Periodicals
Pride of place is given in this month's Empire Review to a vigorous article by Colonel Moore-Brabazon on the Air Ministry. Colonel Moore-Brabazon feels that the Air Ministry generally and the Air Force in particular do not take advantage of the sums of money available to them. It is unfortunate, however, that a man of Colonel Moore-Brabazon's experience can do no more than say " something should be done about it." In the same issue the Marquis de in Torrehermosa dis- courses on . Anarchism in Spain. He omits, perhaps, to explain the background of oppression which can bring such a movement into existence. General Sir Bindon Blood retails his experiences in Nepal on tiger hunting expeditions, while other contributors take us briskly from Zanti to East Africa.
President Roosevelt comes under fire from two quarters : from Mr. Geoffrey Crowther in the Nineteenth Century and from Mr. S. K. Ratcliffe in the Contemporary Review. Both feel that the President's November election triumphs were too complete to be lasting and that the future is less secure. The same two journals both mark the centenary of Charles Lamb's death and both contain articles on the Saar-and the forth- coming Plebiscite. Perhaps Prince Hubertus Loewenstein (in the Contemporary Review) is the more interesting of the two, in that he points out that the high destiny of the Saar is to uphold the true tradition of Germany until such time as the Nazi madness has passed. Other articles in the Nineteenth Century deal with the recurrent crises in France, and Naval disarmament (by Admiral Sir Herbert Richmond), while Mr. Andre Siegfried takes a look at the Empire.
The Round Table for this last quarter of 1934 contains valu- able articles dealing with the problems which confront the British Commonwealth. Undoubtedly one of the gravest is the Pacific situation arising from the probable denouncement of the Washington Naval ratios by Japan. This position is examined in the light of the return to the " old diplomacy," which implies the not-far-distant use of force. Other articles deal With the problems of Empire (or any other, for that matter) tariffs, with particular reference to Australia and New Zealand. The situation in the Irish Free State and the pro- blems of Canada's defence are also dealt with in an extremely well-informed way.
Blackwood's Magazine, in contrast to these other journals, is a publication intended rather for pleasure than for instruction. The most entertaining article in this issue is " A Prince of Gobi," by Captain J. V. Davison-Houston. The author is one of the few Englishmen who can record the fact that he slept in a bug-filled bed without consigning the whole Gobi Desert, the Chinese and Mongolian peoples to the devil on that account. Also admirable is the account of a fractious tug called the Emma in Tierra del Fuego.
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