Shortvr Notices
The Northern Garrisons : the Army at War. By Eric Linklater (His Majesty's Stationery Office. 6d.) The Northern Garrisons : the Army at War. By Eric Linklater (His Majesty's Stationery Office. 6d.) Tim little book, of 72 pages with maps, is issued for the War Office by the Ministry of Information. The War Office is not often accused of imaginative enterprise in the sphere of props. ganda, but if this is propaganda) it is to be congratulated on recognising that there is no better way of presenting the realities of war than to give a free hand to an imaginative writer like Mr. Linldater to describe in his own way the life of the Army and scenes of its operations. Mr. Linklater is fortunate in having for his subject a little-known scene of war, with a romantic setting ; and he has made the most of it. Perhaps some of his readers may not before have realised how the northern Atlantic is studded with islands, in British hands, vital links along what was once the Viking Road, and now is our shipping route to North America. From Greenland it is not far to Iceland, and from the western- most point of Iceland less than 30o miles to the Faroes, whence the Shetlands and the Orkneys are distant some 200 to 25o miles, and from Lerwick in the Shetlands to Bergen in Norway is no more than 18o miles. In all these islands, which play a key part in our defence of the Atlantic route, are British garrisons— Scotsmen, Yorkshiremen, Cockneys, hardening themselves in desolate places, making friends with the no longer unwelcoming natives, and learning the unspectacular but necessary virtue of infinite patience—" patience on a gun-platform, patience in a field with a searchlight, patience on the piers where every day new cargoes are unloaded." A story well worth telling, and well told.
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