TALES FOR BOYS.
Boys of this generation can find every day in the newspapers the most astounding examples of human bravery and endurance, and the realities of war surpass the adventures imagined by the most expert writers of fiction. Nevertheless, some of the war stories designed as Christmas gifts for boys are a distinctly successful blend of fact and fancy, though none of the incidents can, after our bitter experience, be dismissed as incredible. On the whole, the tales of the sea are fresher than those of land fighting, perhaps because the sea at all times is both romantic and tragic. One of the best of these is Under Jellicoe's Command (Collins and Co., 5s. net), by Mr. H. C. Moore, whose boy hero is chiefly engaged in the coast patrol service and in hunting a most elusive German spy from point to point. By concentrating on the homely affairs of the converted trawler and mine-sweeper ` Rose Bush,' Mr. Moore has made an interesting story. He avoids fleet actions, but relates in detail the adventures of Dick Duggan and his dog Toby, and the humours of a Burly but gallant cook are a welcome relief. A curious detail, possibly founded on fact, is the 'Capture of a German officer made up to look like the Kaiser—a device as old as Ahab, though its use in modern war is not obvious. The illustrator, in representing Admiral Jellicoe's interview-with Dick, has unluckily given him only a Captain's stripes—a mistake which an artist ought to avoid with special care now that all our boys are learned in these matters.—Dreadnought, of the Dogger, by Robert Leighton (Ward, Lock, and Co., 3s. 6d.), is a rattling tale of the early part of the war on sea, but it ends on a rather sentimental note. The first villain of the piece is a German merchant settled on the East Coast in order to practise espionage, and his son Max, born and bred in England, goes at the outbreak of war to join the German Navy and serve in a submarine. The author's main purpose is to show how Max gradually came to loathe the insensate brutality of the German methods of sea warfare, and the climax is reached when, having vainly tried to stop his commander from torpedoing the Lusitania,' he shot him dead just after that cruel murder was done. Captured with his companions by a British ship, Max salutes the British flag as he passes from the scene and cries "God save the King! " We hope that there are such repentant " hyphenates," as the Americans call them, but Max is not altogether credible.—Mr. Herbert Hayens, a practised hand at boys' stories, has written a very readable tale entitled 'Midst Shot and Shell in Flanders (Collins and Co., 3s. 6d. net), dealing with the exploits of a Canadian battalion somewhere in the Ypres Salient and towards La Bessie, with a long spy chase, a bomb-dropping expedition in the air, and a shipwreck as incidental details. The personal experiences of the hero, told in the first person, are very well described, especially where he lies helpless in a ditch between the lines after an attack that failed.—At His Country's Call, by Albert Lee (Morgan and Scott, 46. 6d. net), is highly spiced adventure. The hero, who begins the war as a Boy Scout, performs the most wonderful feats in uninterrupted succession. We like best his escape from captivity with another boy and his sister on a borrowed Gorman aeroplane. They embark for England on a transport which is torpedoed, they are picked up by a liner which is wrecked on an iceberg, and, taking refuge on the berg, they are rescued by another liner. At this point the reader wonders whether the hero will prove a Jonah to this third ship, but Mr. Lee spares him.—Buckle of Submarine V2, by Rowland Walker (S. W. Partridge, 2s. 6d. net), is a most exciting tale, and though Buckle has rather more titan his share of successes, almost every incident could be paralleled in Mr. Kipling's " Tales of the Trade " and other authentic sources. When Buckle, having gone into Kiel Harbour and sunk a battleship, is trapped by a new minefield hurriedly laid at the mouth, we thought for a moment that he was done for. But he fires his last two torpedoes into the swarm of mines and blows enough of them away to clear a safe channeL—Just as thrilling, .though more fanciful in its details, is The Secret Battle-Plane, by Percy Westerman (same pub- lishers and -ice). The new and wonderful battle-plane of this story makes two descents behind the enemy's lines to repair defects, and the airmen carry off an English prisoner to Russia. They fight and destroy a Zeppelin, of course, and have a duel with a U-boat in the North Sea, so that the interest of the story never flags.
The name of Herbert Strang on a title-page is in itself a guarantee that the book is readable, and boys will be glad to know that this in- genious author has provided no fewer than four new volumes for them this Christmas, all published by Mr. Frowde and Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton. Frank Forester : a Story of the Dardanelles (3s. Od. net) deals with a young Englishman who at the outbreak of war with Turkey is settled at Erzerum as a carpet merchant and has an unscru- pulous trade rival in a certain Wonckhaus. Disguised as an Armenian he escapes by sea to Gallipoli and roams on the hills behind the Turkish lines, doing all the mischief that he can to the enemy. He steals away in a motor-boat and is picked up by an English warship, in time to guide the Australians in the landing at Anzac. But the moat exciting incident is still to come, when he and a naval party land on the Asiatic coast, surprige a submarine base, and capture the submarine itself by a clever trick.—Through the Enemy's Lines (2a. Gd. net) is another excel. lent story of the fringes of the war. Here again the English hero has been brought up in the East, this time among the wild Arabs of the hills bordering Mesopotamia, and is in disguise in Baghdad when the story opens. He makes his way to the hill fortress of the tribe who had been his father's friends. They are besieged by a Turkish column, on its way to intercept a party of Indian cavalry which has been vainly trying to get into touch with the Russians retreating from the Persian border. The cavalry join the tribesmen and there is some very pretty fighting in the hills, told with the artistic finish that we always admire in Herbert Strang.—A third war-book, Burton of the Plying Corps (3s. ild. net), contains five separate adventures of this astonishing airman, on the Western front and in Bulgaria, and is lighter and more humorous than the others. " The Death's Head Hussar," a little affair in a French château with a rascally German officer and his patrol, is one of the best short stories that we have read for a long time.—The fourth an t most thrilling of all these books, The Old Man of the Moun- tain (3s. 6d. net), deals with a mysterious community near the fabled falls of the Brahmaputra, east of Assam—falls, by the way, of which the latest explorers question the existence. The " Old Man," a heathen Chine who sparks perfect English, is a despot who inherit, the secret of a mysterious source of radioactivity which turns lead into gold, and he inveigles strangers to his remote plateau to work the process. Three young tea-planters from Assam penetrate into the fastness to rescue an English explorer, and are themselves entrapped between iron doors, gassed, and then enslaved. The story of their efforts to free themselves is highly exciting and skilfully invented. These books are all well written and the illustrations are as vigorous as the text.---Commodore E. Hamilton Currey, R.N., continues his studies of Ian Hardy's career in the old Navy in Ian Hardy Fighting the Moors (Seeley, Service, Bs.), which is a very good yarn of advent urea in Morocco, at the Cape, and in the Persian Gulf. Hardy's ship was a frig ate, and the humours and trials of the sailing-ship of bygone days are well described. There is a great deal of land fighting too ; we like beat the lively account of a bout with some offensive Dutchmen in a tavern at Cape Town.— Another book that we can commend is Teddy Lester, Captain of Cricket, by John Finnemore (W. and R. Chambers, 58.), a school story of con- siderable merit. Teddy boxes as well as he bats ; his fight with the inevitable bully is described with careful attention to detail, and the cricket-match which we expect and find at the close is very good of its kind. Mr. Finnemore's schoolboys are natural healthy fellows and not too knowing.
Mr. Tighe Hopkins has found a good subject in Ths Romance of Escapes (J. Murray, 103. 6d. net), and his retelling of some famous episodes will interest young readers and old alike. Captain Haldane's escape from a Boer prison at Pretoria, Louis Napoleon's flight from Ham, the Polish exile Pietrowski's journey out of Siberia, the Irish Midshipman O'Brien's three exciting efforts to get out of a French prison in the days of Napoleon, Casanova's altogether incredible advert. turo on the roofs of his Venetian prison-house, with other stories, are related afresh in an interesting way. Mr. Hopkins has a good deal of critical comment to offer, especially on Casanova and on the mysterious adventurer calling himself Do Buquoit, who claimed to be " the first man who broke the Bastille " in 1709. In an introductory chapter he reviews briefly many other notable escapes, such as those of Lord Nithadale and Latude, for the subject is inexhaustible.—Another readable book of a novel kind is Mrs. T. O'Connor's Dog Stars : Three Luminaries in the Dog World (T. Fisher Unwin, 8s. 6d. net), in which she describes with evident enjoyment the careers of her three dogs, Beau, Max, an d Coaxey, of whom Max, the collie, was easily the prince.
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