THE MARK OF THE WARRIOR

A sensitive, speculative inquiry is concerned with the inner mechanism of the man of action, and much along the same lines as Ronald Hardy and Pierre Boulle, makes its reconnaisance of the metaphysics of courage and cowardice, of the killer instinct which marks the warrior but destroys the man. Major Colin Craig, in charge of a group of Englishmen in Burma in the last phase of their jungle training, had lost -- almost a year before- a young man of superior military qualifications in an unnecessary incident. Now the younger brother of that casualty, Bob Ramsay, is in his command and again has a real instinct for soldiering- a contempt for life and for personal weakness which does not forgive Craig's continuing sense of responsibility and recrimination in his brother's death. As the weeks of exercises and manoeuvers proceed, Craig permits Ramsay to pattern himself into the image of the ""warrior"" and is again tormented by guilt when Ramsay is killed, trying to save himself from what he has become..... An assured writer, always at ease in this terrain- both physical and ideological -- this is perhaps the most successful of Paul Scott's novels (Six Days in Marapore- Doubleday- A Male Child- Dutton). The narrative is controlled and the content is challenging.