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 joyous