Anecdotes about Soldiers. Arranged by J. H. Settle. (Methuen and
Co. 8s. 6d. net.)—What is one to say about five hundred and eighty-seven closely printed pages of anecdotes, grave and gay, about soldiers of the past and present? Perhaps the best thing would be that there is plenty of " fine, confused reading" in them ; but that remark has already been made about a dictionary. Mr. Settle has nothing to tell us about classical times. In fact, his book is modern. Coeur do Lion is dismissed in a para- graph, nor is much more given to the heroes of Crecy, Poictiers, and Agincourt. The book really begins with George III., and the treatment becomes full when the Peninsular War is reached. About five-sixths of the contents are devoted to the doings of soldiers between 1808, in which year the battle of Rolica was fought, and the Boer War. Waterloo has fifty pages devoted to it, and Mr. Settle has evidently done his best to complete his collection of stories about the great battle. He supplements it, also, with various anecdotes about Wellington. Who was the gentleman in plain clothes who, seeing that the Duke had no aides-de-camp about him, rode up and offered his services ? The Duke gave him a note to carry ; he rode off under a very hot fire ; but it was never known who be was. Who, again, was the sergeant of the 2nd Black Watch (73rd Foot) who, finding the colours gripped so tight in the fingers of the dead colour- sergeant that he could not loose them, lifted the corpse on to his shoulders ? The Waterloo anecdotes are peculiarly interesting. So are those of the Boer War. So many men record their experiences that military ana are sure to be abundant. One sometimes wishes that the " dim multitudes " who fought in such battles as Plataea and Cannae, Zama and Philippi and Adrianople, had been articulate. One of the Boer War stories we will give, and this shall be of the humorous kind. An Irish landlord volunteered for the front "Captain, dear," said one of his tenants, "don't be fur goin' to be massacraed by thim Boers." "If I'm to be shot," said the landlord, "I'll come here and let my tenants do it." " God love ye, Captain," said the man ; "Ids a true Oirishman and a lover o' yer connthry ye are afther all!" The story is so good that it is a pity Mr. Settle did not get an Irishman to mend his dialect, which is somewhat transpontine.
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