Colditz Old Style
Napoleon and his British Captives. By Michael Lewis. (Allen and Unwin, 42s.) THIS is a charmingly old-fashioned book; it is half-way between an early nineteenth-century
White Paper presenting the evidence for a world-wide condemnation of Bonaparte and an excursus upon methods of escape during what was the first adumbration of a world war. The White Paper approach is the reason for the summaries of twelve different prison fortresses (some entries amounting to no more than `nothing is known'), the appendices and the enormous list of names of officers and gentle- men imprisoned—not, of course, of men—which surely can be of no use to anyone now. It also causes harsh interruptions of Professor Lewis's more interesting stories--the adventures of Mr. Jackson, the most indefatigable escaper, are broken into two parts, separated by a hundred pages, because he made the error of starting his attempts from different places.
But if one is patient with the Professor one receives the reward—not only the preposterous story of O'Brien who escaped repeatedly and even joined the group which was chasing him 'with a nightcap on his head, this being the common dress of the peasantry of this country,' but also some interesting historical information. For example, that Napoleon was the first to destroy the existing civilised convention that civilians were not interfered with during war by arresting all the British travelling in France and making them into (Menus, a wholly new cate- gory of people who are now called 'internees.' Again, that he introduced the system of accusing the enemy of crimes that you yourself were about to commit, as when his Moniteur pro- duced 355 instances of British officers breaking parole (all but two false, Dr. Lewis shows) as a reason for Frenchmen breaking parole on a great scale, and also for ill-treating his British prisoners. A remarkable innovator, Napoleon, and one who has had apt pupils.
It is only fair to add that the ill-treatment was not gross, and life cannot have been very odious for prisoners who could build a race- course and run races which had as their only disadvantage that the horse backed by the prison governor's wife must win at least once.
RAYMOND POSTGATE
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