MORE BOOKS ON THE WAR.*

DIFFICULT as We all branches of Army reform, the reform of the Army Medical Corps is perhaps the most delicate of them all. Really one shrinks from discussing it for very fear that publicity should magnify the weaknesses of the R.A.M.O. and make its disadvantages seem prohibitive to young doctors already hesitating in making up their minds to join it. That the R.A.M.C. should come to be regarded by intelligent doctors as an asylum for incompetents, and that social dis- abilities inside the Army should be created for its members through no fault of their own, but through the exigencies of their occupation, are grave dangers which the nation must at all costs try to prevent. If such dangers were realised, the irony would be all the greater, in that there can really be no finer profession, on ethical grounds, than that of the Army doctor. We have read with genuine interest and apppre- ciation A Doctor in. Khaki, by Mr. F. E. Fremantle, because he suggests all the difficulties without upsetting hornets' nests. Mr. Fremantle went to the war as a civil surgeon, and this book gives the impressions of a man who is plainly at once a devotee of his profession and a capable observer. Often we have to read between the lines to get the true im- presesion from the author—that is a symptom of his discreet method—but we have no doubt at all that we have got one impression rightly when we say that he behaves the R.A.M.C. to be quite behind the times in its practice of surgery. Of course there is the great difficulty, which we must mention in fairness to the R.A.M.C., that Army doctors necessarily fall out of touch with the latest surgical work being done at the civil hospitals, and in the busier provinces of civil life generally. In Germany, we believe, there is an excellent plan by which Army doctors are bound to do some work in the civil hospitals. Mr. Fremantle carries this principle much further when he suggests that the R.A.M.C., as we know it, might be abolished, and that civil doctors could do all the work on active service under the direction of military administrators. This scheme, we dare say, is quite imprac- ticable, but the experiences which brought such a proposal into Mr. Fremantle's head are well worth examining. No doubt there was a suppressed sense of friction between the civil and the Army doctors ; this is one of the things which appear clearly enough between the lines. Mr. Fremantle's attempts to alter methods, and to banish the belief held by one Army doctor that British soldiers in hospital are "mere logs," and, preferring to be logs, do not desire or require bright surroundings or entertainments, do not appear to have been favourably received. One can quite understand the resentment on one side which would be provoked by uncon- ventional enthusiasm on the other. There was some purpose, then, in the order which eventually reached Mr. Fremantle to leave the Wynberg hospital and take up duties on a transport ship. But though he found himself back in London, instead of near the firing line, after several weeks of service, he was not to be put off easily, and later he really did get to the front. Altogether this is a book that was worth writing and publishing. Its author deserves attention and respect for his zest of life, his courage, and his human and industrious observations.

Colonel Rimington of Rimington's Guides must have gone

about, one would almost think, trying to find men who could write as well as fight. One of the Guides has already written a book with many notable qualities—A Subaltern's Letters to his Wife—and now another of them, Mr. L. March Phillipps, has produced With Rimington, which has some peculiar virtues that belong to no other book on the war. These virtues are terseness, verve, and point. For one who professes no training in the art of writing to manifest such a literary (1.) A Doctor in Khaki. By Francis E. Fremantle. London : John Murray. 1105. 6d.]—(2.) With Eimington. By L. March Phillipps. London : E. Arnold. 17s. 6&J—(3.) Unofficial Despatches. By Edgar Wallace. London : Hutchinson and Co. [6s.]—(4.) Rhodesia and After. By Sharrad H. Gilbert. London : Simpkin, Marshall, and Co. [58.]—(5.) The Great Boer War. By A. Conan Doyle. London : Smith, Elder, and Co. [7s. 6(1.]—(6.) The War iu South Africa: its Cause and Conduct. By A. Conan Doyle. London : Smith,

anl Co. ; and George Newnes. [6d.]

equipment as is manifested here is, to our thinking, remark. able. For our experience is that in most cases the untrained writer, however pointed he may be as a talker, becomes stilted and pompous directly a pen is put into his hand; to conceal art notoriously requires practice. Yet there is a great quantity of art concealed in these pages. Mr. Phillipps does not try to be " literary " ; his jottings are informal and unconventional, yet they make such a pretty use of slang that it seems an almost dignified vehicle of thought.

Although not " literary " in form, the book avoids all the vices which commonly associate themselves with the attempt to be " literary " ; the writing is never otiose and never turgid, and Mr. Phillipps sees the salient point in every situation with a quick penetration that satisfies the reader at once of the author's scholarly habit of mind. Quotation is the only satisfactory way of explaining the author's style. The following passage, containing thoughts which have seated themselves in the heart of every man who has ever "roughed it" in foreign countries, is an example of the natural feeling, sprightliness, and fancifulness that pervade the book :—

"I wish I could see an end to the campaign. When I come home an old, old, aged and infirm old man I mean to pass the evening of my days in a quiet cottage, with its full allowance of honeysuckle and roses. There I shall grow sweet williams, and if I can stand the extra excitement perhaps keep a pig. They tell me the Times has pronounced the war over. I would be glad to pay 25 out of my own pocket to have the man who wrote that out here on the veld with us for a week. We have just heard that Dewetsdorp has fallen, and there is a rising in the Colony. Vogue la gaUre ! "

Or again in the same spirit :—

" And all this time you (at home) are drinking champagne (well, most of it, anyway), and sleeping in soft beds with delicious white sheets, and smoking Egyptian cigarettes, and wearing clean clothes, with nice stiff collars and shirt-cuffs, and having a bath in the morning, warm, with sweet-smelling soap (oh, my God !) and sitting side by side at table, first a man and then a woman ; the same old arrangement I suppose, knives to the right and forks to the left as usual. Ho, ho ! There are times I could laugh."

Mr. Phillipps lived in South Africa before the war, and has his own opinion about Outlander grievances. "There are times I could laugh," he may be imagined as saying at this• point. No, in his view the war is simply for a United South Africa—an end—a destiny—which bad to be reached through inevitably painful stages. As to the burning of farms, he is all quick and intelligent sympathy for the sufferers. He makes it clear that the military necessity for clearing the country was bound by no very definite rules. "To save trouble we burned the lot." Every generous soul, we think, will be glad to echo his praise of the fine resistance which the Boers, take them for all in all, have made. Yet they are an inarticulate nation, and cannot give their own heroism the

adventitious aid of trumpetings. "That is always the way with these Dutch," says Mr. Phillipps, "they have all the harsh realities and none of the glamour and romance. Athens, with their history and record, would have made the whole world ring for ever. But they are dumb. It seems such a waste." A waste, indeed !

Mr. Edgar Wallace, the author of Unofficial Despatches, is better as a sender of news, if we may make the distinction,

than as a writer. We remember times when few intelligible accounts of the Boer raid towards Cape Town were coming to

England, and then Mr. Wallace's telegrams in the Daily Mail were often like a light in darkness. He seemed to under- stand what was happening, and to foresee what would happen next. But there is less to be said in favour of these unequal

and often melodramatic sketches. Passages here and there are very good, but Mr. Wallace is not in the same boat with Mr. March Phillipps. He always seems to be flinging his emotions at our heads, and after a time we distinctly feel the rise of a certain resentment. Mr. Phillipps with no such palpable efforts produces better effects. All Mr. Wallace's defects are those of one who does not appreciate the exact uses of the language. But we must say that Mr. Wallace's keen sense of a military situation makes his remarks on Lord Kitchener worth attention. He thinks that Lord Kitchener has failed in his administrative capacity to deal properly with the present disaffection of Cape Colony.

Rhodesia and After, by Sharrad H. Gilbert, is dedicated to the author's fellow-soldiers in the 17th and 18th Battalions of Imperial Yeomanry. Mr. Gilbert is precisely what Mr.

Philippe is not,—he is more like the type of the untrained writer who has a pen suddenly put by circumstances into his hand. He has fluency, but he has not the apparently un- conscious skill of Mr.. Phillipps. Happily, there' are other' qualities which may redeem ' a • war book, and this 'volume, written in the best spirits ' and with the best intentions in the world, will no doubt 'serve ' its excellent purpose of reminding certain Yeomen in years to come of their unusual experience.

To Dr. Conan Doyle's The Great Boer War we endeavoured to do justice when it first appeared, and we have only, to say now that the present volume is a new edition which brings the narra- tive up to the end of the second year. To write of the tangled guerilla warfare, which no man can have followed in detail, must have been a heart-breaking task, and we are astonished that Dr. Doyle has succeeded so well as he undoubtedly has. Although he has to lament a declension from the admirable spirit in which the first part of the war was fought, it cannot be said of Dr. Doyle himself that his fairness and honesty have suffered correspondingly. The fights at Nooitgedacht and Vlakfontein are most clearly and vigorously described, and no man Could fail to have his understanding of the vague chapters in the 'war made far better by a study of this work. If Dr. Dole finds it hard sometimes to distinguish between the true functions of the writer of fiction and of the historian, we do not pretend to depreciate the value of the result. This is a popular history, and yet it is highly intelligent. By it men, who perhaps read of war only for its "sensations," will infallibly but gradually be made to lend their minds to the fascinations of its problems, its strategy, its tactics, and its ethics. It is a great end for one book to achieve by itself, and we believe this book, if any, will do it.

Since: reading these books we have received a copy of Dr. Conan, Doyle's small work, The War in South Africa : its Cause and Conduct. The purpose of this pamphlet is to restate the honesty of our national purpose, and to rebut the preposterous charges of inhumanity which have been brought against us in other countries. With admirable industry and admirable public spirit—we know not which is the more laudable-!Dr. Doyle has marshalled all the evidence he can lay hands on as to the policy of farm-burning, the establishment of the concentration camps, and the alleged various cases of inhumanity; and all this he offers as a labour of love, from which he derives no pecuniary profit himself. Indeed, although he, foregoes payment, the expenses of distributing a pamphlet which scarcely covers its own cost—its price is 6d. —are still difficult to meet. We must not omit, therefore, to say that Dr. Doyle appeals for funds to translate the work into various languages, and spread it in foreign countries, to which, after all, it is primarily addressed. Every one who has read The Great Boer War knows Dr. Doyle's splendid fairness, and frankness, and both these virtues are displayed in an almost greater degree in this pamphlet. Whether men in the state of mind in which our foreign traducers appear to be will not twist the very frankness which ought to capture the sympathy of honest men into admissions of guilt appears to us an open question. Men capable of promoting Mr. Kruger, who left his country in its distress with as much money as he could take with him, to a hero's pinnacle are perhaps capable de tout. But such a prospect does not detract from the motive and the accomplishment of Dr. Doyle, on which we heartily make him our compliments.