" Be your opinion of the New
Journalism what it may I guarantee that you will find its champion an
agreeable companion.
* * * * *
There are parts of Mr. W.J. LOCKE'S latest novel, _The House of Baltazar_
(LANE), which will, I fear, make almost prohibitive demands upon the faith
(considered as belief in the incredible) of his vast following. To begin
with, he introduces us to that problematical personage, whose possibility
used to be so much debated, the Man Who Didn't Know There Was A War On.
_John Baltazar_ had preserved this unique ignorance, first by bolting from
a Cambridge professorship through amorous complications, next by living
many years in the Far East, and finally by settling upon a remote moorland
farm (locality unspecified) with a taciturn Chinaman and an Airedale for
his only companions. This and other contributory circumstances, for which I
lack space, just enabled me to admit the situation as possible. Naturally,
therefore, when a befogged Zeppelin laid a couple of bombs plonk into the
homestead, the ex-professor experienced a mental as well as a bodily
shake-up. I had no complaint either with the transformation that developed
_John Baltazar_ from the only outsider to apparently the big boss of the
War; while the scenes between him and the son of whose existence he had
been unaware (a situation not precisely new to fiction) are presented with
a sincere and moving simplicity.
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