A Lost World
Half a Life. By Major C. S. Jarvis, C.M.G., O.B.E. (Murray. 155.)
1T is perhaps no handicap that this picture of a lost world—as Major Jarvis calls his account of his life before 1914—should be reviewed by one to whom that world was hardly known. For it is almost a certainty that among Major Jarvis's contemporaries no one could be found with the qualifications necessary to do the book full justice. Who but Major Jarvis has served an apprenticeship to sail, been a trooper in the South African War, and as an officer in the Militia been fortunate in having the leisure and opportunity to fish and shoot as much as he wanted? All that a reviewer of a book like this can do is to commend it to everyone who has enjoyed the author's previous books, and to introduce to those who do not know them the work of a man who has seen much and forgotten little and can describe what he has seen with humour and skill.
The book falls naturally into three parts. The first five chapters tell of a voyage to Australia and back as an apprentice in a four- masted sailing ship. There are plenty of good stories, but little
• here in the way of glamour for Major Jarvis does not attempt to gloss over the hardships of life at sea in the 'nineties. He cheerfully abandoned his career at sea when the end of his voyage coincided with the military crisis of 1899 caused by the Boer victory at Colenso, and enlisted in the Montgomeryshire company of the Imperial Yeomanry. His reminiscences of the South African War add hardly anything to our knowledge, although it is interesting to realise that food was not plentiful and that the troops were kept in complete ignorance of the purpose of what seemed to them inter- minable treks, journeys which in reality fitted into a general plan for encircling the Boer commandos. The chapter on Morant of the Bushveld Carbineers tells from a different angle a story which will be familiar to us, if at all, only from a single paragraph irc Conan Doyle's popular history. Major Jarvis, who knew Morant personally and almost joined the Carbineers himself, makes out a case for regarding his execution as unduly severe. At one point Major Jarvis's memory lets him down. De Wet could have had nothing to do with any breach of the armistice at the Wittebergen, since De Wet had evaded the encircling British forces before Prinsloo's Surrender. Major Jarvis is probably thinking of Haasbroek and a few other commando leaders who did escape with about fifteen hundred men after General Hunter had accepted Prinsloo's surrender. It is, of course, true that most of these men later joined De Wet, but De Wet himself was innocent of any breach of faith on this occasion. The last section of the book deals with the author's experiences between 1902 and 1914. During this period he was an officer in the Militia, which in 1907 was transformed by Haldane into the Special Reserve. Major Jarvis has many good yarns to tell of his soldiering experiences, but the bulk of this section deals with fishing, especially in Irish waters, and with caravanning holidays. Rudyard Kipling once advised Major Jarvis not to make the mistake of wasting all his experiences in one volume, and it is not unreasonable to suppose that Major Jarvis has more to tell us about his life before 1914. Military historians, at any rate, would be grateful if he were to paint a picture of life in the old Army and give his memories of the change brought about in it by the Haldane reforms. S. H. F. JOHNSTON.
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