Welsh Journals

lucid account of "Co-operative Cultivation in Italian Agriculture." Apart from the local factors making for success, the corner stone of the scheme is seen to be the readiness to submit to discipline for the good of the community,-the co-operative instinct. How far can such instinct be fostered in this country by the applica- tion of the Guild idea to Agriculture? The same theme runs through the article by Mr Thomas Foster (reprinted here from the Congregational Quarterly) embodying the gist of the famous proposals for the reorganisation of the building industry formulated by a committee of the Building Trades' Joint Council in 1920. It is a brave and serious attempt to deal with the needs and con- ditions of a particular industry. "Events have shown that the old incentives are no longer effective and that new and better ones must be found." How to sub- stitute the higher and worthier ideals for the effete and discredited methods of industry is indicated in this significant contribution. The Year Book is strewn with evidences of the untir- ing energy and devotion of its Editor; each contri- bution from his pen reveals the master hand. It is a compilation of which Wales can be proud and no Welshman con consider himself equipped for the service of his countrymen without first-hand acquaint- ance with its contents. J.J.R. "With Allenby's Crusaders." By John N. More, Capt., 1/6th Royal Welch Fusiliers, T.A. (E.E.F.). Heath Cranton Ltd. 10s 6d. This is a book which, without any pretensions to style or brilliant writing, somehow or other manages to "get there." Captain J. N. More served with the Welsh Brigade of the 53rd Division in Palestine, and in a thoroughly interesting way narrates his experiences- and those of quite a number of others-while in that splendid company. The work is little more than a diary, but one singularly well kept, and bristling with delightful anecdotes. The campaign in the Holy Land is clearly outlined, and ready tribute paid to the great changes produced by the advent of General Allenby. We propose to take the military qualifications of that gentleman as read; we have experienced them, and they are of no mean order. But side by side with them is an understanding of men, an insight into their needs, and a wonderful capacity for meeting them. In sani- tation, equipment, and in the arrangement of leave to Egypt, General Allenby increased the comfort and the efficiency of his army a hundredfold. All this Captain More makes abundantly clear. The book, incidentally, provides us with some word pictures of the Holy Land, its customs, and its people. We remember a group of Suffolks, shivering in the mud and rain of the Somme, asking for the head, on or not on a charger, of the man who sang of "Sunny France." The E.E.F., after experiencing a Khamsen or sand- storm, not to mention the heat and the flies, must have had similar designs upon the man who wrote of a land "flowing with milk and honey." If anyone doubts Captain More's stories of flies, let him turn to the illus- tration facing page 105. The sufferings of the men must have been appalling, and though our own trials were in a region where fighting was heavier, we are rather glad we steered clear of Palestine. Of curious incidents and startling anecdotes there is no end. The "freedom of the seas" acquires a new meaning when we read of Carnarvonshire men bathing in the Mediterranean, while three miles farther up the coast the Turks were indulging in the same luxury, both in full view of each other. It is interesting, too, to com- pare the local version of "how tbt camel got his hump" with Kipling's "Just so" story. We have no doubt as to the ethical superiority of the latter. Then there is the padre who would refer to heaven as G.H.Q. (a most unalluring prospect); or the Tommy who tumbled to the fact that an alleged shark or some great fish was really an enemy torpedo, and so saved his fellow bathers from great danger; or the Turk who would ransack a church for a cannon which turned out to be the remains of a canon. These anecdotes are oases in what sometimes becomes a desert of facts. Occasionally, Captain More doffs the motley or what- ever may be its khaki equivalent, and gives us a glimpse of himself. Like the rest of us he is a queer mixture, and we at least will not condemn him for that. In one place he rejoices because an escort avenged a Turkish sniper's insult to one of our dead in summary fashion. We can understand his feelings at the moment, but not his feeling in retrospect. Insults are ugly things, so are Turkish education and military training, but an escort is an escort and not a body of executioners. It is good that we should be reminded of such incidents, and realise that they are not the doubtful prerogative of any one particular race, not even the Germans. They are "War" At other moments we see Captain More surveying a battlefield with its dead and wounded. "War is a mad, useless business. The futility of kill- ing, and of beng killed by one's fellow-men seemed so evident. Was there no other method of settling inter- national strife?" We are grateful for those words, and we hope this book, and many another like it, will fall into the hands of Lord Curzon. We would remind the author that many evil results follow upon taking "insults" too seriously. Altogether we are glad to have read "With Allenby's Crusaders." Despite a certain sameness, it is worth reading. We see Welshmen in a new setting, and thrill to much that they did, and equally we see war presented not as a picnic but as the sheer horror that it is. Men who served with the Welsh Brigade in the Holy Land will find the book a mine of reminiscence, and the general reader will not waste his time. The illus- trations are clear, and the "get up" of the book excel- lent. Our only quarrel is with the price, but that perhaps was inevitable. At any rate we wish the author luck and his book many readers. It would be difficult to imagine more effective peace propaganda (in the best sense of that abused term) than such narratives of what war is really like, and of what it leads to. There remains but one criticism, and we are not quite sure that it is fair. This book, like many others of its kind, gives us a vivid and searching picture of what our soldiers suffered when abroad. No mention is made of the sufferings they now endure. What with unemploy- ment and the persistent breaches of pledges due to the failure of the Ministry of Pensions to give them fair play, their lot is a cruel one. Perhaps Captain More's readers will remember that many of his com- rades are now out of a job, or lamenting the disappear anoe of their pension, but that they cannot rejoice at the disappearance of their service ailments. We owe them much. M.W.W. The Round Table, No. 51, June, 1923.— The first article in the current number of the Round Table," The New Imperial Problem," from the point of view of this review, marks the beginning of a new chapter. It gives its considered opinion as to the changes that the war and what followed it have made in the Imperial question, the meaning of the new status of the various parts of the Empire, and the measures that should be taken to enable the Commonwealth to hold together and to do its work as a whole without any of its parts sacrificing anything to their position as full-grown nations. It has nothing to say against, on the contrary it wel- comes, the present tendency on the part of the Dominions to become complete nations in themselves. But the article points out the essential need of at the same time improving the linking up machinery, which must accom- pany the nationalist tendency, for without it the Empire would gradually drift into dissolution, and it is pointed out how greatly all the parts. would suffer if such a result were to take place. The second article is another chapter in the series which the Round Table has published upon the great