The Home Guard The Home Guard of Britain. By Charles
Graves. (Hutchinson. los. 6d.) MR. CHARLES GRAvEs's history of the Home Guard must be rated as a first-class performance. . He gives his readers the facts and he has presented them in such a way that the volume should appeal to the general reader, even if he prefers to skip portions of it, and is quite indispensable to those members of the Home Guard who still insist, despite all discouragements, in taking their part-time employment seriously. The author undertook his task with the official encouragement that made its fulfilment possible. He has had accesss to records, and has accordingly been able to give a picture that is as complete as can be while the war is still in progress, and the considerations of security have to be respected. He has presented it, first, as a connected story of the three years of the life of the Home Guard, and has devoted the latter half of the volume to appendices, which include a lengthy' collection of reports that he has received from individual units, covering their origins in the L.D.V. days, and subsequent activities. The book is packed with stories, many of them heroic, and, still more, humorous, and brings to the public some realisation of what it owes to its Home Guard, quite apart from its practical usefulness to H.G. personnel.
The only major fault of the book is that it possesses no index ; a most aw kward omission from the point of view of the serious student. No doubt that will be rectified in future editions. It is also not free from the minor mistakes that are almost inseparable from war-time book production, and one does not—quite naturally— agree entirely with all the opinions expressed by the author. If the reader was not occasionally irritated by them, the book would almost certainly be colourless. And it is certainly not that. The author is skilful in being frank without being offensive. Writing with official encouragement, it is only to be supposed that he had no wish to incur official displeasure, and there is nothing in the book to which anybody in Whitehall can reasonably take exception.
Yet, Mr. Graves has managed to give the whole truth to his readers —and particularly to those who scan between the lines. He shows how the Home Guard was developed from an Irregular Force into one almost more Regular than the Regulars themselves, its individuality was submerged, Its high-spots carefully ironed down to the orthodox level ; no one will gainsay that this was an achieve- ment on the part of Whitehall, or even that it was st beneficial achievement. But whether it was quite the best possible one, in all the circumstances, is another matter altogether.
FRANCIS JONES.
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