The deeds of the two tongreves, Sir Walter and his
son "Billy," both of whom won the Victoria Cross, speak so well for them that a formal review of The Congreves (Murray, 15s.) is unnecessary. But we would not lose the occasion to reiterate that the true story or the War is better told by its heroes than by its hysterical chroniclers. General Con- greve was famous in his Corps and Division for always being in the front. line : he was a good letter-writer, too, with a telling gift of undei-statement, and draws a vivid picture (unconsciously, for he would never have strained after effect) of the Hooge Crater when it lay in No-man's-land in August, 1915. In 1917 he had his left hand blown off by a direct hit from a shell : within an hour he was dictating a letter about a missing man, but to his mother he wrote himself, fearing she would be alarmed if he sent her a dictated letter. The son, Brevet-Major William Congreve, V.C., D.S.O.,
was equally fearless and more articulate. His letters and diaries reveal why. Sir Herbert Uniacke said that he was "the finest soldier we had out here." The two authors of these memoirs are to be congratulated on having pub- lished a record that all who are collecting War books should buy and keep. As the Duke of Connaught says in his preface to the volume : "The names of men, like those of the Con- greves, have made the British Army what it is."
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