Britmis (Jonathan Cape, 12s. 6d.) was the telegraphic address of
the British Military Mission attached to the armies of Admiral Kolchak in Siberia ; and the author of the book, Major Phelps Hodges, was a member of this ill-conceived and unfortunate Mission. His adventures began when in the autumn of 1919 he was sent to serve as liaison officer with the Orenburg Cossacks under Dutov. He found the Cossack army not exactly in retreat, but in a state of dissolution, with the victorious Reds advancing on all sides. Cut off from his own headquarters, he found only one line open to him— retirement across some of the bleakest and feast-known steppe- country of Central Asia into Chinese Turkestan, followed by a less eventful but not less arduous journey from this remote Chinese province to Peking. The record of these experiences makes an attractive book, which it is difficult to- classify. It is half war-book and half travel-book, though it may be added that both war and travel were of a highly unprofessional character. Major Hedges exhausts his vocabulary of adjec- tives in speaking of " our Russian allies " ; they were " lazy, untidy, pessimistic, boastful, ignorant, untruthful and dis- honest." The sympathies at any rate of the junior members of the Mission ended on the side of the Bolsheviks. The interest of the book is, however, not primarily political. It should be read by anyone who likes a good yarn, modestly told, of unconventional adventure in wildest Asia.
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