With the Indiana in France. By General Sir James Willcocks.
(Constable. 24s. net.)—Sir James Willcocks gives us a very readable supplement to the official history of the Indian Corps in France which has already been published. He brought over the Lahore and Meerut Divisions in 1914, and was in command of the Indian Corps for almost a year, until his insuperable difficulty in seeing eye to eye with Sir Douglas Haig led to his resignation. We regret to see that Sir James Willcocks labours under a sense of having been unfairly treated and proposes to "tell his own tale" as soon as he ceases to be on the Active List. He was undoubtedly in a difficult position in France, where he was senior to every British officer except the Commander-in- Chief and General Smith-Dorrien. But we doubt whether he will do much good by embarking at some future date upon a campaign of recrimination. He speaks with just indignation of the ill-effects produced in India by the strict adherence to the principle of promotion to the higher commands by seniority alone, to which we must attribute the inefficiency of the higher command in that country as shown in the earlier part of the Mesopotamian campaign. The better part of his book is a detailed account of the work of the Indian troops in France, based on his diary and official papers, which shows the difficulties with which the Indian soldiers had to contend and the courage with which they encountered them. It is extremely interesting to read to-day, and will be a valuable document for the future historian of the Great War.
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