THE SERVICES.
The Australian Flying Corps, 1914-1918. By F. M. Cutlack. (Sydney : Angus and Robertson. 24s.) This eighth volume of the official Australian War History is one of the most interesting war books that we have read. Mr. Cutlack, the well-known correspondent who accompanied the Australian forces throughout their campaigns, writes uncommonly well, and has had the advantage of using many private diaries and memoranda. He is thus able to describe in vivid detail the work of the Australian airmen in the Near and Middle East and in France, and he illustrates his account with many remarkable air-photographs. There could be no better proof of the value of an enterprising air force than the two chapters on the final battle in Palestine in September, 1918. Lord Allenby's masterly plan, leading the Turks to expect an attack in the east while his forces were massing on the west, might have been discovered had not our airmen, both British and Australian, driven the Germans from the sky in the weeks preceding the battle. Moreover, before the action began on September 19th, 1918, the late Sir Ross Smith in a Handley-Page bombed and wrecked the enemy's central telephone exchange at El Mule, while other airmen destroyed the exchange at Nablus, the result being that the eastern Turkish army remained in ignorance of the rout of the western army until its own retreat was cut off. When the Turks fell back to the Jordan, they were caught in the defiles by the airmen and annihilated eighty-seven guns were left in one valley road amid the dead. Mr. Cutlack's elaborate account of these episodes is a valuable addition to the history of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force. He gives many good maps, a glossary and a useful appendix, by Captain Andrew Lang, describing the chief types of aircraft employed by the Allies and by the Germans.
Previous page
