Peasants in War

MEN PASS--Marcelle Capy--Liveright ($2.50).

Mme Capy, winner of the 1930 Prix Severine, transplants the stolid peasants of George Sand's pastoral novels to the War-years of 1914-18 and presents them in crisp, classic profile. Madeline of the white skin, Sebastien of the shadowy mustache loved each other, planned to be married. That was before the War. The War forced first the old men, then the women to work the fields, drive wavering plough-furrows through the hard earth. Madeline's white skin and plump cheeks turn weather-brown, her muscles harden. She is admired as the finest woman in the whole village. Sebastien, on harvest-leave, admires her too. But when a man admires a woman, he no longer wants her. This is but one of the tragedies that mutilate the lives of peasant women when their men are at war. Madeline sees it all, her thoughts confused by the presence of a squad of German prisoners, who, contrary to all her visions of les sales bodies, are kind, good, sensible. The War ends. One morning Madeline finds some grey hairs; she is 30. She whose white skin so troubled young men before the War is doomed to celibacy.

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