GENERAL WASHINGTON'S DILEMMA By Katherine Mayo
Miss Mayo has devoted all the resources of her talents to exhuming a minor episode in the history of the American Revolution which involved Washington in an awkward, not to say ugly, situation. The dangers of a policy of reprisals are well illustrated here, for the British atrocity of which Wash- ington complained was not one for which the British military authorities were really responsible. And the innocent victim of American wrath was a French as well as an American prisoner, and Rochambeau, for all his deference to his chief, was not Gbasy at the prospect of appearing - before the world as an auxiliary in a judicial murder. Did he remember that the first time that Washington's name became known to the French public it was as a violator of the laws of war ? The atrocity stories of the Seven
Years War were nearly renewed in 1782! But all , ended well or fairly well. Round this simple anecdote Miss Mayo has woven a highly coloured historical tapestry or shroud. We have an account of the Siege of Yorktown which makes the creditable defence of that position rank with Ypres and Verdun for heroism. We are given a -very dramatic account of the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers and a disparaging account of the conduct of the Virginia militia. Even the " Forty-five " is brought in (with some odd chronology). TLe importance of the opposition to George III's policy is exaggerated, and the old legend that makes the Howe brothers better Whigs than they were loyal servants of the king whose coat they wore is given fresh currency. By these methods a story worth fifty pages is spun out to two hundred and fifty, but none of the pages in this book (Cape, 13s. 6d.) is dull.
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