The Highland Division. By Eric Linklater. (H.M.S.O. 9d.)
LIKE fire after plague, the story of the Highland' Division in the Battle of France burns up the contagion that lingers from the " malady of defeat." It is an epic: in its pure flame of heroism, determination and devotion there cannot survive bitterness and recrimination or the innuendoes that flourish in their shade. The false emphasis of defeatism is righted: there may have been French officers with bits of white cloth pinned on their backs, and refugees, panic-stricken and leaderless, cluttering up the roads, but there was also the Commandant with his arm shot off who was carried round, a dying man, to repeat his orders that the line was to be held till dark : many others who fought as gallantly to keep open the way to the coast ; and villagers whom the billeted High- landers had entertained with their pipes and now " with brave and generous hands " helped them as escaping prisoners. The Fifty-First Highland Division added to its glorious tradition (in such actions as the defence of Franleu, for instance, and other engagements), but most in its survival of that sternest test of discipline, " a long reargMard action," and to General Fortune, in sight of the sea at St. Valery, fell the hardest decision of its career. Jr will take some masterpiece to immortalise the story of the Battle of France—the mechanised Anabasis of our day—but this small book provides material—and an author ; for Major Linklater shows, in what must surely sometimes have been difficult circumstances, a breadth of mind and imagination worthy of the subject.
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