FAR AWAY CAMPAIGN By F. James Many Generals and most
Statesmen have committed their part in the Great War to paper, and the reading public has not as yet had its fill. But, particularly for those who took no part in the last War, there is something unreal about these views from Whitehall. Not unnaturally, such people want to know what life was like for the actual participants on the various fronts. A suitable book for them
is Far Away Campaign (Grayson, 8s. 6d.), and the scene is that
lonely frontier between Persia and Afghanistan—a campaign that finally became a struggle with the Bolsheviks in Russian
Central Asia long after the War in Europe was over. Mr. James was a plain company officer, and he wisely seldom ventures into the danger zone of high policy. He came from France to fight a curious battle of bluff with the Baluch tribesmen in barren valleys and burning deserts ; he was' ambushed and left for dead by them. However, he recovered and was posted to a minor Persian town. Here he was part- of a force some regiments strong whose main duty it was to prevent half a dozen agents of the Central Powers reaching Afghanistan, where they hoped to embarrass the British by raising a revolt. This arduous duty was shared with the Cossacks, but gradually, under the influence of the Russian Revolution, the Cossacks receded, leaving behind them officials without a position or a country. Mr. James enjoyed this feckless society and fell in love with Sonia, the slant- eYed ward of a vodka-drinking pessimist of the genuine Dostoievsky school ; the last part of the book is divided between this all-too-honourable passion and the manoeuvres of the newly-arisen Bolsheviks. Mr. James manages— without being a really pleasant writer—to capture for us that strange mixture of present-day squalor and historic romance which is the attraction of Persia and Central Asia. It is a book that all those who have a taste for a true adventure story in an out-of-the-way setting will enjoy.
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