The Battle Book of Ypres, compiled by Miss Beatrix Brice,
with the assistance of General Sir William Pulteney, and provided with a short preface by Lord Plumer of Messines, is a difficult book to criticize. We picked it up with enthusiasm. Some of the author's poems we like (for instance " 0 little mighty Force that stood for England," with its conclusion- " This land inviolate your monument ") and to the present writer the bleak autumn of 1914 and the sodden, hastily- scraped trenches near Gaapard are memories that will not fade. We would like to recommend this book heartily, as we do so recommend it to those who intend to make a pilgrimage to that sacred ground, or to those who for personal or patriotic reasons are well acquainted with the defence of the Salient. But as literature these pages cannot be praised : they make a scrap book, or a gazetteer, not a connected intelligible account of a subject which needs the pen of Mr. Kipling. He could enshrine Ypres in British history ; lesser writers are lost in its tangled heroisms. * * * *
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