REVIEWS 167 



The Life of Sir Colin C. Scott Moncrieff, K.C.S.I., K.C.M.G., R.E., LL.D., etc. 

 Edited by his niece, Mary Albright Hollings. [Pp. xii + 374, with 

 illustrations, genealogy, and index.] (London: John Murray, 1917. Price 

 12s. net.) 



THE significance of the life here recorded is best summarised in Sir Colin's 

 question : " Suppose you had a fresh visitation of famine, would you be more 

 ready than you were last time to fight it?" Our sheltered nations till lately had 

 forgotten that all food comes from the plants in the soil, and thought that 

 mechanism was Progress ; yet " of course the railways are invaluable for carry- 

 ing food to where it is wanted, but only irrigation creates food," as he writes 

 when nearing the end of a life spent chiefly between naked earth and glaring sky. 



As an account of the kind of work done by one of those men who have 

 brought honour to the Empire by unselfish, far-sighted labour for her subject 

 races, on which labour its security depends, this volume has much more than a 

 personal interest ; it is a book to be read by every novice starting for civil service 

 abroad. The story is told very largely by Sir Colin's own words, skilfully woven, 

 and this restrained treatment makes the effect the more striking. A career which 

 participated in the Indian Mutiny, in the Madras Famine of 1877-8— those pages 

 should be read together with Kipling's story of another Scott in "William the 

 Conqueror " — and in the Delhi Durbar of 1903 ; which completed its full service 

 in the Indian Irrigation Department before taking charge for ten years of the 

 waters of the Nile, and so laying the foundation of Egypt's modern prosperity ; 

 which after ten years more in the Scottish Office presided over the Indian Irriga- 

 tion Commission ; which knew Transcaucasia, Lombardy, South Africa, and 

 America, and lasted from 1836 to 1916, was filled with human interest. 



In writing to General Gordon in 1876 he modestly says : " I cannot pretend to 

 any scientific knowledge," but although it is true that his life work was primarily 

 the administration of technical processes with notable engineering courage, 

 rather than the deliberate study of first principles, yet one technical discovery, 

 not specially emphasised in this volume, is alone sufficient to entitle him to 

 scientific status — if a President of the Engineering Section of the British Asso- 

 ciation needed it — namely, his clear recognition of the importance of humble 

 drainage equally with water-supply. We find this in his Egyptian Public Works 

 Reports from 1882 to 1892, and it is not unreasonable to grudge the ten years he 

 gave to the Scottish Office ; for, had those further years been spent in Egypt, the 

 developing irrigation projects of America, India, and Egypt, too, might have been 

 saved from temporary failure to recognise that ;< it would be more difficult to drain 

 the water off the land than to pour the water over the land " (p. 175). 



The work of Sir Colin Scott Moncrieff stands in such fundamental relationship 

 to the last half-century of effort in irrigation, that we wish it might be found 

 possible to prepare a companion volume to the present Life, dealing more 

 technically with aspects, developments, and consequences of his work. Much 

 of the material is already available in official reports, lectures, or books, and 

 most of his assistants are still with us. In any case we can commend this book 

 to all who desire to learn how good principles may be put into good practice. 



L. B. 



