Current Literature
BRIGADIER-GENERAL C. BA.LLARD'S Smith-Dorrien (Constable 15s.) is well worth reading, both as a memoir of that able and much respected soldier and also as a defence of his actions as commander of the Second Corps in the early part of the War at Mons, Le Cateau and Ypres. General Ballard had a brigade under him and has also been permitted to use his diaries, so that General Smith-Dorrien's own account of his career is largely supplemented in regard to critical episodes. The author, not unnaturally, holds that the late Lord French's " 1914 " is definitely misleading, and cites a whole series of misstatements from its pages. He makes it plain that there was no love lost between the Commander-in-Chief and his Corps commander. When General Grierson died on his way to take over the Second Corps, Sir John French (as he was then) asked for General Plumer to replace hiin. Lord Kitchener, despite the warnings of his staff, appointed General Smith-Dorrien. There can be little doubt that the Commander-in-Chief took this as a personal grievance and never forgot it, much to the disadvantage of the British Army as a whole in these first trying months in France. General Ballard's narrative is lucid, though necessarily controversial, and is illustrated with sketch maps.
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