Moral War

THE CROWNING OF A KING--Arnold Zweig--Viking ($2.50).

In Tolstoy's War and Peace, war is essentially a moral struggle. From top to bottom of the army, each individual soldier is shown making his choice, determined by his sense of right & wrong, in moments of crisis. But in most World War novels, soldiers are shown caught in a vast impersonal military machine that operates blindly, automatically, uninfluenced by their individual actions. Simple privates or intellectual officers, they are alike in their helplessness and confusion: the machine of which they are part continues to operate regardless of their heroism or cowardice, their strength or weakness, their life or death.

The shining exception to this pattern of War fiction is Arnold Zweig's The Case of Sergeant Grischa. It is an old-fashioned moral study, and Author Zweig is almost the only War novelist for whom armed conflict is only a part of the war between good & evil that rages as fiercely when the guns are silent. Last week Author Zweig published the fourth volume of Grischa's moral story. A long and involved book called The Crowning of a King, it deals, superficially, with the intrigues of the German general staff over the selection of a king for Lithuania. But in a deeper sense it is a dramatization of the moral conflicts that began years before, when the innocent Sergeant Grischa was executed. Aside from a few confusing passages about characters who appear in the previous books, it makes interesting reading in its own right. But it gains greatly if readers know the plan of Zweig's cycle of novels.

The scope of that plan was suggested in The Case of Sergeant Grischa. A goodhearted, simple Russian soldier, Grischa escaped from a German prison camp, hid in the woods, took the clothes and identity of a dead German deserter. He was caught and sentenced to be shot for desertion. Grischa proved his identity, was nevertheless ordered shot in his false identity as a German deserter. Gradually, as one soldier after another was shocked at the injustice, his case became the centre of a major conflict. A sergeant tried to save him, then a lieutenant, finally a general. They compromised their army careers, suffered the constant temptation to let the whole affair go. When millions of men were dying, what difference did the death of one more make?

Grischa was eventually shot, in one of the most powerful scenes in War fiction. In his next two novels Zweig turned back to trace the earlier careers of some of the people who had defended Grischa. Young Woman of 1914 told of the marriage of Werner Bertin, who had been one of Grischa's first defenders. Education Before Verdun told how Bertin had learned the facts of war life, and the savagery of conflicts between officers. Now, in The Crowning of a King, the consequences of their stand in the Grischa case are traced in the subsequent careers of people who were involved in it.

One of these is Captain Winfried, attached to the political section of the army administration governing conquered territory in Lithuania and Poland. The Crowning of a King begins with Captain Winfried's dizzy climb into the high councils of the army. Entrusted with secret negotiations, he wins the friendship of the great General Clauss himself, the hero of the Eastern front. But at each step in Winfried's climb, usually without his knowledge, the ghost of Grischa enters his life. Sometimes superpatriotic officers who had been on the other side in the Grischa case whisper that Winfried is untrustworthy, try to delay his progress. Sometimes Winfried is warned by humble soldiers of traps that have been set for him, because they remember his attempts to save Grischa.

Because of his reputation as a just officer, Winfried is told of terrible abuses in a forced labor camp, promises to try to correct them. But in the excitement of his swift rise to power, his love affair with a pretty nurse, the hazards of his diplomatic negotiations, he lets his promise slip his mind. When General Clauss learns that Winfried has been seeing members of the Reichstag who want peace, he agrees to let the young captain be taught a lesson, has no idea how terrible the lesson is to be. For old rivals, who have hated Winfried since his interference in the Grischa case, have him arrested as a spy, thrown into the labor camp that he had neglected to investigate, almost kill him. Winfried gets out, for friends in the lower ranks of the army--orderlies, telephone operators, privates--protect him. But he finds that his sweetheart has died, that the German armies are retreating in the West, that his eyes are permanently open to the brutal realities of conquest. When Clauss tries to make up with him, Winfried damns him and his kind, takes his place with the common soldiers.

No such book as the first volume of the Grischa series, The Crowning of a King has much of the same moral force, little of the excitement. Its main importance is likely to be that of steering readers to the book which many a critic considers the best that has come out of the World War: The Case of Sergeant Grischa.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.