Campaigning in South Africa and Egypt. By Major - General W. C.
F. Molynenx. (Macmillan and Co.)—This volume, which would be interesting at any time, is especially seasonable now. General Molyneux served in South Africa in the war with Cetewayo. He did not reach the scene of action till after the disaster of Isandhl- wane, but gives an opinion of its causes gathered from what was said on the spot. He acquits Lord Chelmsford, thinking that the garrison perished through its own rashness. The policy which was so successful at Rorke's Drift was the right policy at
Isandhlwana. The Prince Imperial was, he thinks, exceedingly rash, but he has not anything to say in favour of Lieutenant
Carey. The Egyptian experiences begin with the bombardment of Alexandria, and are continued up to the ending of the campaign. We have no call to pronounce on the value of General Molyneux's military judgments, but we can unhesitatingly commend his volume to our readers as a vigorous picture of campaigns which have not by any means lost their interest.—The Soldier in Battle, by Frank Wilkeson (Bellaire and Co.), is another narrative of warfare, but told from a point of view not often represented in literature. Mr. Wilkeson was a private soldier, and he tells the story of the American Civil War as he saw it from the ranks. He ran away from home at the age of sixteen to enlist. His first experi- ence was not encouraging. He was sent to the Penitentiary where there were some thousand other recruits, guarded as if they were prisoners. And well they might be guarded if our author does not misrepresent them. "If there was a man in all that shameless crew who had enlisted from patriotic motives, I did not see him. There was not a:man of them who was not eager to run away. Not a man who did not quake when he thought of the front." And all of them received heavy bounties —and more than one—while the only patriot among them, Frank Wilkeson, got nothing. "I, who know, say that they were as arrant a gang of cowards, thieves, murderers, and blacklegs as were ever gathered inside the walls of Newgate or Sing-Sing." How much of the .237,000,000 that the United States Treasury pays in pensions goes to these gentlemen and their descendants ? The book is a grave indictment of all who were concerned in the conduct of the war, whether in the Cabinet or in the field.
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