SOME BOOKS ON THE WAR.*

Mn. F. W. WILE has done a really useful service to English readers during the war by summarizing for them the news and comments of German newspapers. In his new book, The .Assau11,1 he describes how,

after being known as an American for thirteen years in Berlin, he was arrested as an " English " spy at the outbreak of war; how Berlin went mad and assaulted men of enemy nationality and damaged their property ; how he was allowed to depart from Germany under the care of Sir W. E. Goschen ; and how in England he studied Englishmen at war and learned to appreciate more deeply both their determination and their cause. We are specially interested to notice that Mr. Wile does not think that the German people had adopted bodily the hateful doctrines of ascendancy preached by the Prussian militarists :—

"I wish Germany beaten for the Allies' sake and for my own country's sake. A victorious Germany would be a menace to international liberty and become automatically a threat to the happiness and freedom of the United States. My years in Germany taught me that. But I cherish no scintilla of hatred or animosity toward the German people as individuals, who will be the real victims of the war. I saw them with my own eyes literally dragged into tho fight against their will, fears and judgment. I know from their own lips that they considered it a cruelly unnecessary war and did not want it. They were joyful and prosperous a year and a half ago—never more so. They craved a continuance of the simple blessings of peace, unless their tearful pro. legations in the fateful month preceding the drawing of their mighty sword were the plaints of a race of hypocrites, and I do not think the percentage of hypocrisy much higher in Germany, man for man, than elsewhere in the world."

We hope this judgment as to the desires of the German people may be true. For Germany ultimately must be reformed, if at all, from within. The spirit of the people is therefore the first factor in the problem. The book has evidently been written for Americans, as the commonplaces of English life are often explained. But the narrative is very lively ; although Mr. Wile must have been thinking for a long time, so to speak, in clippings, he pieces the extracts together so that there are never any loose edges. A boy who read this record of ex-

periences would certainly come to the conclusion that journalism is a thrilling career.

• (1) The Assault : Germany before the Outbreak and England in War-Time. A Personal Narrative by Frederic William Wile. Ilitetrated. London : W.Ildnemann. [Os. net.1---(2) Wdh the Zionists in Gallipoli. By Lieutenant-Colonel J. 11. Patterson D.S.O. London : Hutchinson and Co. lea. net.}--(3) I1W Out Troops in Pravee. By Rev. R. J. Campbell, M.A. London : Chapman and Ball. (la. net.]—(4) The SfOry of a Prisoner of War. By Arthur Omen, No. 6640, nria Somenetshire Light Infantry. London hatto and Wiudus. Os. net.1—(s) The War Manual. By 1.leutenant-Colonel C. C. Anderson. 2 vols. London : T. Nisbet Uvula. [Vol. I., Ga.; Vol. IL, 108.] One of the strangest incidents in the war so far was surely the creation of the Zion Mule Corps, which served under Colonel Patterson in Gallipoli.2 Colonel Patterson, the well-known author of The Man. Eaters of Tsavo (in which he described how he killed the lions that for a time held up work on the Uganda Railway), tells us that from boyhood ho has been intensely attracted by Jewish history. When the Russian Jews who fled before the Turks in Palestine arrived in Egypt with their families, starving and destitute, and offered their services to Britain, the choice fell upon Colonel Patterson to organize them into a corps of muleteers. It was a curious but appropriate chance which brought these men under the command of one who had a natural sym- pathy with them, and an insight into their thoughts and habits. Not since the days of the Maccabees, probably, has a Jewish unit fought in any war. For it should be understood that the Zion Mule Corps were armed, and several times took a gallant part in the fighting. The corps was five hundred strong. Colonel Patterson says of its members :— " Among the N.C.O.'s and men I had every conceivable trade and calling ; highly educated men like Mr. Gorodisky, a Professor at the Lycee in Alexandria, and afterwards promoted to commissioned rank ; students of Law, Medicine, and Divinity ; mechanics of all kinds, of whom I found the tinsmith the most useful. Even a Rabbi was to be found in the ranks, who was able to administer consolation to the dying and burial rites to those who were struck down when death came amongst us before the enemy in Gallipoli. I also discovered among the enlisted soldiers a fully-qualified medical man, Dr. Levontin, whom I appointed our surgeon, after having obtained permission to form a medical unit."

The badge of the corps was the shield of David, such a shield as David is supposed to have used when he fought Goliath. Colonel Patterson thinks that the employment of this corps against Germany did much to determine the adherence of many Jews, who had hitherto hesitated as to -which side they sympathized with in the war. One of the privates in the corps received the Distinguished Conduct Medal for a fine deed. The mules were stampeded by intense shrapnel-fire when ammunition was being conveyed to the trenches, but Private Grouskousky held on to his mules, though he was shot through both arms, and safely delivered his ammunition. Apart from his extremely interesting account of the Zion Mule Corps, Colonel Patterson indulges in some caustic criticism of the conduct and strategy of the war.

The Rev. R. J. Campbell's book, With Our Troops in France,s is extremely modest in size and tone, but it contains some things about soldiers and religion which were well worth saying. No wonder that Mr. Campbell expects results to flow from the fact that "the same table is used for Holy Communion for Church of England at one hour, Roman Catholics at another, and Nonconformists at a third." The Roman priest is expected to bring his own candles, and that is almost the only difference in the preparation of the table. The following comment on the soldiers' view of religion is important :—

" They see no justification for our permanent divisions. Compre- hension is their note, without rigid uniformity. How far this is true I cannot be sure, ut I think it is not very wide of the mark. It is no use anyone telling me that our soldiers are not taking religion seriously ; they are. They may be too shy to say much about it openly, but they are thinking about it all the same. How could it be possible for men daily at grips with death to do any other? I have overwhelming proof in my own immediate experience alone that fellows who formerly may have been somewhat careless or rackety are now in simple whole-hearted fashion seeing themselves and their duty sub specie aeternitatis. Never have I seen among them, and never expect to see, anything but the utmost reverence for the name of our blessed Redeemer. One of their favourite pastimes was to stand me up on a platform and heckle me, sometimes to my discomfiture and sometimes theirs, but always enjoyably. It began in a very simple manner. After an ordinary non-parade service at which I happened to be preaching, men singly and in groups would saunter up to the reading table and enter into conversation. Usually this would lead to a little questioning and discussion, and the numbers of those taking part would gradually swell until quite a large audience would be assembled. At length the authorities thought it would be well in the interests of all concerned to have separate meetings for this kind of thing, properly announced and held at specified hours. This arrangement was a great success. It beats cock-fighting,' remarked one Tommy cheerfully after we had had about an hour and a half of one down, Vother come on. The questions were not flippant by any means ; they wore mostly on quite a high level, not only of seriousness but intelligence."

One knows the popularity of religious debates in Hyde Park. Perhaps here is a fruitful idea. Debates might end in a service—the majority assenting.

Mr. Arthur Green's story4 of his capture by the Germans and of his treatment at Wittenberg and elsewhere is told in his own terse, vivid, but highly ungrammatical language without the disastrous inter- vention—it would have been disastrous in this case—of any editorial hand. If this sort of thing were done artificially, it would be tiresome ; but the book is, we should say, genuinely what it professes to be. Mr. Green describes how he lay helpless when he was wounded, and how be was eared for by French and English, and finally carried off by the Germans :— " Well, it rained all night, so I covered my head up, and, what with being worn out and loss of blood, I slept, I suppose, till seven o'olock next morning. I was wet to the skin, and what with mud and blood I bet I looked in the pink. I could still see the enemy, and I knew they had drove our people back, as they ought to, considering there were so many. The cries now were worst than ever. I could see our men lying on top of one another, dead and wounded. It was a very pitiful sigla. About 10.30 along come EODIC. French country people. They

lifted me up and took me in a cart to a village called Beauvois,' Pen. tame an Pire, in (Nord). I was took to a room used for a gymnasium. They treated us very good. There were sixteen of us in this room, but four died the first two days. I remained there till 5th September, going then to a civil hospital at Cambmi (Nord). I did not like it there. The Germans were in the town ; it was their base. They had most all the food. My wound only took about fourteen days to heal up. Since then I've had no treatment whatever. I could not get into the French way of living—such funny feeds, boiled red cabbage, else beans, or potatoes. They seem to make a feed off anything. I remained there until 5th October • then I went to a English lady's house for convalisanee. Oh ! it was fine there—all English ways ; and the ladies use to come and see us and bring us sweets and fruit. It was pleasant. It was while there that our airplanes tried to drop bombs on the railway. A bomb fell about 300 yards away in the street. I thought we were lying too easy. I had not been able to get up yet. Well, on the 16th October they came—the Germans, I mean—and took us off to the train bound for Germany."

He was mocked at by brutal spectators as he was conveyed through Germany. At last he found himself at the deadly camp of Wittenberg.

It is an entertaining study in the comparative values of language which is educated and language which is not to read Mr. Green's account of Wittenberg while one still remembers the official account :— " Our camp was composed of 15,000 Russians, over 2,000 French, 850 English, and about 40 Belgium civics. If anything came in the camp it was shot down a shoot, and nothing whatever would go out when once in, so they left us in misery, and disease. At the time there were about 10 French doctors, 10 Russian doctors. They had to live in the disease with nothing to beat down the fever. You see nothing but Russians laying down with fever. They were going into hospital about 50 a day and a lot getting treated in barrack. At this time the lice had got a propehold of the camp. You could catch about sixty before dinner on your shirt, in the afternoon you would have just as many, at night you could not sleep ; you could feel them crawling over you. Just before the Germans left the camp they told us we were shifting ; so we had to pack up."

Mr. Green's " report " loses nothing of the horror, we think. In November, 1915, he was suddenly told by a comrade "You are for home." His answer was "I've been had before." But then a German officer came up, and Mr. Green continues : "He says Nom ? " Green,' I says. He says Green, Arteur ? ' I says Yah.' He says Scurrey 1

Go London.' Well, I did nip."

We cannot do much more than mention the first two volumes of The War Manual.' It is a mine of information gathered together from

various sources. It gives all the military definitions of words any one is ever likely to require; it explains strategy, the laws of war, martial law, the practice of first-aid, military formations, the principles of attack and defence, military engineering, and much else.