General Sir Ian Hamilton, writing an introduction to Lt.-General Sir
William Marshall's Memories of Four Fronts (Benn, 21s.), observes that they are " ultra English." Unemotional they are, plain statements of objective truth, but one hopes not necessarily ultra English in style, which is, indeed, a little wooden and too much given to the use of outworn cliché. That, however, should not blind the reader
to the importance of the matter. Sir William was one of the most distinguished soldiers of the War, and has many pregnant comments to make on it from standpoints in France, Gallipoli, Macedonia, and Mesopotamia. Of the Gallipoli expedition his judgment runs that " the shortage of shells, especially H. E., was almost entirely the cause of the failure," as in Mesopotamia it was (at first) the want of co-ordination. General Maude (over whose memory the author, who was also his successor as C. in C., really opens out) introduced that co-ordination, and brought the Cinderella among British forces from virtual defeat to complete victory. Sound fare are these memories, though not very highly spiced, and yet it is pleasant to hear of a private in the Border Regiment who produced a dead tortoise with the remark, " I've found one of these here landmines, Sir."
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