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    The Deserter
    The Deserter
    The Deserter
    Ebook45 pages35 minutes

    The Deserter

    By Richard Harding Davis

    ()

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateOct 1, 2006
    The Deserter
    Author

    Richard Harding Davis

    Richard Davis was born and educated in Melbourne and now lives in Queensland. He was encouraged in his writing by Alan Marshall, Ivan Southall and later, Nobel prize-winning author Patrick White. Richard pursued a successful career in commerce before taking up full-time writing in 1997. Since then his published works have included three internationally acclaimed biographies of musicians: Geoffrey Parsons - Among Friends (ABC Books), Eileen Joyce: A Portrait (Fremantle Press) and Anna Bishop - The Adventures of an Intrepid Prima Donna (Currency Press). The latest in this series is Wotan’s Daughter - The Life of Marjorie Lawrence.

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      Book preview

      The Deserter - Richard Harding Davis

      The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Deserter, by Richard Harding Davis

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

      Title: The Deserter

      Author: Richard Harding Davis

      Release Date: February 17, 2005 [EBook #15089]

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DESERTER ***

      Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Stephanie Tarnacki and the PG Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

      THE DESERTER

      BY

      RICHARD HARDING DAVIS

      WITH AN INTRODUCTION

      BY

      JOHN T. MCCUTCHEON

      NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1918

      INTRODUCTION

      When Mr. Davis wrote the story of The Deserter, he could not possibly have foreseen that it was to be his last story—the last of those short stories which gave him such eminence as a short-story writer.

      He apparently was as rugged and as vigorous as ever.

      And yet, had he sat down to write a story which he knew was to be his last, I do not think he could have written one more fittingly designed to be the capstone of his literary monument. The theme is one in which he has unconsciously mirrored his own ideals of honorable obligation, as well as one which presents a wholesome lesson to young soldiers who have taken an oath to do faithful service to a nation.

      It is a story with a moral so subtly expressed that every soldier or sailor who reads it will think seriously of it if the temptation to such disloyalty should enter his mind. This story of the young man who tried to desert at Salonika may well have a heartening influence upon all men in uniforms who waver in the path of duty—especially in these days of vast military operations when a whole world is in arms. It belongs in patriotic literature by the side of Edward Everett Hale's The Man Without a Country. The motif is the same—that of obligation and service and loyalty to a pledge.

      In The Deserter Mr. Davis does not reveal the young soldier's name, for obvious reasons, and the name of the hotel and ship in Salonika are likewise disguised. It is part of the art of the skilful story-writer to dress his narrative in such a way as to eliminate those matter-of-fact details which would be emphasized by one writing the story as a matter of news. For instance, the Hotel Hermes in Mr. Davis's story is the Olympos Palace Hotel, and the Adriaticus is the Greek steamer Helleni. The name of the young soldier is given as Hamlin, and under this literary camouflage, to borrow a word born of the war, the story may be read without the thought that a certain definite young man will be humiliated by seeing his own name revealed as that of a potential deserter.

      But the essentials of

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