lcur- Our—By Rupert Croft-Cooke.
Darrelds, London, 1/6
"Night Out" is the story-of the two days' adventures of 'a young Londoner, Justus Willis, who attempts to break away "from the [imited existence of his daily life in search of the fulfilment of an ethereal ambition, the quest of an "Ideal." By his' fruitless wander ings he epitomizes the ineptitude of what the author calls that most unfortunate of all generations, the Post-War generation, whose ' cir~ Jcumstances of upbringing have produced an apathy towards life and, jas the author puts it, a complete inability to go right out for any.
The old philosophy. acceptance and faith in the srmanent order of things has been supplanted by the modern philosophy of doubt and uncertainty.
There is an unfortunate amount lof truth in what the author writes when he dilates upon this awful scepticism which is a natural reaction from the Great War. In an age of enlightenment and. realism how can men retain their faith after witnessing the futility. of all. the energy. expended in that fierce struggle? As the riddle loses. its terest when the clue is divulged so does life lose its keenness with Jou the illusion.
The extent to which the author justified in his dictum is, of course, a matter of opinion; but it is certainly a question worth some thought, Tu his adventures, young Willis meets much that disillusions him and much that shocks him: bub wherever he goes reality fails to justify hig Ideal, and he returns home finally with' a sense of blank nihilism, convinced in the futility of ambition and determined to make the most of his given status in life, One may not, perhaps, agree with rho [all that the aut writes but for that, the book is well- written and worth reading—p.al.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.