MARINE GUNNER
By Patrick Mee Mr. Patrick Mee has written a simple and attractive account (Cape, 7s. 6d.) of his- adventures. He devotes most of his book to an account of the twenty-two years which he spent in the ,Marine Artillery, although there are occasional glimpses of life in London, Glasgow and Ireland. The impressions of Ireland after the rising of 1916 are particularly interesting, since he was himself an Irishman thoroughly loyal to England, but critical of her rule. Mr. Mee's strangest adventures occurred during the brief periods when he was on shore rather than on the sea itself. PerhaPs the oddest story ivhiCh he tells is of his encounter with sonie Spanish brigands who lived in a vast subterranean cave. There is something very pleasant about the story_ of his- religious discussions with Parsecs in Bombay. Mr. Mee seems to haye maintained_ excellent rela- tions with his fellow-sailors and with'the officers, although the fact that his name could not be distinguished orally from the pronoungave rikg to misunderstandings. There is .an amusing account of an incident in which he expounded his ,views on the conduct of the Dardanelles campaign to an unknown person who proved to be General Birdwood. The description of the campaign loses something, however, through the sim- plicity of the style ; a more dramatic rendering would have done better justice to the subject.
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