WITH THE FLYING MEN.t As this book is in essence
a perfectly obvious and straightforward diary kept by the author during his association with the Flying Corps in the War, and as it reveals no wonderful secrets, tells no scandal, blasts no reputations and contains no vigorous indict- ment of those in authority, there does not appear to be any reason why it should make an immediate and successful appeal to the reader. Naturally, there is in it much that is intrinsically interesting ; a fight in the air, for example, always makes a thrilling story, and Mr. Baring knows how to do it justice. His humour, too, flickering continually in and out through his pages, would make any subject good reading. "Valentine drove at a terrific speed, but with consummate skill. He would calculate accurately what a man in a cart about three-quarters of a mile ahead would be likely to want to do, . . . and not give him time to do it." "We must not exaggerate. After all, the worst the politicians do is to make the war a little more difficult." These are the sentences that catch our eye as we turn the leaves
* An Adoenlurs in Working Class 134neation. - By Albert Mansbridge. Hon. ILA. London : Longmene and Co. 18e. net..1
t R..F.C.H.Q. 1914-1018. By Maurice Baring. London : G. Bell and Sons, 1.Sa. not.1
in search of illustrations. There are, likewise, many valuable discussions on the use of aircraft in warfare, and many sad Instances of the diversion of men and machines from useful purposes to useless owing to popular agitations at home. But when we have subtracted all these from the volume, there remains a considerable residue for whose charm it is very hard to account. George Borrow's "Wild Wales" suggests a parallel ; thickly scattered between the passages that he alone could have written are matter-of-fact itineraries and jottings that apparently anybody could have written ; and yet, placed where they are, they are pleasing and right beyond question. Mr. Baring has something of the same knack of making the trivial attractive. He can put down the most commonplace events in the plainest possible way and not only not weary us but leave us positively wishing for more. He has shown in his previous works what good nonsense he can write ; in this he shows that he can write good sense too, and when we remember the authors who cannot discuss anything except in terms of paradox and epigram, we feel very grateful to a clever man who is content at times to be simply clear. We take as a sample an incidental defence of Divisional Staffs against uninstructed criticism
In the first place, a Divisional Staff is engaged for the greater part of the time in incessant hard work of the most harassing and responsible nature. In the second place, the men who form such a staff would nearly always be giving their eyes to be elsewhere : to be at the front. They are there because they have got to be there, and they are determined to do. the best they can. The work has got to be done, and somebody has got to do it. But because they are on a Staff they don't change into supermen or into angels, and a pompous man will remain pompous on a staff or become possibly more pompous, and an unpretentious man will remain unpretentious or become more unpretentious. And if the man who is at the head of the Staff is a good man, he will get rid of drones, but he will also make the best of the material available and not complain because every Staff officer is not a heaven-born genius. When people talk of ether professions they are not so unreasonable. If they go to see a play acted, they will be satisfied if the acting is up to a good average level. . . . They will not expect a cast consisting entirely of stars of genius, because stars are necessarily rare. Yet in talking of the Army, and especially of the new Army, the Army which was improvised and organised and created while the war was actually being fought, they used to be pained if every Staff officer was not a budding Napoleon."
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