This book recounts the adventures of a young British engineer during the opening phases of the Russo-Japanese War. Bob Fawcett is sent to the Far East on behalf of his firm, which has supplied range-finding instruments to the Japanese Navy. His arrival coinciding with the outbreak of war leads, by a natural sequence of events, to his being an eye-witness of the first great sea fights by which Japan revealed herself to the world as a first-rate naval power; and the grim struggle between East and West is an ever-present background to the stirring story of his subsequent adventures amongst Cossacks and Manchu brigands, and of his friendship with Kobo, an officer of the Japanese Secret Service.
"An excellent story, such as one might expect to have from the author of that capital book, 'Tom Burnaby.' 'With a Japanese duty comes inexorably first.' This, indeed, is the keynote of the whole story. This principle of action dominates Bob's friend, and it dominates the story."--Spectator.
"The book is capital: full of life and vigour and local colour.... Mr. Strang has intimate personal knowledge of the countries of which he writes, which, no doubt, accounts for much of the vraisemblance of his story."--Guardian.
Jack Brown in China: A Story of the Russo-Japanese War. (Originally published under the title of "Brown of Moukden.") Illustrated by W. RAINEY.
This book describes the adventures of a young Englishman in Manchuria during the latter stages of the Russo-Japanese War. Mr. Brown, senior, a merchant of Moukden, is wrongly convicted by the Russian authorities of giving information to the Japanese, and is deported from the city. Jack does not know where his father has been sent, but he goes through some desperate adventures in his attempts to find out, and to get his wrongs redressed. At one time he is in imminent danger of being beheaded as a "foreign devil" in an outlying village, but is delivered in the nick of time by a band of brigands; and he has more than a passing glimpse of actual warfare. There is humour as well as excitement in the book, and some of Mr. Strang's orientals are very entertaining characters.
"The equal of anything we know of in the whole range of juvenile fiction.... The book will hold boy readers spellbound."--Church Times.
Samba: A Story of the Congo. Illustrated by W. RAINEY.
The scene of this story is laid in the Congo Free State, where a young Englishman and his uncle, while prospecting for gold, are brought into violent contact with the Belgians who are working the rubber concessions. Moved to indignation by the sight of the barbarous methods employed to extort rubber from the natives, the hero openly champions the cause of the oppressed; he gathers about him a small force, to which he imparts a measure of military discipline, and with it administers a sharp lesson to the slave-drivers. He restores the confidence of the natives in the White Man; to them he is Lokolobolo, a great chief, and a harbinger of brighter days.
"It was an excellent idea on the part of Mr. Herbert Strang to write a story about the treatment of the natives in the Congo Free State.... Mr. Strang has a big following among English boys, and anything he chooses to write is sure to receive their appreciative attention."--Standard.
"Mr. Herbert Strang has written not a few admirable books for boys, but none likely to make a more profound impression than his new story of this year."--Scotsman.