(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)
_The Secret Corps_ (MURRAY) is the title of a book on espionage,
before and especially during the War, every page of which I have read
with the greatest possible entertainment--the greatest possible,
that is, for anyone at home. To get the real maximum out of Captain
FERDINAND TUCHY'S astonishing anecdotes one would, I suppose, need
to be under a table in Berlin while they were being perused by the
ex-chiefs of Intelligence on the other side. It is a book so stuffed
with good stories and revealed (or partly revealed) mysteries that I
should require pages of quotation to do it anything like justice. It
can certainly be claimed for Captain TUCHY that he writes of what
he himself knows at first hand, and that his knowledge, like that of
another expert, is both extensive and peculiar, gleaned as it was from
personal service in Russia, Poland, Austria, Belgium, France, England,
Italy, Salonica, Palestine, Mesopotamia and several neutral States.
Still, absorbing as his book is, it suffers perhaps from being what
its publishers call "the first authentic and detailed record." One
feels now and then that posterity (which gets all the good things) may
score again in the revelation of yet more amazing details for which
the hour is not yet. Meanwhile, here to go on with is a fund of
thrilling information that will not only hold your delighted interest,
but (if you make haste before it becomes too widely known) ensure your
popularity as a remunerative diner-out.
_One after Another_ (HUTCHINSON), by Mr. STACY AUMONIER, is a tale
of social progress: of the steps--I imagine this is where the name
justifies itself--by which the son and daughter of a Camden Town
publican rise to higher or at least more brilliant things. You might
suppose this plan to promise comedy, but the fact is otherwise. Really
it is an angry book, and though there is laughter in places it is
mostly angry laughter, with a sting in it. Somehow, whether speaking
in his own person or through the voice of his hero, Mr. AUMONIER
gives me here (perhaps unjustly) the impression of having a grievance
against life. Yet it cannot be said that _Tom_ and _Laura Purbeck_
found their climb from Camden Town unduly arduous, since in a
comparatively short time one has made a position and pots of money as
a fashionable house-decorator, and the other is a famous concert star
and the wife of a marquis. I think my impression of unamiability must
be derived from the fact that the entire cast contains not one really
sympathetic character. Old _Purbeck_, who ruled his bar like an
autocrat and believed in honest alcohol (and fortunately for himself
died some years ago), comes nearest to it. _Laura_, of whom the author
gives us spasmodic glimpses, is vividly interesting, but repellent.
_Tom_, the protagonist, I found frankly dull. Perhaps I have dwelt
overmuch on defects. Certainly the story held my attention throughout,
even after my-disappointment at finding nobody to like in it.
* * * * *
A lot of diaries make very poor reading, because people who are
conscientious enough to keep them at all keep them conscientiously and
fill them with nothing but facts. Mr. MAURICE BARING of course has
no empty scruples of this kind, and _R.F.C. H.Q. 1914-1918_ (BELL AND
SONS), though it has plenty of statistics in it and technical details
as well, is in the main a delightful jumble of stunts and talks and
quotations from Mr. MAURICE BARING and other people, culinary details,
troubles about chilblains and wasp-bites, and here and there an
excellently written memoir of some friend who fell fighting. The main
historical fact is, of course, that our airmen from small beginnings
reached a complete ascendancy at the end of 1916, and then suffered a
set-back, reaching their own again when the mastery of the Fokker was
overcome. The author himself was _liaison_ officer and interpreter
at H.Q., and stuck to General TRENCHARD throughout, although he was
urgently requested to go to Russia. Scores of eminent people make
brief appearances in his book, and the following is a fair sample of
his method:--"_January 3rd, 1917._--An Army Commanders' Conference
took place at Rollencourt. My indiarubber sponge was eaten by rats."
Happily his diary escaped.
* * * * *
Lieut.-Colonel JOHN BUCHAN, in his now familiar _role_ of the serious
historian, has been officially commissioned to tell a tale more
thrilling in heroisms, if perhaps a trifle less madcap, than anything
his unofficial imagination has given us. His latest volume, _The South
African Forces in France_ (NELSON), though naturally it does not
break much new ground, still contains a good deal that was well worth
sifting from the mass of war history and is written with a vigour that
could not be excelled. The proudest claims of the South Africans
are, it seems, that they finished "further East" when the cease-fire
sounded (I wonder if this will go unchallenged), that they were three
times practically exterminated, and that they were the most modest
unit in the field--the author of course being solely responsible for
letting us know this last. Their terrible fights, not only at Delville
Wood, but even more at Marriere Wood and Messines, are beyond question
amongst the greatest feats of arms of the War, and on the last two
occasions their stand in the face of odds went far to save the Allied
cause in the black months of 1918. Since, as the author joyously
notes, Dutch and English elements in the South African forces lived
and died on the field like brothers, we may all agree with him,
politics or no politics, that there has been something fundamentally
right for once about the Empire's treatment of their country. This
alone would give the book importance and interest outside the Southern
dominions to which it is first addressed. In Capetown and Pretoria it
will be _the_ history of the War.
* * * * *
In _John Bull, Junior_ (METHUEN) Mr. F. WREN CHILD sets out to record
the difficulties which a "home-trained boy encounters at a public
school." Whether his picture of school-life as it was some years ago
is true or not, it is unlikely that there will be keen competition
among public schools to claim the original of _St. Lucian's_; and I
do not think that tender-hearted mothers need fear that their own
children will be beset by the temptations which _Brant_ had to
encounter, for in his hectic career he was unfortunate enough to have
card-sharpers, whisky-drinkers and other unusual types of boyhood
among his fellow-pupils, and with such company it is not to be
wondered at that he was more often in than out of trouble. But, since
he helped to solve the mystery which was perplexing _St. Lucian's_, it
would seem that whatever happened to his soul he contrived to keep
his head. Boys with a taste for amateur detective work might derive
enjoyment from this tale, and to them I recommend it.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _The Novice._ "I AM A LITTLE ABSENT-MINDED, SO YOU MUST
GIVE ME A SHOUT IF I PROVE TO BE A WINNER."]
* * * * *
_Stephen Manaton_, heir to great possessions, found that his wealth
and worldly position were slipping away from him, but as compensation
against his losses he had the supreme satisfaction of discovering that
the girl of his choice loved him solely for himself. So with the best
will in the world I could not shed tears over _The Manaton Disaster_
(HEATH CRANTON), though I admit that Miss PHILLIPPA TYLER does her
strenuous best to set my sympathy in motion. Possibly she tries a
shade too hard, and in future I hope that she will cut shorter--or
even cut out completely--the soliloquies of her heroes. Miss TYLER
has the dramatic sense, and an author who can write over a
hundred-and-fifty words without a full-stop is not to be thwarted
by trifles; but she dissipates her forces and fails to reach the
catastrophic climax at which she apparently aimed.
* * * * *
The ways of the humorist are hard indeed, and it must be particularly
exasperating, even if you are a clergyman, to be told by some
disgruntled reviewer, as "GEORGE A. BIRMINGHAM" must, I am afraid,
here be told, that his latest, _Good Conduct_ (MURRAY), is not up
to standard. _Virginia Tempest_, the tomboy, the extremely unworthy
recipient of the good conduct prize at _Miss Merridew's_ academy, has
her points, but her pranks are played with or against such dull folk:
an editor and assistant editor for whom I blush; an emporium owner
who is kinder and wealthier and stupider than he is diverting; an
assistant schoolmistress, a surgeon, a Futurist-painter, a bishop.
None of these worthy people commands my respect or laughter. The high
spirits seem not entirely genuine. A casual lapse into Brummagem, I
take it.
* * * * *
"Wanted, for 3 months, nice Bedroom and small paddock for
pony."
"Six Acres Freehold Land, with Two Cottages, near Southampton;
suitable pigs and poultry."--_Provincial Paper._
With bedrooms for ponies and cottages for pigs, what chance has a
human of getting housed?