Behind the Front

CLASS OF 1902--Ernst Glaeser--Viking ($2.50). In All Quiet on the Western Front (TIME, June 17), Author Erich Maria Remarque wrote of the old-young men of Germany who were destroyed, whether they died or not, on the battle front. Class of 1902 is by a younger and hence luckier author. For the "class of 1902" to which Author Glaeser belonged, was the German Army designation for those born in 1902 who, aged 12-16 in 1914-18, were just about to be called to the Western Front when the Armistice was signed. Thus Author Glaeser remained, his novel remains, behind the Front.

Spectator. The story opens in 1914 with one Brosius, a high school teacher as brutal as the one in Remarque's book, bullying delicate young Leo Silberstein, a Jew. Leo serves only to provide the author with the bleak picture of a despised race. The author is likewise merely a spectator when adults talk politics; when the workers march singing behind their arrested leader; when Germans who were once social and political enemies fall hysterically into each other's arms because "they need their hatred for the other people''; when philosophical Ferd is stoned for predicting Germany will lose the War; when the Battle of Verdun makes so many of his playmates orphans; when people, tired of Death and Patriotism, bootleg food under police noses; when two mutilated soldiers symbolically reveal the blood beneath the flag waving.

Seeker. These sights are interlinked with a perpetual seeking. At first the author senses a mystery; he wishes to know "how it is with human beings." Girls, he decides, are the mystery, for even the complex Ferd, whom he plainly adores, is not. With Hilde he craftily sets about a solution, but neither of them, aged 12, knows quite what to do. For three marks the butcher's boy consents to exhibit the mystery with a Polish girl, but the author runs away believing the girl is being murdered. When he later undresses the sleeping Mein-chen, a farm girl, he is too overpowered by female beauty to awaken her. Toward the end of the War, still studying Greek, he meets Anna, a trolley conductorette, and proves his love by taking her some of Germany's scarce meat from his mother's cupboard. Anna loves him in return, promises to reveal the mystery. But after an air raid a report is sent: "Direct hit. We've covered up all that's left of her. . . ."

Other Characters. At the Front, frenzied and weary men lose their individuality, but those who stay at home reveal their naked egos when confronted by crisis. Among them are: A labor leader of solid, statistical mind who forgets his dissatisfaction with the Vaterland when the foe threatens; well-fed Dr. Hoffman who can afford to be Socialist and argue with his practical friend, the belligerent Major; Papa Silberstein who prospers, first by selling uniforms, then widow's weeds; small Gaston. a French boy who tells the author: "The War? That's an affair of our parents!"

The Significance. Germany, together with the rest of the combatants, slowly becomes articulate about the War. Author Glaeser, an editor of the Frankfurter Zeitung, adds to the panorama most effectively begun by Author Remarque. Says the latter: "Pages (of this book) lay bare the hopeless position of boyhood when confronted by the adult world, for it is hard to be younger, cleverer, more alive than the world about you, a world that is most onerous when it tries to be helpful." Neither Ernst Glaeser nor Ernest Hemingway in his new war-scarred novel, A Farewell to Arms (see p. 80) attempt to interpret their encounter with Moloch. Their books are sensitive reports, not judgments. Perhaps both adolescent Ernst and mature Ernest have seen things which men of all ages should be spared. But philosophers and interpreters of War will come later; meanwhile these biting, intimate, personal histories are written, better case books than any scholarly assembly of facts.