SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
[Under this heading uns stogies such Books of the sea as haw not boon reserved for rooms in other Arms.] From Naboth's Vineyard. By Lieutenant-General Sir William Butler. (Chapman and Hall. 5s. net.)—It must not be supposed for a moment that when the governing director of the Tribune asked Sir William Butler to go out to South Africa and record his impressions, he made any suggestion of what he was to write; but he most certainly knew what he would write. There could be no one more absolutely possessed with the belief that the war —to put the matter in a few words—was a blunder and a crime, a blunder on the part of the English people who fought it and paid for it, a crime on the part of the statesmen, English and Colonial, who carried it on. The subjects which occur in this volume have been discussed in the Spectator, and there is no need to discuss them again. On one of the most important we have expressed our agreement with Sir William Butler,—the introduc- tion of Chinese labour. As to that suggested by the title which he has seen fit to give to his book, we have believed all along, and still believe, that we had to fight for the retention of South Africa within the Empire and all that this retention meant. As to " Naboth," we do not see his antitype in, say, President Kruger. If Naboth had any of the schemes which that very astute person certainly cherished, Ahab and Jezebel were not so very wrong after all.
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