SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
[Notice in this column does not necessarily preclude subsequent resifts.] THE FEBRUARY MAGAZD1RS.—Sir John Davidson, who was Director of Military Operations under Lord Haig, contributes an important article on " Passchendaele, 1917," to the Nine- teenth Century. He recalls the critical situation produced by the failure of General Nivelle's offensive and by the collapse of Russia and the intensified U'-boat campaign. It was neces, sary, he says, for the British Army to attack the enemy and to keep on attacking, so that he could not attack elsewhere. He states that the Passchendaele offensive was delayed because the French wanted to take part and were not ready. The rain hampered but did not foil the plan. Sir John Davidson quotes from General Ludendorff's memoirs abundant evidence of the train put upon the enemy. The Somme and Passchendaeles `` were not spectacular victories, but they wore the enemy out, reduced his power of resistance, saved the Allies, and paved the way to final victory, for without them victory could never have been gained." Mr. C. Prescott institutes an amusing comparison between " Napoleon the Third and Mr. Lloyd George " ; neither " is on his knees before democracy : rather they are democracy, as Louis the Fourteenth was the State and Napoleon the First the Revolution." Mr. Harold Hodge in " 0 Tempura, 0 Mores !" rebukes the pessimists and urges that " this is a time when there is need of political faith." Mr. James Kidd replies to Mr. Austin Hopkinson's advocacy of " The Aristocratic Principle " in industry, and recommends instead that the trade unions should invest their funds in industrial concerns and thus secure a share of the management. Major Lindsay Bashford describes " The Condition of GerMany." He thinks that German industry is recovering itself ; " it is now as clear that Germany can pay as that she ought to do so." He does not believe that the Hohenzollerns ,stand much chance of recovering the throne, but he is impressed by the growth of Bolshevism. Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge discusses " The Capital Ship : is it Doomed ? " He points out that the biggest ships are not necessarily the most useful in naval warfare, and that the submarine and torpedo proved relatively ineffective in the late war as compared with the gun. Mr. Basil Worsfold writes on " The Administration of the Empire," discussing the problems that will confront the conference of Prime Ministers next June. Mr. Geoffrey Drage has a valuable article on " National Economy and Public Assistance," pointing out that the nation does not know how much it is spending in direct public assistance,and that the local authorities have no incentive to check the enormous waste of money under this head. He suggests that a small Royal Commission should allocate a fixed sum to the local authorities and thus compel them to study economy. He quotes, as an illustration of overlapping between different sources of relief, a case in which a man drew a full disablement pension of £2 12s. 8d. a week, as well as an unemployment dole of £1, and good pay from a sick club. Sir Herbert Warren has an admirable article on "The New Humanities at Oxford" ; they are "not the enemies of the ancient but in the long run their best friends." —In the Fortnightly Sir Michael O'Dwyer sounds a warning about " Anarchy in India " and laments the weakness of the Indian Government. " Since the Mutiny, the position of our Government in India was never so weak, its credit never so low," because it has abdicated its powers and refused to enforce the law against anarchist conspirators. The seat of the trouble, we fear, is not in Delhi but in Whitehall; Lord Chelmsford might do better if Mr. Montagu would let, him act. Mr. J. 13. Firth says some plain words about " Labour and Democracy since the War " and the tendency of Labour leaders to discard Democracy and work for a Trade Union or Bolshevik Despotism. Mr. Bertram Clayton criticizes very severely but not unjustly " The Cinema and its Censor " ; he thinks that the music is the real attraction. Mr. E. H. Wilcox gives an interesting account of " Dostoyevski as seen by his Daughter " ; the novelist was a bundle of grotesque contradictions. Mr. Archibald Hurd's " Great Ships or — I " is a review of the Times correspondence on the subject ; like Sir Cyprian Bridge, he thinks that the big battleship has become too costly, but that some sort of capital ship will always be the principal unit of the fleet. Mr. M. Soko explains and defends " Japan's Far Eastern Policy " ; Japan, he says, is only too anxious to promote the rise of a united and well-governed China, and she does not want to keep Shantung. An unnamed statistician writes on " The Increased Cost of Living," and shows that the Index Figure and the use made of it by the Ministry of Labour have led the industrial world into an almost hopeless position by inflating wages and discouraging thrift ; he pleads for an inquiry into the facts before we drift into bankruptcy. Mr. H. C. Woods discusses " The Greek Elections," and attributes the result to the errors of M. Venizelos' domestic policy. Mr. E. A. Baker, in a useful article on " Public Libraries under the New Act," shows how the existing libraries might do a great deal more for technical education at very small expense if they were encouraged ; he condemns a recent proposal to establish separate technical libraries, which would cost far more. —Lord Charnwood in the Contemporary writes temperately on " Relations with America." He points out that America is very remote from Europe, that it has " as inefficient a machinery of government as probably now exists anywhere," and that it has not recovered from the shock of the war and the surprise of finding what President Wilson's Covenant involved. He says that an "ancient grudge against Great Britain survives " in the form of " a mild traditional belief in the dark and designing character of our Imperial policy," but he is sure that " in the long run the better people are the controlling force in America." Mr. H. E. A. Cotton discusses " Parties and Politics in India " in a hopeful fashion ; we cannot think why he should say that " the civilians who control the machine at Delhi exhibit no signs of the new spirit," or why he should suggest that the Govern- ment are somehow to be reconciled with Mr. Gandhi, who is obviously and avowedly irreconcilable. Mr. Ramsay MacDonald describes and commends " The Georgian Socialist Republic " which the Bolsheviks are seeking to destroy ; he advocates " an understanding, complete in its heartiness and single- minded in its spirit and purposes, between Great Britain and Georgia," but his Labour friends would be the first to object to this. Sir H. H. Johnston writes with vigour and enthusiasm about " Anthropology : the First of the Sciences," but he surely goes too far in suggesting that so difficult and contro- versial a subject should be taught in schools. Professor John Adams describes " The Present Educational Position," and suggests that the local authorities may after all study economy in the working of the Act of 1918. Mr. Ikbal Ali Shah, writing on " The Empire and Mesopotamia," maintains that we cannot throw up our mandate and leave the country to fall into anarchy ; his candidate for the presidency of an Arab Government is Sherif Ali Haidar of the Hedjaz. We may call attention also to an instructive article on " Juvenile Labour," which is in a very unsatisfactory condition.—In the National Review H. Lauzanne, the editor of the Malin, eulogizes M. Delcasse as " The Man Who Prepared Victory," and relates in detail the circumstances of his enforced resignation in 1905, at the instance of the German Government whose intrigues and threats alarmed M. Bouvier. Captain Dewar writes well on " The Battleship and the Submarine " ; he points out that in the war the battle- ship was "a potent if not the most potent factor," and that the submarines never sunk a modern battleship and did not interrupt our communications with France. Our Admiralty, he says, suffered in the earlier part of the war from the lack of a good Staff system. Sir Henry Lawson, a former Governor of the Channel Islands, makes a strong plea for Alderney as " An Island in Distress " ; Alderney, he says, is rack-rented by the Office of Woods and Forests, which, like a bad landlord, spends little or nothing on its property, so that the island is " in a starved and neglected condition." Lord Arran laments the coming destruction of " The Southern Loyalists under Home Rule " by means of arbitrary taxation ; his forebodings are perhaps unduly pessimistic. Mr. Maxse, in an article entitled " Echoes of the Paris Peace Conference," contends that the Prime Minister has been and still is unduly anxious to make things easy for Germany. Lady Bathurst contributes a helpful and informing article on " Goats," which she breeds with great success.—In Blackwootrs Major Lindsay Bashford continues his interesting notes of travel, " In the Little New Countries " ; his account of Memel and of the borders of Lettland is admirably written. Mr. W. B. Harris completes his remarkable reminiscences of Raisuli, who is " in his way the biggest man in Morocco " ; Mr. Harris's summary of the recent Spanish cam- paign against Raisuli differs widely from the Spanish accounts. " India on the Threshold " is a sombre article predicting evil as the inevitable result of Mr. Montagu's reform scheme. Mr. Valentine Williams gives a spirited sketch of the career of Rachel, who was born just a century ago and died in 1858.
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