14 
land'& water 
Books to Read 
By Lucian Oldershaw 
August 9, 1917 
OF all recent books dealing with contemporary events 
Mr. Isaac F. Marcosson's The Rebtrlli of Russia 
l]ohn Lane, 3s. 6d. net), is the most worth reading, 
it deals in a vivid, picturesque and mformative 
manner witli the greatest event of recent times. The author 
IS modest about his own work. " This little book, he says. 
" has no serious historic pretensions. It is frankly journalistic 
—the record of momentous events chronicled, hot on ine 
heel of happening. It was my good fortune to be among the 
first to reach Petrograd after the Great Upheaval. I found 
the capital delirious with freedom— the people still blinking in 
the liKht of th(- sudden deUverance. I saw the fruits ancl 
the follies of the ncW libertv." So with the deft touches of 
the experienced journalist Mr. Marcosson proceeds to outline 
the events of those historic days in March and to gives Horn 
personal observation, interesting sketches of the leaders 01 
the Russian Revolution. " 
* * * * * 
It is good reading, this red-hot record of the Russian Revo- 
lution. It seizes on the events that seemed vital at a period 
of intensive activity. It is a book of those f^rst impressions 
which are likelv to "be the right impressions. I do not know 
if the author is accurate in every detail, or if lus judgment 
of individuals is to be relied on. But there is, after all, not 
much room for error of detail in a book which records a series 
of big events ; the mountainous Rodzianko acting as 
Mirabcau to the Duma when refusing to assent to its dissolu- 
tion ; the Czar, with a fountain pen borrowed from (jutch- 
koff , a man of many adventures, but none so epoch-making as 
this, writing out the manifesto that signed away his power ; 
and " the man Keren?ky," who has a chapter to himself, 
electrifying now the Woikmien's and Soldiers' Council, now 
the Finnish I'arliamcnt, and again a fashionable Red Cross 
working-party, with his sudden appearances and impassioned 
speeches. Mr. Marcosson pays due tribute to Lvoff. the 
organiser of the Union of Zemstvos, to the idealistic and 
self-sacrificing Milyukoff and to the other courageous makers 
of the Revolution. Rut even in those first days of the great 
change he always comes back to Kerensky, and let us hope 
that his final summing up of the latest lawyer-politician 
will come true. " The man," he says, "who was the cement 
of the Revolution will remain the rock of Reconstruction." 
1^ * * * * 
The unconquerable spirit of France exhibits itself, in one 
case from a general and in the other from an individual point 
of view in two books I have just been reading. The one 
is Les Diverses families SpiritneUes de La France (Paris, 
Emile Paul, 3fr.5o), in which M. Maurice Barrcs shows how 
Catholic, Protestant, Jew, Socialist and Traditionalist have 
united to fight for France, and how in fighting for France 
each is fighting for his faith. M. Maurice Barrcs is perhaps 
the best-known to English readers of all the eloquent ex- 
ponents of the patriotism of his country, and it is only 
necessary to say that his latest book is written in his usual 
strain of fine enthusiasm based, according to the habit of his 
countrymen, on an appreciation of reality. Such a book will 
help to crystallise the new unity of France. Would that" 
someone with the same faith and the same vision would do 
the same for our country before it is too late. 
* * * it He 
My other French book is Under Fire, by Henri Barbusse 
(]. M. Dent and Sons, 5s. net), one of the most remarkable of 
French documents of the war, and well worth translation 
into Flnglish, a difficult task with which Mr, Fitzwatcr Wray 
has struggled, on the whole satisfactorily. The book, 
dedicated " to the memory of the comrades who fell by my 
side.at Crouij and on Hill 119, January, May and September 
1915," is a detailed record of tiic experiences of a French 
soldier and the men of his squad from the time of mobilisa- 
tion. It is particularly interesting to the English reader, 
because it gives fuller information about the French army 
than is usually to be found in such books. The book is full 
of incident, humorous and horrible, mostly horrible, for the 
author is a realist who ^^uiifif^lc on the glories of war. 
But the most wonderful MBuuminating part of the book is 
the dialogue, the talk cimny of the soldiers among them- 
selves, describing their contempt for those who manage to 
evade active service, or, lying wounded in the mud dis- 
cussing equality and whether the horrors of war will be 
sufficiently remembered even by themselves to prevent war 
ever happening again. This is the constantlj' recurring theme 
of the book : " There must be no more war after this ! " 
And yet in. spite of this preoccupation of the author's with 
the very present beastliness of fighting, there shines through 
the book the splendour of the common man when he faces 
discomfort, wounds and death for the sake of an ideal. 
***** 
After reading two such books as the above, I was naturally 
thinking of all that France meant to Europe and to civilisation 
generally, when I took up a little book by a Danish Professor, 
which pays gracefully and sincerely the tribute which our great 
Ally has earned. France bv Chrfstophe Myrop (Heinemann. 
IS. net), pubhshed on behalf of the French Red Cross, is a book 
that might well be adopted as a text-book in our schools. 
The titles of a few of its chapters, " Christian Ideals," " Le 
Panache," " Gloria \'ictis," " Beauty and Gaiety," aiid "The 
Land of Liberty," reveal the scheme of the book, which is of 
the nature of a scries of essays on the leading characteristics 
of the country honoured. The author writes simply, but with 
dignity. He chooses his literary illustrations from well- 
known sources, Le Chanson dc Roland, Rostand, Victor Hugo, 
and he records what every schoolboy should know, but does 
not know about France'. So let every schoolboy read it I 
***** 
News from No Man's Land (Kelly, is. fid. and 2s. 6d. net) 
comes to us with an introduction "from General Sir William 
Birdwood, which would of itself entitle it to a hearing. It is 
the work of the Rev. James Green, the Senior Chaplain with 
the Australian Imperial Forci:!. and is primarily intended for 
his own fiock. " I can only hope," says the author, " that 
reading what the Padre has to say may cheer them in some 
lonely places, or help them to be happy though miserable in 
some indifferent billets." The stories "of the Western Front 
with which tlie book opens will doubtless be full of memories 
for such readers. The essay on " The God of Battles" carries 
with it the authority of a Chaplain for tlie kind of rehgu n 
that appeals to the soldier at the front. What will perhaps 
chiefly- interest the general reader, however, is the author's 
visit to London in the guise of Macaulay's New ZealaYidor and 
his being chietly struck with its crazy collection of chimnty 
pots, from which he manages to extract a moral. 
***** 
It may, under very favourable circumstanci-.. l>f .1 pleasant 
thing to sec ourselves as others see us. La Mdchoire Carrcc 
or The Square j[aie> is a series of newspaper articles by two 
French journalists with the British troops in France, and 
is published both in French and linglish, (Nelson and Sons, 
IS. and ifr.) M. Henry Ruffin and M. Andro Tudesq write 
in a lively and picturesque style about last year's British 
offensive. I recommend English readers, vyho would avoid 
a certain feeling of awkvvar.dness in listening to the compli- 
ments paid to our country to read the FYench version in which 
they seem to come more naturally. Only one thing in the 
book worries me, and that is the title, which seems to be based 
on sonic misapprehension, for, say the authors, in talking of 
the English soldier's determination to see the war through : 
' S'il n'en rcstail qu 'tin, it serait celui-ld car — c'esi lui (tui 
le dit el on doit le croire — il a ' la mdchoire carree.' " Do 
English soldiers ever speak of their " square jaws " ? 
***** 
"The little progeny claims to be as vigorous and well-shaped 
as any in the world of latter-day English verse, exceptions 
being made in the case of certainly one, perhaps a second, and 
])ossibly a third writer," So writes Mr. Paul Hookham of 
his httie volume of verse, Y'lco Kings (B. H. Blackwell, 3s. M. 
net). The surprising thing, after this bold claim, is to find 
the poems in question neither very good nor very bad. There' 
are one or two effective lyrics, including a recruiting song 
that has an unusual lilt about it. The long blank verse poem 
which gives its title to the book is particularly common-place. 
It is all of apiece with the following reminder of the 
Conqueror's speech in Tennyson's Harold : 
I am the first of our proud Normm line 
To find this people out. There's that in them, 
Celt. Roman, Saxon, how.soe'er it comes, 
That, conquer as we may is quite unconquerable 
A stolid obstinacy untamable, 
That bends its one clear thought to one clear point. 
* * * * * 
The Great Gift, by Sidney Paternoster (John Lane, 6s.), 
is a readable political novel on the theme of the stalled ox. 
Hugh Standish attained one of those marvellous successes, 
first in business and then in politics, which would a few years 
ago have seemed impossible save in fiction. But he starved 
the emotional side of his nature, and when love came into 
his life, it was not reciprocated. It is an obvious theme, but 
it is worked out with considerable narrative power and a 
freshness of outlook that is engaging. 
