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THE DONKEYS, by Alan Clark (216 pp.; Morrow; $4). "The English fight like lions," said German General Ludendorff.

"Yes," scoffed an underofficer, "but they are led by donkeys." So they were, as Historian Clark proves in this horrifying account of the early months of World War I. His charges, proved beyond doubt by huge and sickening casualty lists, are that the British commanders--notably Field Marshal Sir John French and General Douglas Haig--overrated the cavalry charge, underrated the machine gun, and stubbornly refused to change outmoded tactics. Clark calls French and Haig mass murderers, and few who read his book will contest the judgment.

THE CONSCIENCE OF LOVE, by Marcel Ayme (253 pp.; Atheneum; $4.50). At one time or another, veteran Author Marcel Ayme, 60, has been sweepingly accused of being pro-and anti-1) fascist, 2) Semitic, 3) Christian, and 4) Communist. Shy and almost inarticulate in person, Author Ayme on paper fires volubly in all directions and at all available targets. In this new novel, his first in twelve years, he is at his pyrotechnical best as he blasts away at contemporary love, sex, crime, big business and middle-class morality. His hero is a 20th century descendant of Candide, a young Parisian named Martin who believes that "everything can be explained." With Martin, who has just been released after serving a prison term, Ayme takes a dreamlike but invigorating stroll through the contrarieties of Western society. He views men and women as obsessed by mutually contradictory impulses, and his mordant humor is best expressed by standing acceptable ideas on their heads. When one character painstakingly discovers irrefutable evidence that there is a God, he is persuaded to destroy it on being reminded that, for believers, "an absolute, demonstrated certainty tends to dispel faith and hope."

TWENTY-ONE STORIES, by Graham Greene (245 pp.; Viking; $3.95). Any new book by Graham Greene, the British alchemist skilled at transmuting complex metaphysical problems of guilt and God into goose flesh, is a literary event. But Twenty-One Stories is also a tribute to publishing ingenuity. The present bouquet of Greenery has been compiled simply by taking a 1949 collection called Nineteen Stones, throwing out one, and adding three. The old stories are still able to trouble the sleep. The three new ones are predictably grim, and well up to the author's average--one good, one excellent, one paltry. The collection as a whole is a reminder that Greene is one of those rare contemporary authors not ashamed to clank a chain, or a plot. Two of the best--both in the old lot--are built around identical twin brothers, and in each case the reader's considerable fear and trembling depend on the death of one brother. No young writer today would think of being so unsophisticated.

SCRUFFY, by Paul Gallico (299 pp.; Doubleday; $4.50). Scruffy was a Barbary ape and, according to Writer Paul Gallico, the male animal that did most to turn the tide of World War II. Gallico invented him and his doings from a single shred of fact: during the war Prime Minister Winston Churchill issued orders that the ape population of Gibraltar be preserved, in deference to the legend that when the last ape leaves the rock, the British will, too. The monkey tricks that roll out of Gallico's typewriter are frantic but predictable. The crisis, brought on by fifth columnists who try to wipe out the ape population, is passed when Scruffy is induced to marry cross-eyed Amelia, after a long-distance betrothal complete with a touched-up portrait, a la Anne of Cleves. It was funnier the first time it happened.

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