Shorter notices
From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow: The Royal Navy in the Fisher Era: Vol IV, The Year of Crisis Arthur J. Marder (ouP 63s). Professor Marder, in his full-scale survey of the operational, professional and political history of the Royal Navy during the earlier years of the present century, has now reached the last volume but one. Jutland is past, and the few surface encounters are brief and dis- appointing. The struggle has shifted to beneath the sea, for the Germans with their unrestricted submarine campaign, are threatening the entire Allied war effort. It is a dismal and frightening tale. Side by side with this, there are those Admiralty and Whitehall jockeyings for control and direc- tion of the war at sea. There seemed at one time so little real hope that Jellicoe, then First Sea Lord, grew ever more pessimistic. The book covers his time in office, and his dismissal by Geddes. It is not a book into which the uninitiated may plunge with the assurance that they will find their bearings at once, but the pace of the narrative, and the weight of the material on which it is based, are as remarkable as ever.
Posters from the Revolution: Paris, May 1968 Atelier Portu- laire (Denis Dobson 20s). Handsome volume, measuring sixteen by eleven inches, of bold and beautiful French posters (Support the strike of the postal workers', 'Solidarity with the deep sea fisher- men,' La police s'affiche dans les Beaux Arts: les Beaux Arts affichent dans la rue), very different from the home life of our own dear students ('Deanz meanz finez', 'Matriculation makes you blind'). This ele- gant collection proves again, if proof were needed, the truth of Mallarme's saying that 'La vie existe pour aboutir a un Byre.'
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