Michael Foldi's latest book, "The World Strides On" (Melrose, London, 7/8), is à touching love drama, played in the shadows of the Great War. The author, a celebrated Hungarian novelist, tends to show the demoralizing effects, which those horrible years from 1914 to 1918 had upon the survivors who came back from the front only to realize that they had forgotten how to live and were unable to fit into the routine of daily life. The scene of the story is laid in Budapest, where two medical students, a young man and a young woman, both poor and full of ambitions, fall in love with each other. The war breaks out, and he must go to the front. The war fever anù the enthusiasm with which the news of the proclamation of hostilities is received in Germany and Austria are described very vividly. He goes through all the horrors of war, in the meantime forgetting his former life and ambitions. Upon returning to Budapest, he finds that his sweetheart, who thought him dead, has married a rich professor. She soon finds out, however, that she cannot live without her former friend, and divorces the professor in order to marry the young soldier and start a new life. This, again, comes: to a sad end, as her new husband, finding that she still loves the professor, leaves Budapest, dressed in his old uniform. He meets two Roumanian Soldiers who take him for a spy and Shoot him. The book, well written and full of emotion, is original, and one can sympathize with its strong anti-war tendency.—x.J.z.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.