Eight Months on Duty. From the French of Roger de
M (Strahan and Co.)—This volume contains the diary of a young French noble who, after marching with the unruly Mobiles of the Seine to Chalons and back, betook himself to his Norman village and a commission in the Mobiles of Mortain. With these willing peasants, though only once or twice under fire, he shared in the ups and downs of the troops who. acted under or in co-operation with Chanzy. The special value of the book is the glimpse into the rude sort of life led by these Mobiles. They were perpetually on the march, yet but once seriously in action. They did not always find the country-folk friendly, sometimes absolutely indifferent. Food and clothing and rest were all in scant quantities. The vexatious thing to these men was that all their exertions appeared to be valueless because there was nowhere fighting, and especially success- ful fighting, for them to do. They went from Mortain to Cherbourg, then into La Perche, onwards to Beauce, back again into Brittany, and finally over the Loire as far as Poitiers. They heard the roar of battle, but were never in the thick of a fight. The young noble who left his studies to. save his country is a little angry at the waste of power by Gambetta, whom be naturally dislikes. But he is gentle even in his hatreds. The peculiar charm of these pages is imparted by the modest, observant, cheerful, and gallant writer. They were written each day after the toil was over, and they have the flavour of reality. What he thirsted for was partisan warfare on a large scale, guerrilla among the hedges and woods and deep lanes of his native district. The error is natural to fiery youth, but experience would have shown Mat that a wide- ranging, disconnected body of partisans would have been got rid of sooner than Chanzy. Dr. Vaughan has written a pretty introduction to a volume which throws a new light upon the byways of the great war.
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