REVIEWS 181 



Portuguese authorities for their alleged indifference regarding the presence of 

 sleeping sickness in Principe to certain German influences in Great Britain. His 

 note stated that our Foreign Office has turned a deaf ear to these machinations. 

 Colonel Wyllie says that the " ' Foreign Office White Book, Africa, No. 2, 1913,' 

 is worth reading for the illuminating expose" it gives of their inaccuracy, defective 

 reasoning powers, and valueless suggestions. This collection of documents dealt 

 the coup de grdce to the San Thome Slavery Lie — the trump-card of pan-German- 

 ism in England to follow that of Congo Atrocities, already played." 



R. R. 



Discoveries and Inventions of the Twentieth Century. By Edward Cressy. 

 [Pp. xvi-f-398, illustrated.] (London: George Routledge & Sons, Ltd. 

 Price 7 s. 6d. net.) 



Many more books of this nature should be published. They contain the real 

 history of the world, that is of the advances made by the human intelligence from 

 time to time, and are much to be preferred for educational purposes to the 

 accounts, often quite untrue, of political and military events and of the doings of 

 kings, generals, and various kinds of impostors who pretend that they are 

 advancing the cause of civilisation. It would be good if our youth could learn 

 to distinguish between genuine efforts for human advancement and the bogus 

 efforts. Slums, disease, vice, cheating, crimes, bad laws, and wars will assuredly 

 continue until the mass of men are able to appreciate the difference. Mr. Edward 

 Cressy's book will be of interest to many others besides school-boys. It is in the 

 nature of a sequel to Robert Routledge's Discoveries and Inventions of the 

 Nineteenth Century, but deals with engineering inventions rather than discovery — 

 it would of course have been quite impossible to include the latter in any detail 

 in a book of this size. The chapters include histories, recent advances in 

 connection with steam power, the generation and transmission of electricity and 

 electric lighting, the electric furnace, the artificial production of cold, soils and 

 crops, railways, motor cars, ships, the conquest of the air, wireless telegraphy, 

 ships of war, photography, radium, and the constitution of matter — altogether a 

 useful mass of information. The writing is generally good, but at times the 

 author has not taken quite sufficient pains, we think, to explain details in a 

 manner free from ambiguity. Of course many of the chapters may have been 

 greatly amplified, especially the one upon aeroplanes. The book was written 

 before the war, but this does not greatly detract from its value. 



Aircraft in Warfare. The Dawn of the Fourth Arm. By F. W. Lanchester, 

 M.Inst.C.E., M.Inst.A.E., with an Introductory Preface by Major-General 

 Sir David Henderson, K.C.B., Director-General of Military Aeronautics. 

 [Pp. xx + 222, with 14 plates and 21 figures in the text.] (London : Constable 

 & Co., 1916. Price \zs. 6d. net.) 



The author in his " Note" states "that the present work may be said to date from 

 its contribution as a series of articles to Engineering, covering a period from 

 September to December 1914 ... the last two chapters, however, include new 

 matter." This reason is given for reprinting and revising — " that articles in a 

 technical journal, whatever its standing may be, can never appeal to so wide a 

 circle as a publication in book form." We agree entirely. 



The work is a serious and well-reasoned contribution to military and naval 

 aeronautics and appears at a very opportune time. If it finds Sir David Henderson 



