RAMBLES IN A BOOKSHOP.
192
The Ypres Times.
Perhaps the deepest and sincerest conviction that
one has when one wanders tourid a bookshop now
adays, is that one has ho money, or, at least,
not nearly enough, for the books one covets are
all dearanother anct very sad legacy of war.
And so one has to be very circumspect, for lots of
them have very attractive covers and very little
inside. One thing is noticeable at oncethere is
a steady decrease in war books. There are, of
course, very represen'ative histories of regimental
coings, but most of these are being printed pri
vately, and are at any rate ralher expensive, and
there is the first volume of General Edmond's
massive Official History of the War on Land
(published by Messrs. Macmillan at 21s., with a
case of maps, also at 21s.), which takes the story
up to the stabilisation on the Aisne. It is a great
work, Lut it is terribly stiff reading, decidedly not
for the armchair, and it takes a long time to get
all those many facts about the retreat from Mons
and the counter-stroke on the Marne fixed in one's
me.nory. But if one has the courage to work at
it, it is well worth the time and the trouble, for
it lets one see better almost than any other book
what a magnificent show the Old Contemp-
tibles made. In quite another class is another
4 4 semi-official book," called Air-Raid Damage in
London, by Major Monson and Mr. Marsland
(published at 5s., by the British Fire Prevention
Committee). We, in the trenches were always a
little bored when people in London told us what
errible t'mes they had in air-raids. After being
bombed twice and three times a night behind the
salient, one could not really get interested in
the frantic rush of panic-stricken Londonerslots
of them aliensto get down into the tubes. But
this little book makes one take a more sym
pathetic view of their panic, for it shows not
only how much damage to life and property was
done, but what a terrible amount might have been
done had the raiders been a little more efficient.
There are some truly horrifying photographs.
But the cream of war-books surely is Colonel
Fuller's phophecies of the future, The Reforma
tion of War (16s. netHutchinson). It is
astonishingly good reading, though one may dis
agree with every line of it. Colonel Fuller expects
that the next war is going to be very different
from the last. It is going to be short, and it is
going to be fought with machines, and all the
incidents are going to happen on the civilian
front. While the P.B.I, sit snugly in the trenches
looking at each other, monster tanks are going
to fight a wild battle in No Man's Land. The
victors then proceed to career wildly over the
enemy's territory, land on it, if need be, from
submarines, dealing death and destruction, while
aeroplanes, having smashed up the enemy's fleet,
drop enormous bombs in the main streets and
blow the enemy's big cities and half his popula
tion to bits, till what is left surrenders. That is
very horribleespecially for Cuthbert and the
munition worker, but, in Colonel Fuller's opinion,
it is going to let people see what a waste war is.
Then we shall war by threat. We shall use gas,
but not deadly gas. It will be laughing gas or
blinding gas, or gas that gives you a terrible
pain in the stomach. Then, when all the popu -
lation is helpless with laughter or colic, Alder-
shot like a den of hyaenas, and the fleet like the
morning after the night before, the enemy will
suddenly appear with the deadly stuff, bombs and
tanks, and say, Now you're helpless; your Ad
miral is holding his stomach, and your General
his sides. No one can fight, and here we are.
Will you sign peace—on our terms?" And we
should have to 1 A nice prospect, and Colonel
Fuller, though he writes like H. G. Wells, almost
makes one believe it all. It is astonishingly well
written, and there's a lot of good stuff in it.
Side by side with a row of books inspired by
that most depressing Egyptian King with the
name pronounced like Tooting Common, are a
couple of books about foreign parts, that are
worth a look at. Mr. Norton's Far Eastern Re
public of Siberia (12s. 6d. net Allen and Unwin)
is a stoiy of unknown countries, where a handful
of extraordinary menone of them a Yankee
worker known as Big Bill Shatov hammered
a huge territory over-run by all sorts of armies,
some of them our own, under General Knox,
Japs, Americans, Russians, Bolshevists, German
prisoners, Chinese, and a few more, into something
like a State which the Bolshevists have grabbed
at last. It is hard reading, but it is a good book.
For sheer excitement though, it yields to the ex
traordinary work of a Polish professor, named
Ossendovski, who had to bolt into the Siberian
forests to escape the Bolshevists. Beasts, Gods
and Men (12s. 6d. Arnold), he calls it. He was
quite alone and unarmed, but meeting a Red
soldier in the woods, he sold a spare pair of
trousersfor a rifle, two automatics, and cart
ridges. With them he managed to get through to
the Chinese, but there things were no be'ter», so
he tried to get to India with some friends over
the steppeshiding all day, travelling at night,
living on raw meat, because they dare not light
fires, till they fell ir. with brigands, who killed
six of them and forced the rest to bolt back.
Finally he managed to work his way to the sea
and so escape, after meeting the poisoners of the
Mongols' chief medicine man, and seeing priests
cut open a conscious man, perform an operation,
and then close the wound up again. It is really
a great story, that is more exciting than many a
novel.