OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
There is no doubt that one of the greatest pieces of luck that has come the way of the Empire is Louis Botha. Mr. Harold Spender's legitimately uncritical biography, General Botha: The Career and the Man (Constable), fills in the details of the romance; and astonishing details they are. Botha, the anti-Krugerite, one of the seven in the Volksraad who voted against the fateful ultimatum in October, 1899, threw himself, when war was unavoidable, with all his energy into the task of his country's defence. Rapidly proving himself, he succeeded his sick chief, Joubert, with at first, and luckily for us, a mitigated authority. Here was no mere slim guerilla playing little disconcerting tricks on a clumsy enemy, but a general to respect, as Buller found at Colenso and Benson at Bakenlaagte. And his staff college was just his own occiput. When the inevitable end came, long delayed by his and his brother-generals' skill and courage, he laboured for a lasting peace, and took a line of steady fealty to the ideal of British citizenship, which he has unfalteringly pursued to this day. It is good, by the way, to recall the admirable and patient diplomacy, at and after Vereeniging, of Lord Kitchener, who was the chief pleader for generous concessions to the gallant beaten enemy—an attitude Botha never forgot. Botha is indeed the pilot of modern South Africa—the first Premier of the Transvaal after the gift of responsible government, the first Premier of the Union after the federation of the four states. To him has fallen the honour (and the task) of crushing the rebellion, wherein he had the supreme wisdom to throw the burden upon the loyal Dutch in order not to risk reopening racial bitterness by using British elements against the rebels. He has entered Windhuk a conqueror. May his old luck follow him in the still difficult days of the youngest of the Dominions! I've forgotten Mr. Spender's book. But of course this is all out of it. And there's plenty more good stuff in it.
I have for some time now had my prophetic eye upon Mr. J. C. Snaith as a writer from whom uncommon things were to be looked for. So it has pleased me to find this belief entirely justified by The Sailor (Smith, Elder), which is as good and absorbing a tale as anything I have encountered this great while. It is the life-history of one Henry Harper that Mr. Snaith sets out to tell; incidentally it is also the record of the development of a popular novelist out of a slum child, through such seemingly unpromising stages as tramp-sailor and professional footballer. There is a strength and (to use the most fitting term) a punch about the telling of it that carries the reader forward quite irresistibly. Moreover, like all histories of expanding fortune, it is cheery reading for that sake alone. Personally, I think I liked most the football section. I knew from Willow the King that Mr. Snaith knew all about cricket; for his football mastery I was unprepared. There is a fresh poignancy in Mr. Snaith's handling of professional sport in its most frankly gladiatorial aspect that gives one a new sympathy with the young giants who are now mostly engaged upon another and nobler contest. What I I liked least about the book were the Sailor's two matrimonial adventures. His entrapment by the detestable Cora is so painful that perhaps I was glad to think it also slightly incredible. Even the lady whose hand is his ultimate great reward failed to rouse me to any enthusiasm. But the Sailor himself is so human and likeable a figure that he perhaps absorbed my interest to the exclusion of the other characters, which I hope is as Mr. Snaith intended it.
In Verdun to the Vosges (Arnold) Mr. Gerald Campbell has paid a generous tribute to the indomitable courage of our French Allies. His position as Special Correspondent of The Times gave him opportunities—strictly limited, of course, but unique—of recording in particular the earlier phases of the War on the fortress frontier of France; and he has produced a volume which shows no trace of civilian authorship, except in those qualities which confess the art of a trained writer. Never obtruding his own personality, he gives us here and there a glimpse of privileged experiences and happy relationships with the French authorities, civil and military, notably the Préfet of Meurthe et Moselle, whose letter to the author, published as an epilogue, is a document of astounding force and eloquence. If I have a complaint to make it is that in a serious history—the kind that you must follow very closely on the map—Mr. Campbell should have spent so much time on general reflections and homilies which might just as well have been compose in Fleet Street or the salient of Ypres. And it is perhaps a pity that, where his subject gave him no chance of dealing with his own country's share in the War, he should have exposed at considerable length certain defects in the English character which delayed the adoption of national service. It is true that universal compulsion had not been adopted at the time when Mr. Campbell was writing, and it is certain that no one who knows the good work he has done in helping the two nations to a better understanding of one another will question his motives; but I think that these reflections upon England, very English in their candour, have no proper place in a history of the achievements of France; and I hope that they may be cut out of the French translation which is shortly to appear. For the rest (and a good big rest) it is an enthralling book; and if I were a Frenchman I should read it with a very great pride. Even as it is, and notwithstanding what I have said, I am proud enough that an Englishman should have written it.
