25 JANUARY 1913, Page 13

SOLDIERING AND SPORT IN UGANDA.

Soldiering and Sport in Uganda. By E. G. Dion Lardner, F.R.G.S. (Walter Scott Publishing Co. 10s. net.)—"For to admire," the motto of Kipling's private, is no less evidently that of Captain Lardner, and his genuine enthusiasm for untrodden paths and superhuman solitudes must atone to a considerable degree for its slipshod and commonplace expression. But for an irritating jumble, at times, of past and present tenses, and an alternation of needlessly exclamatory passages with others of still more need- less straining after humour, not always in the best of taste, the author's account of twelve months' wandering in the last paradise of big game might have possessed the magic with which sincerity, even when undistinguished, never fails to transfigure a congenial subject. .To declare it altogether absent would be unduly harsh, but there can be no question that Captain Lardner is at his worst when describing scenery, and at his best when writing of sport, which is, after all, his theme.