BRITALN AND THE WAR.
Britain and the War. By Andre Chevrillon. (Hodder and Stoughton. Ss. net.)—M. Chevrillon's exceedingly able and sympathetic analysis of the British attitude towards the war, from the outset up to the adoption of conscription at the close of 1915, well deserved translation. It is a piece of contemporary history which has, we think, a permanent value. Mr. Rudyard Kipling in an admirable Preface confirms the author's view that OW ingrained habit of referring all thought and deed to certain standards of right and wrong, which, we thought, all men respected, hampered us at first in dealing with the enemy, but in the long run saved us:—
"The same spiritual motive which leads a man to enlistment as though it were a religious conversion, makes his nation slower to insist on what it has done than what is left undone. This attitude is misleading ; but crisis cannot change character. If we are good shopkeepers, we have always been bad window-dressers. So the carefully circulated legend, first that England could give no help to her Allies, and secondly that she was giving as little as she could, must be allowed to die out in slaughter and disillusionment."
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