There are some pages in Bessie's book ["Men in Battle"] which tell us more about the war in Spain, and in fact more about war in general, than whole volumes of parliamentary records. And this in spite of the fact that the author hardly ever generalizes, seldom mentions anything he did not see, and appears to write in almost unsullied political innocence.

I think this is one of the best war books I ever read. Its effects come directly from the material in an extraordinary way; it does not seem to be opaque, like most books, hiding from the reader just what the author most wishes to reveal. There are no "literary" effects at all, or, such as they are, the material creates them. The whole thing gives such a terrifying impression of exact truth that in its climactic passages … we lie there, we the readers, on that...