Épilogue

Questions et Expressions Idiomatiques . 69

Notes . 89

ALBERT ERLANDE

Mr. Albert Erlande, well known in France both as a poet and as a novelist, wrote this story, Un jeune Légionnaire, for young Americans.

In writing it, he drew mainly on his own recollections of the Great War, during which he fought as a private. Born in Marseilles in 1878 of an English father and a French mother, he could not enlist in a French régiment; but he was so anxious to fight for his adopted land that he did not hesitate to join, at the very beginning of the war, the Foreign Légion, composed of foreign volunteers whose motto is “never to look backwards, never to retreat to save one’s life.”

After being wounded in 1915, he published En Campagne avec la Légion Étrangère , a story of his own expériences, which has received lately the great honor of being crowned by the French Academy.

Professor Albert Schinz of Smith College praises Mr. Erlande’s war diary in his book, French Literature of the Great War, as follows: “The présent writer . . . knows that if he were asked to point out the diary which has left the deepest and most lasting impression upon his mind, he would unhesitatingly reply: Erlande’s En Campagne avec la Légion Étrangère. It is the one which, from ail points of view, appeals most to our human selves in their entirety; because, although it is a

ALBERT ERLANDE

war diary, it never fails to give a large place to the man as a man and as distinct from the soldier. ... We prefer Erlande also . . . because of the splendid virility his men manifest in big spectacular achievements. There is in that fact something which satisfies the mind, which harmonizes with our sense of the fitness of things.” •

Mr. Erlande is also the author of several novels. A very good film has been based by Mr. d’Auchy, for the Gaumont Pictures Corporation, upon one of them, Stella Lucente, the action of which takes place in Venice. Another novel, L'Immortelle bien-aimêe, in 1922 won the prize of 5000 francs which the literary review, La Force Française , offers every year for the best novel still in manuscript.

As a poet, he has composed two tragédies in verse, Le Titan and La Tragédie des Empires, and many beautiful poems. One of his odes, Le Festival, has been selected to be sung at the opening of the Olympic . games in Paris in 1924.

Mr. Erlande has recently entered a new field for which he seems especially well fitted; he has been appointed by the Librairie de France (Paris) as its editorin-chief for its new sériés of children’s stories, the first of which, Coup-de-Pif (Little Saucy Nose), was written by Mr. Erlande himself.

The story of Un jeune Légionnaire is that of a French boy left to himself without any other protector than his faithful dog, till he finds another devoted friend in the person of an old corporal of the Foreign Légion.

ALBERT ERLANDE

Our interest in him never flags, because he is resourceful, brave, loving, and ambitious; and after sharing his hardships, we rejoice with him at the happy ending of his adventures.

The characters of this story are not artificial; they are living beings. Mr. Erlande knows them; he saw them; he talked to them and listened to them with sympathetic ears; and the proof that they are living beings is the fact that the author has supplied photographs so that we too may get acquainted with them. In the picture facing page 22, you will see Mr. Erlande seated at the right of the group, and in the picture facing page 30, you will find Jean and his dog. These pictures add the element of reality to our enjoyment of this very interesting story.