Retreat: A Novel of 1918

New York/London: The Century Co.. Very Good+ in Good dj. (c.1930). 2nd printing. Hardcover. [solid copy with minor wear to the extremities, light dust-soiling to top edge of text block; the jacket has a shallow triangular chip at the bottom of the front panel, a half-dollar-size chunk torn away from the base of the spine, and a couple of tiny chips along the top edge]. "The story of an English priest who goes to war in 1918 buoyed up by reilgious idealism and imbued with the desire of carry the word of God to the soldiers at the front. But Chaplain Warne, caught in the final desperate German offensive of the war and flung back in the great British retreat that follows, painfully discovers the fact of his own utter uselessness and the futility of the divine mission he had imagined for himself. With terrible restraint we are shown the gradual collapse of this earnest, eager, over-sensitive priest, sinking from fear and depression, down through every degree of morbid self-torture, to madness and death." Great War narratives were all the vogue in the late 1920s -- both the play "Journey's End" and the novel "All Quiet on the Western Front" are evoked (twice!) in the jacket -- .