reports of isolated instances--the profanely humorous experiences of
correspondents, the magnificent courage of signalmen under fire, the
forgotten adventure of a converted yacht--but all are instinct with the
red fever of war, and are backgrounded with the choking smoke of battle.
Never again did Crane attempt the large canvas of "The Red Badge of
Courage." Before he had seen war, he imagined its immensity and painted
it with the fury and fidelity of a Verestchagin; when he was its
familiar, he singled out its minor, crimson passages for briefer but no
less careful delineation.

In this book, again, his sense of the poetry of motion is vividly
evident. We see men going into action, wave on wave, or in scattering
charges; we hear the clink of their accoutrements and their breath
whistling through their teeth. They are not men going into action at
all, but men going about their business, which at the moment happens to
be the capture of a trench. They are neither heroes nor cowards. Their
faces reflect no particular emotion save, perhaps, a desire to get
somewhere. They are a line of men running for a train, or following a
fire engine, or charging a trench. It is a relentless picture, ever
changing, ever the same. But it contains poetry, too, in rich, memorable
passages.

In "The Monster and Other Stories," there is a tale called "The Blue
Hotel". A Swede, its central figure, toward the end manages to get
himself murdered. Crane's description of it is just as casual as that.
The story fills a dozen pages of the book; but the social injustice of
the whole world is hinted in that space; the upside-downness of
creation, right prostrate, wrong triumphant,--a mad, crazy world. The
incident of the murdered Swede is just part of the backwash of it all,
but it is an illuminating fragment. The Swede was slain, not by the