SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
Enlist in this column doss not necessarily products subsequentrroinn] "For a couple of hundred years," says Mr. H. G. Wells in his introduction to Friendly Russia, by Denis Garstin (T, Fisher Unwin, 3s. 6d. net), "Russia baa been a fabulous country to the English imagination, a wilderness of wolves, knouts, serfdom, and cruelty." He also tells us that "nobody reads introductions," and if their writers never bad anything more pertinent to say we think that this abstinence would be justified. Without exaggeration, however, we can congratulate Mr. Garstin on having given us a lively and picturesque description of what he saw in Russia. The most timely portion of his book deals with "the Russian miracle" of mobilization for the present war. We note his statement that Russia ores as much to the Japanese War as England owes to the South African: both produced a useful revision of military ideas for which Germany, still sunk in the com- placency produced by 1870, will have to pay heavily.
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