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.

HISTORISCHE KRANTEN

The Ypres Times (1921-1936) | 1923 | | pagina 14