Lady Pentland's attractive memoir of her husband, The Right Honourable
John Sinclair, Lord Pentland, G.C.S.I. (Methuen, 10s. 6d.), recalls that earnest and strenuous Liberal politician whom Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman made Secretary for Scotland in 1905 and whom his successor, Mr. Asquith, removed to India in 1912. Captain Sinclair, who had been a keen cavalry officer before he went to Toynbee Hall and was elected to the first London County Council, was personally popular with all classes, but in politics he was a violent Radical, at whom Conservatives and many Moderate Liberals looked askance. In the Liberal party feuds of thirty years ago he was a supporter of Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman, and while that statesman lived his promotion was rapid and sure. Sir Henry's death in 1908 left him somewhat isolated in the Cabinet, and he did well to go to India. There he showed competence as Governor of one of the provinces before and during the War and the political controversy about the reforms. The Madras war fund equipped and maintained the one Indian hospital ship which proved invaluable to our wounded in East Africa and Iraq.
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