CARRYING ON.*
Ix this sequel to The First Hundred Thousand we lose a good deal of the rich flavour of that exhilarating work, but we resume agree- able acquaintance with some of our friends, and watch them " carry- ing on " doggedly and faithfully. When " Ian Hay," as the " Junior Sub," wrote the story of how his unit of K(1) was forged into an instrument of war, we were all young and enthusiastic. Now even the youngest of us has grown old in war, we are hardened veterans, and, maybe, we smile less easily. We have settled down to the long dour business of seeing the war through to a successful end, however long that end may be deferred ; and though stripped of illusions, our faith in our cause and our confidence in its ultimate victory are undimmed. " Ian Hay " has given us a fine cheering work, and we heartily thank him for it. There is not much in it of actual fighting—the author is wise to spare us most of the bloody details—but there is a great deal which helps us to understand and to love the men who are battling for us. The ranks of the Seventh Hairy Jocks are sadly thinned ; they have been cut up and replenished so often that when the book closes scarcely any officers or men of the original battalion remain ; yet its soul goes marching on. Though officers and men may change, the unit lives on as a personality, growing ever more conscious of its past splendid record.
Colonel Kemp, Major Wagstaffe, Captain Bobby Little, Sergeant Mucklewame, and, last but not least, Private Bogle, remain alive after two years of the most active of service. A newcomer, a gigantio Highland Second Lieutenant, one Angus M`Lachlan, appears, establishes himself in our affections as one of the best of the author's creations, and then dies grandly in knocking out by himself a German machine-gun. We shed a tear over Angus M`Lachlan, but we are certain that his father in the distant North cherishes the posthumous V.C. and grudges not the life that went to the earning of it.
Few understand the spirit of youth better than " Ian Hay," or can convey it more felicitously. This is a story of Youth Triumphant, of Youth that has come into its own. " Most of our regular senior officers are gone, Sir," remarked Colonel Kemp one day to the Brigadier—" dead or wounded or promoted to other commands ; and I have something like twenty new subalterns. When you subtract a centenarian like myself, the average age of our Battalion Mess, including Company Commanders, works out at something under twenty-three. But I am not exchanging any of them, thanks ! " Youth is intolerant, and one of the best stories in the book describes the unconscious way in which an elderly Major of the A.S.C. overcame Lieutenant Cockerell's twenty-year old prejudice against the Corps of "Non-combatants." The
• Carrying On—After the First Hundred Thousand. By Ian Bay. London: W. Blackwood and SODS. fee. net.,1 boy learns his mistake, and the Major never knows what it was that produced his stumbling apology. An admirable story, admirably told.
We have much—we could have asked for more—of the Wisdom of Major Wagstaffe. Wagstaffe has a penetrative mind, which now and then goes deeply into the meaning of things and gives us some insight into the true significance of the great struggle :—
" If the present scrap can only be prolonged for another year," said Major Wagstaffe m 1916, " our country will receive a tonic which will carry it on for another century. Think of it ! Great Britain populated by men who have actually been outside their own parish ; men who know that the whole is greater than the part ; men who are too wide awake to go on doing just what the Bandar log tell them, and allow themselves to be used as stalking horses for low-down political ramps. When we, going round in bath chairs and on crutches, see that sight—well, I don't think we shall regret our missing arms and legs quite so much, Colonel. War is Hell, and all that ; but there Is one worse thing than a long war, and that is a long peace."
Major Wagstaffe was a Regular who began with a hearty pro- fessional prejudice against the New Armies, but lived to change his views. In his closing talk with Captain Bobby Little, when both officers, sorely wounded, had been put on to Home Service jobs, he handsomely blesses what formerly he cursed :— " I admit to you that when I found myself pitohforked into K(1) at the outbreak of war, instead of getting back to my old line battalion, I was a pretty sick man. I hated everybody. I was one of the old school—or liked to think I was—and the ways of the new school were not my ways. I hated the new officers. Some of them bullied the men ; some of them allowed themselves to be bullied by N.C.O.'s. Some never gave or returned salutes, some went about saluting everybody. Some came to mess in fancy dress of their own design, and elbowed senior officers off the hearthrug. I used to marvel at the Colonel's patience with them. But many of them are dead now, Bobby, and they nearly all made good. Then the men ! After ten years in the Regular Army I hated them all—the way they lounged, the way they dressed, the way they sat, and the way they spat. I wondered how I could ever go on living with them. And now—I find myself wondering how I am over going to live without them. We shall not sea their like again. The new lot—present lot—are splendid fellows. They are probably better soldiers. Certainly they are more uniformly trained. But there was a piquancy about our old scamps of K. that was unique—priceless--something the world will never see again."
K(1), the First Hundred Thousand, has become merged into the armed nation, and, in the words of Sergeant Mucklewame, " there's no' that mony of us left now, onyways." Their Chronicles have ended. We may leave them with Major Wagstaffe's epitaph and hold them secure of immortality.
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