KNOW YOUR LIBRARY #4

       A service of the Taos Public Library

  written by Joanne Forman

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We’re up to the 300s in our survey of the books in the Taos Public Library: Social Sciences.

 November brings the holiday of Veterans’ Day—which was

Originally Armistice Day; remembering November 11, 1918, when Germany and the allied powers halted the senseless slaughter that had left millions dead.

     Like all wars, especially the horrendous wars of the 20^th century, the sorry story gave rise to some of the great novels: Ernest Hemingway’s A FAREWELL TO ARMS,  e.e. cummings THE ENORMOUS ROOM,  Dalton Trumbo’s JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN, to name just a few.

     But probably the most brilliant and poignant of them all was by the German Erich Maria Remarque: ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT. This story of a small group of German soldiers is universal: they’re kids—none of them is yet twenty years old, and, if they cannot at the beginning articulate it, they know well they’ve been hoodwinked, robbed, swindled.

Here is all the misery of the insane trench war—starvation, disease, unspeakable wounds, boredom relieved only by terror.

     Toward the end of the book, Remarque shows well why this novel was one of the first banned by Hitler:

     “It’s queer, when one thinks about it,” goes on Kropp, “we are here to protect our fatherland. And the French are over there to protect their fatherland. Now who is in the right?”

…..”Then what exactly is the war for?

…..”Every full-grown emperor requires at least one war, otherwise he would not become famous…”

,,,,,almost all of us are simple folk. And in France, too, the majority of men are labourers, workmen or poor clerks. Now just why would a French blacksmith or a French shoemaker want to attack us? No, it is merely the rulers….

…..”There are other people back behind there who profit by war……”