iS 
LAiND & WATER 
November 9, 1916 
Books to Read 
By Lucian Oldershaw 
STOPFORD BROOKE once said, I believe, oi 
Coleridge that he had only written a few first- 
rate poems, but that these few should be bound 
ill gold. We have turned our gold to-day into 
kliaki. and in a khaki-bound volume comes from Mr. 
Erskine Macdonaid a collection of the characteristic 
songs of two dozen lighting men. They are worthy of 
their binding. The.se Soldier Poets (2s. 6d. net), are drawn 
from all ranks, from the old army and from the new 
and from various parts of England and the Empire. 
They sing different tunes in different keys, but there is 
a burden common to nearly all of them. This I have 
tried to express in this " Sonnet in Envious Approbation 
of the Singers who Fight and the Fighters who Sing." 
How goes it, brothers, ye who fight and sing 
With that old gamesome spirit that enrols. 
You witlj our deathless ones, with liim whose bowls 
Still reach his Jack.s and liim who offering 
Of water yielded up ? From quenchless spring 
Of a free manhood ami glad heart there rolls -^ 
I'nconquered and imconqucrable souls — 
Immortal England in the songs ye bring. 
" There is no death . . There is no death . . " No loss 
Courlncy who tends the dying, witnesseth ; 
While Streets, the miner, sings of death's eclipse 
For these " Olpnpian gods in consciousness," 
And Hodgson, on his knees, has conquered death, 
And Grcnfell falls, a trumpet to his lips. 
:¥ * * * * 
Fighting men abroad w\\\ especially welcome English 
Landscape, an anthology compiled by Maurice Baring 
(Himiphrey Milford, is. net). It is a little waistcoat- 
pocket volume, whose every page is a picture and a 
memory. Mr. Baring has evidently attempted in placi s 
the lour de force of quoting by heart, and a naturally good 
memory has once or twice pla3'ed him false. His littK' 
book is as comprehensive as one can ever allow another s 
anthology to be, but if another edition is called for in 
the interests of the excellent charity in whose aid it is 
jHiblished — the British fund for the relief of Russian 
])risoncrs in Germany — I hope it may contain Geoffre\- 
Howard's " The Beach Road by the Wood," or, at least 
his sonnet. " England," whose sextet is a very 
epitome of Enghsh landscape. Both these poems are to 
be found in Soldier Poets. 
***** 
How Englishmen abroad dwell on the homeland is 
well illustrated by Dartmoor Days with the Forest Hunt 
(John Murray, 6s. net). The author of this exiiilaratin,; 
novel of English country pursuits is Captain J. H. W. 
Knight-Bruce, and he wrote the work while a prisoner in 
a German fortress. The book is illustrated with remarl^- 
able little silhouette drawings by a fellow-prisoner, a 
Belgian officer, who evidently has as much love for and 
knowledge of a horse as the author of the tale. Nothing 
less could have inspired Lieutenant Picard's memory, 
for of course he had no models, with such a wonderful 
little study as that, for example, on p. 278. But tlic 
book is not merely attractive for its extrinsic interest. 
It is the real thing — the best sporting novel at least, 
since Some Adventures of an Irish R.M. Captain 
Knight-Bruce is not merely a lover of noble animals and 
a faithful and graphic recorder of the doings of horses 
and dogs, he has also no little talent for human 
portraiture, a robust sense of humour, and the sense of 
proportion of one who loves animals no less because, 
wing no professional humanitarian, he loves human 
beings more. He has spent his captivity to the great 
profit of his fellow countrymen. 
* * » * * 
Bismarck once called Mr. Sidney Whitman " a good 
liorse-dealer in men," and that there is some truth in 
this description Mr. Whitman's volume of reminis- 
cences. Things I Remember (Cassell and Co., 7s. 6d. net.), 
bears witness. Mr. Wliitman is a good judge of the 
points and tlie form of the many interesting men with 
whom he has come in contact. He can tell us pretty 
shrewdly why some have succeeded and why some have 
failed in the race of life. We know l\Ir. Whitman best in 
England as an authority on Germany, and we naturally 
look to his book for some analysis of the causes of the 
present war. In this respect the' book has only a negative 
interest, its author's chief concern being to point out that 
" if Bismarck had lived and still been in power, this war 
would not only never have taken place, but would never 
have been contemplated, nor its sinister preparations have 
been allowed to come to maturity." Bismarck did not 
flatter his apologist in vain ! For the rest Mr. Whitman 
as a painter of the times we live in has the defect of his 
qualities. He is a good journalist and, as he points out 
in describing his Zionist friend. Dr. Herzl, a journalist 
cannot afford to be an enthusiast, for, if he is, he becomes 
"a partisan where he should only be a faithful recorder." 
Yet Mr. Whitman can appreciate enthusiasm in others, 
two of the best, because the most sympathetic, studies 
in his book are those of Charles Dilke and W. T. Stead. 
* * * * * 
A novel by Mr. William J. Locke always provides 
a welcome refuge from the dusty highways of life, and 
The Wonderful Year (John Lane, 6s.), lias all the qualities 
of his pleasant craft. Cheerful vagabondage, facile 
sentiment, a sense of culture without effort and of well- 
being without vulgarity — these are the things we expect 
from Mr. Locke, and we get them, without stint, in 
A Wonderful Year. We get also an intimate and charming 
little study of a French provincial town before and during 
mobilisation and during the first few months of the war. 
To set the wheels of his story in motion, Mr. Locke has 
invented a characteristic figure in Mr. Daniel Fortinbras, 
Marchand de Bonheur, who for a fee of five francs is pre- 
pared to give coimsel in distress to the students and artists 
of the Latin Quarter, I do not propose to follow Corinna 
Hastings and Martin Overshaw on the journey Fortinbras 
sends them in a search for their souls. Everyone will be 
reading for himself this slightly absurd but wholly 
attractive.novel, for we have not altogetlier lost the joy of 
sentimental living. 
* * * * * 
The Hon. Stephen Coleridge has spent An Evening 
in My Library among the English Poets (John Lane, 3s. 6d. 
net) ; a somewhat long, but not entirely unprofitable, 
evening. In the course of the evening Mr. Coleridge quotes 
a good deal of poetry, so that his book makes quite an 
interesting antholog3^ chiefly of the simpler type of lyric, 
and he pronounces a certain number of literary judg- 
ments, some of which are no doubt based on previously 
decided cases, as that Browning was obscure, Walt 
Whitman unpoetical and obscene, Gray's Elegy uninspired, 
and Lindsay (jordon, the Australian, more original a poet 
than any America has produced. There are many 
judgments in the book which a higher court may be 
inchned to revise, but this summary condemnation will 
surely stand for ever : " Mr. Bernard Shaw shares with 
Mr. Masefield, the notoriety of having, without circum- 
locution or shame, projected upon the public the foul 
expletive which never passes the lips of any decent 
person." Mr. Coleridge has in literature as in other 
matters the courage of his opinions. 
***** 
In German Hands, by Charles Hennebois, is one of the 
most moving of the personal narratives published by Mr. 
Heinemann in his series of " Soldiers' Tales of the (ireat 
War " (3s. 6d. net). It is the diary of a French volunteer, 
who was taken a prisoner after being severely wounded 
before Saint-Mihiel on October 12th, 1914, and records his 
experiences from the time he went on active service 
till his return, without a leg, to his native land. There 
is nothing extenuated in the story, but there appears to 
be nothing set down in malice and in consequence it is 
one of the most convincing indictments of Boche methods 
of warfare I have yet read. It is also, in its author's 
splendid faith, undimmed by disaster, in his country and 
in right, a most inspiring human docinnent. 
