BOOKS.
SOME WAR BOOKS.*
A SPECIAL welcome must be given to Part IL of Mr. Muirhead Bone's drawings of the Western front.' There has never before been any- thing like the issue under official inspiration of these drawings with their skilful and scholarly explanatory text. The chief thing that strikes the eye is that the drawings obtain their effects without any searching for peculiarly dramatic material. It might easily have been otherwise. Indeed, if any one had told us a couple of years ago that the War Offices would authorize a series of drawings illustrating the doings of soldiers at the front, we would confidently have predicted the kind of thing that must be expected. But we should have predicted wrong. Mr. Muirhead Bone may be trusted to remain Mr. Muirhead Bone. He chooses his subjects because they appeal to the eye of the artist, not to that of the sensation-monger or the propagandist. He illustrates life rather than death ; and yet his success is complete in giving us an idea of the hard daily routine of the Western front. The drawing called " Watching our Artillery Fire on Tranes Wood from Montauban" is perhaps the best, but it is characteristic of all. Only four or fire human figures appear, and only a small billow of ground pock-marked with shell-holes in the foreground, but the artist makes us stand whore we feel that the terrain is vast, that mighty invisible hosts are engaged, and that wo are in the midst of civilization's greatest upheaval. Let us quote from the introduction which describes " The Somme Battle- field " :- "Among the wreckage of the countryside you can detect the traces of old standing comfort and rustic wealth. The many wayside windmills show you how much corn was grown. In size and plan they are curiously like the mighty stone dovecotes of Fifeshire. Almost as frequent as ruined windmill.; are ruined sugar refineries, standing a little detached in the fields, like the ono at Courcelette, for which armies fought as they fought for the neighbouring windmill. Beet was the next crop to grain. There were little industries, too, like the making of buttons for shirts at Fricourt, where you see by the road small refuse heaps of old oyster shells with many round holes where the little discs have been cut cleanly out of the mother-of-pearl, though all other trace of the factories has vanished. Each village commune had its wood, with certain rights for the members of the commune to take timber ; Fricourt Wood at the doors of Fricourt, Mametz Wood rather far from Mametz, as there was no good wood nearer. All these woods were well fenced and kept up, like patches of hedged cover dotted over a park. It was a good country to live in, and good men came from it. The French Army Corps that drew on these villages for recruits has won honour beyond all other French Corps in the battle of the Somme. Many skilled writers have tried to describe the aghast look of these fields where the battle had passed over them. But every new visitor says the same thing—that they had not succeeded ; no eloquence has yet conveyed the disquieting strangeness of the portent. You can enumerate many ugly and queer freaks of the destroying powers—the villages not only planed off the face of the earth but rooted out of it, house by house, like bits of old teeth ; the thin brakes of black stumps that used to be woods, the old graveyards wrecked like kicked ant-heaps, the tilth so disembowelled by shells that moat of the good upper mould created by centuries of the work of worms and men is buried out of eight and the =wrought primeval subsoil lies on the top ; the sowing of the whole ground with a now kind of dragon's teeth—unexploded shells that tho plough may yet detonate, and bombs that may let themselves off if their safety pins rust away sooner than the springs within. But no piling up of sinister detail can express the sombre and malign quality of the battle- field landscape as a whole. ' It makes a goblin of the sun'—or it mighb if it were not peopled in every part with beings so reassuringly and engagingly human, sane and reconstructive as British soldiers.'
The publication of this series is in itself a portent. It shows that we are learning during the war many things which are not immediately connected with war. It almost encourages one to hope that some day Blue Books, official documents, Acts of Parliament, and such-like will be written in language which Englishmen who love their tongue need not resent.
The time was ripe for a really good history of the machine gun written with professional knowledge. Here it is.' Major F. V. Longstaff, having left the Service through ill-health, has used his enforced leisure in producing this industrious work, partly with the help of Captain A. Ffillierd Atteridge. The explanation of the slowness with which the machine gun was adopted in the British Army on a scale appropriate to its obvious merits is only another link in a long chain of military conservatism. The authors remind us that for at least two hundred years the musketeer was protected by pikemen, yet it must surely have been an "idea to let" that the musketeer could be his own pikeman by fixing a steel blade on the end of his musket. Similarly sportsmen were using percussion-caps long before any army gave up the old • (1) The Western Front. Drawings by Muirhead Pone. Part II., January, 1917. Loudon : Published by Authority of the War Onkel at the Office of 0ountry Life and George Newnes. [2s. net.]—(2) The Book of the Machine Gun. By Major F. V. Lonelier, late 5th Batn. (Territorial) The East Surrey Regiment, and A. Hilliard Atteridge, late Captain, London Irish Rifles. London : Hugh Rees. [3s. ed. net.)—(3) The Unbroken Line : Along the Prenah Trenahes from Switzerland to the North Sea. By H. Werner Allen. With Illustrations and Maps. London : Smith, Bider, and Co. Ns. net.]--(4) Sea Power. By Archibald Hurd, London : Constable and Co. [1s. net.1—(5) Scrape of Paper : German Pro- clamation. in Belgians and France. With a Foreword by Ian Malcolm, M.P. London: Hodder and Stoughton. [1a.1—(6) 'Froth Verdun : August-October, 1911. By Maurice Generals. London : Hutchinson and Co. (Os. net.)—(7) The Battle of Verdun (February 21—May 7). By Henry.Dugard. With 32 Full-page Illustra• tions and Maps. Same publishers and price.—(S) With Cavalry in 1915: the British Trooper in the Trench Line through the Sawa Battle of Iprel. Fredetla Coleman, F.R.G.8. Illustrated. Loudon : 8ampoon Low, Marston, and CO. tea. new flintlock. Every War Office in Europe made a long fight against the introduction of the breech-loader. In the Crimea our soldiers, although armed with the long-ranging Enfield rifle, marched close up to their enemy as though they were still dependent upon the old Brown Bess. In short, though a step forward had been made in armament, tactics in the Crimean War had failed to follow. We venture to think that after this war we shall never more so slowly again. Perhaps before the war is over we shall even have light portable body-shields in use. Hem again probably nothing but conservatism has prevented experiment. A machine gun is the equivalent of something like fifty rifles, with the advantages that it does not occupy anything like the space of deployed riflemen, that it can be much more easily hidden, and that its fire is not subject to the varieties of nerve and temperament distributed among fifty riflemen. Bat the necessary sequel must never be forgotten— the single brain controlling the machine gun must be exceptionally cool, resourceful, and highly trained. So far as skill may be learned from a book, it may be learned from this volume, which is complete with technical explanations and diagrams.
Mr. H. Warner Allen, as the special representative of the British Press with the French Armies in the field, had exceptional opportunities of observing the work of our undaunted and ingenious Allies. Ho was in Alsace, the Vosges, Lorraine, the Argonne, Champagne, Artois, at Verdun and elsewhere, and finally on the Somme. Ho does not deal in strategical or tactical discussions, or in criticism. He gives us, besides a military narrative of the operations, the notes of a close and competent observer of " things seen," as the French say. The result is that the reader derives a clear impression of the daily life and the temper of the French soldiers. The French take enough pride in good technical work to be able to admire it in their enemies—which, after all, is one of the signs of strength and self-possession--and Mr. Allen has the good sense to record such instances of praise. For instance, ho writes of German sapping in the Argonne :—
" The French, however, were not sparing in their admiration for the efficiency and industry of tho German sappers. They judged them from a purely impersonal point of view, and drew distinctions between the various German sections and companies as impartially as though they were awarding prizes in a competition. It was agreed that ono particular German company carried off first enemy prize, not only for the Argonne, but also for the whole front. ' It is a real pleasure,' said an engineer officer, to work against them. They dig like lunatics. First you find they are three metres down, so you go down five metros. Then you find they are still below you, so you go down seven metres; but still they dig deeper, and there is no end to it. They must have been moles in their last incarnation ! ' " We read with much interest that on the Somme the Germans began moving back their heavy guns as early as July 2nd. There were no emplacements for them in their new positions, and they had to take their chances in the open of being spotted by aeroplanes. At p. 184 there is a fine photograph of the interior of a dug-out with a bright patch of light at the tunnelled entrance and high lights shining on the helmeted figures within. Any artist might snatch an inspiration from these forms and faces and the natural composition of the whole.
Mr. Archibald Hurd needs no introduction as a naval writer. In the useful little book before us 1 he has applied Mahan's doctrine of sea power to the two branches of the Anglo-Saxon family. Now that the United States expresses the intention—wo sincerely hope it may be a well-supported intention—of creating a Navy second only in strength to tho British Navy, Mr. Hurd's historical exercise is very appropriate. He argues that so far in the present war all the teaching of history has been confirmed. If Britain had stood out, the Gorman Navy would have commanded the sea, and the war would probably have been over in a few months. Certainly if the Allies do not win the war we shall have to modify some of the more drastic of Mahan's conclusions. But wo have no fear of that.
Mr. Ian Malcolm has done a really useful work in collecting several of the German proclamations in Belgium and France and reproducing them in this shape." As he says, those posters are a final answer to the type of persons who argue that people are no worse off under German rule than under any other. He has also had the happy notion of appending to the translation of each poster the particular international law or Convention which it violates. It is a damning record of &hooting innocent persons, of illegal extortion, and of wickedly making blameless hostages responsible for the faults of others. The only thing we can praise from the German point of view is the colouring of the posters. The orange and the green are good.
'Arcata Verdun' is the translation of a record of experiences and emotions in the early months of the war which has had a wide circulation in France. The author was a French undergraduate when war broke out. Perhaps it is well that the ghastly side of the war should not be tucked away as though it did not exist. Horror is treated here with a French power of rhetorio and insistence. Turenne just before leading a charge rebuked his miserable body for trembling. Any Frenchman, with such deeds as stand to the credit of his glorious Army, can well afford to.talk of the tremblings as well as of the achievements. We do not think anything is gained, however, by leaving whole pages blank to inchoate that here the Censor has intervened. " I could have told you had I been allowed—" is not a commendable device. A general explanation in the preface that much has been suppressed is enough.
M. Bogard also writes of Verdunj but at a much later stage. He gives us a complete history of the great battle of Verdun, and shows
from incontrovertible evidence how much importance the Germane attached to their effort. His deductions as to the extent of their disillusionment may consequently be trusted.
At the time of its publication we praised Mr. Frederio Coleman's From Mons to Ypres with French. This now volume is a sequel, and many English readers will be glad to read more chapters by this high- spirited and good friend of their country. The sequel contains more criticism than the earlier volume, but it is always kindly. He notices that our Staff work was improving up to the time when his observations ceased. In fact, all his criticisms refer to the past. He considers that the " British Tommy is worth five or six of any German soldiers," and that our Army is led by the right men. His general coned sion is this: " The man who cannot see that the Allies will win this war, and win it conclusively, is indeed blind to what the future holds for civilization."
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