The qualities which distinguish Remarque as a writer are abundantly displayed in "Three Comrades." Simplicity and strength, humor and tenderness, a poet's sensitive reactions both to the things that are tangible and to those that are not—all these have been united in his work from the beginning, but to them there is added now, I think, a growing power of characterization. The people of "Three Comrades" are more fully depicted than those of Remarque's two earlier books, and there is evident for the first time the power to build up the story of the unfolding of a human relationship—for "Three Comrades" has for its focus one of the most poignant love stories that have been told in our time.

The development of that story is definitely a new achievement for Remarque. Looking back on "All Quiet" and "The Road Back," it is the perfection of certain detached episodes that one best remembers; in "Three Comrades" the episodes are handled in as masterly a fashion, but there is a continuity that was lacking before, a progression in the tale that seemed essential to Remarque's full development as a novelist….

[When] Pat Hollmann stepped into Robby's life the world slowly but perceptibly changed. They would not admit to themselves or to each other at first that it was so, but their steadily growing consciousness that this was not a casual relationship but the central fact in their lives, is what, in Remarque's delicate and sure delineation, gives the story of these two its quality and points the tragedy of its conclusion.

It is a story that brings inevitably to mind that of Lieutenant Henry and Catherine Barkley in Hemingway's "Farewell to Arms." "Three Comrades" ends with an identical scene, on an identical note, after Pat's death from tuberculosis in the sanatorium. It seems to me that Remarque's story is more than a little the better, good as Hemingway's is. And for the reason, I think, first of all, that the relationship in "Three Comrades" is more fully developed and the characters of Robby and Pat are more fully realized. And Remarque's is the greater compassion and the more completely stated understanding of love.