SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
[Under this heading we notice such Books of the week as have not been reserved for review in other forms.] The Officer's Field Note Book and Sketch. Book and Reconnaissance Aide - Menioire. By Lieutenant - Colonel E. Gunter, p.s.c. (William Clowes and Sons. 6s. 6d. net.)—We have received the eighth edition of this admirable campaigner's vade mecum, which has been rewritten and revised so as to bring it up to date, as regards the detailed information it contains, with Lord Roberts's new manuals of training and the amended War Establishments. This Note Book is already so well known to officers of all arms that it needs no recapitulation by us of the immense mass of use- ful notes on every conceivable subject which is compressed into ninety-three pages of close print. Soldiering is to a large extent a matter of common-sense and individual resource ; but the infor- mation to be found in Colonel Gunter's Note Book cannot fail to be of the greatest service to an officer who finds himself face to face with any ordinary military problem. For instance, the proper allowances of rations, water, and' forage to be made to man or beast, the preparation of orders, the demolition of a bridge or a railway line, the defence and occupation of positions, the spaces required by troops of all arms in camp, &c., &c., are all questions which are succinctly dealt with in the Note Book. By running over the notes which it supplies on almost every conceivable military situation, a check may be placed on a defective memory or an in- sufficient consideration of the problem, and any omissions made can be rectified. It is said that General Clery might with advan- tage have kept a copy of his admirable book on" Minor Tactics" by him in Natal. Colonel Gunter supplies even more information still in so compact a form that it may be carried in the breast- pocket. In addition, he provides all the material for rough field sketches and reconnaissance reports, and the result is the most complete and most portable report-book in the market. If we were to criticise at all, we should suggest that in future editions it might be well to omit some of the notes on the more ordinary problems, such as outposts, road reports, &c., the details of which should now be perfectly familiar to all, and for the sake of space and quick reference to confine the notes to the more technical details involving numbers or mathematical figures which an officer may be apt to forget in the strain of a campaign. But the main object of an aide-mimoire of this kind is, of course, to come to the rescue of those minds which are least familiar with all the details of a soldier's knowledge, and we have no doubt that Colonel Gunter, as the" Whitaker" of campaigning, has confined himself very strictly to that which experience teaches him is the irreducible minimum of compact information.
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