SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
this heading tr. %aft. such Books of ti's week as hays not hes seserrect for 'mew in other forms.]
A Soldier's Diary. South Africa, 1899-1901. By Murray Casby Jackson. (Max Goschen. 10s. 6d. net.)—This volume was, we are told, compiled by a sergeant in the 7th Mounted Infantry for the amusement of his friends and relatives, and founded on a diary unfortunately lost before the conclusion of peace. The result of its unceremonious genesis is cer- tainly a happy one, for Mr. Jackson writes entirely without affectation and with the most obvious enjoyment. He has an abundant sense of humour, and gives us the small change of warfare with infinite gusto. His pages are a record of discomforts cheerfully borne, of laughable accidents, and whimsical personalities. A good quarter of it is devoted to the author's efforts to keep dry, more than a third (one would say) to his difficulties in finding food, and the incidents which bulk most largely in his memory are the one or two "glorious feeds" which chance brought him on the march either at a Bloemfontein restaurant or in a deserted farm. All this is characteristic of the campaigner. Equally characteristic is his cheerful and unconscious cynicism. Mr. Jackson has no scruple in telling us how happy he felt when able to" do a bit of a Tod Sloan" out of an awkward corner, and his remarks on the idea of officers walking about under fire to keep their men steady recall a much-abused passage in "Arms and the Man." Characteristic, too, is the friendly feeling for the enemy (" the Joes," he calls them), and the habit of mind by which deaths, mutilations, plunderings, and destruction are all brought down to the common level—all regarded as mere incidental inconveniences, worth no more emphasis than the loss of a horse, a wet skin, or a day without rations. In conclusion, a word must he said of the admirably spontaneous drawings with which the book is illustrated. These have all the merits of Mr. Jackson's writing, and will add materially to the reader's enjoyment.
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