The work of the naval airmen in the Eastern Mediterranean
and the Red Sea during the War has never been described until now. How incessant and effective it was we may see in Mr. C. E. Hughes' clever and amusing book, Above and Beyond Palestine (Benn, 10s. 6d.), which he has illustrated with many attractive sketches in line. Long before our troops entered Palestine, our seaplanes had been mapping the country and worrying the Turk by raids on his com- munications and depots, to say nothing of combined naval and air attacks on Beirut and other places. Mr. Hughes is not concerned to write a history of this side-show, but rather to give some idea of how the East Indies and Egypt Seaplane Squadron was employed, how its officers lived on their island at Port Said, and how they amused themselves on leave in Cairo. Few books about the War have been so cheerful or so brightly written as this modest volume.
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