The loves and the
hates of his boys are as primitive as their virtues and their vices. His
women, from the beautiful Agnes to the witch-like mother of Lieutenant
Vanslyperken, are, with the exception of the sailors' wives, like the
shadows of what has never been. His Silvas, his Ribieras, his Shriftens,
his Delmars remind us of people we have heard of somewhere, many times,
without ever believing in their existence. His morality is honourable
and conventional. There is cruelty in his fun and he can invent puns in
the midst of carnage. His naiveties are perpetrated in a lurid light.
There is an endless variety of types, all surface, with hard edges, with
memorable eccentricities of outline, with a childish and heroic effect in
the drawing. They do not belong to life; they belong exclusively to the
Service. And yet they live; there is a truth in them, the truth of their
time; a headlong, reckless audacity, an intimacy with violence, an
unthinking fearlessness, and an exuberance of vitality which only years
of war and victories can give. His adventures are enthralling; the
rapidity of his action fascinates; his method is crude, his
sentimentality, obviously incidental, is often factitious.
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