Lord Fisher's book has been 30 paragraphed, quoted from and even reproduced en masse that it is difficult for a reviewer to know what to say about it. Objection has been raised to its manner of speaking of King Edward for one of its "colossal vanity" and the most. lenient of—adverse criticisms is @ pitying regret that an old man at the end of a glorious career should mar his record by "butting in" where he has no business with admonitions which the times have made out of date. Prorisely the same criticism avas levelled at Lord Roberts': desperate and unavailing effects to rouse his countrymen against the German peril and that Lord Fisher is equally derided now merely shows that we have not learnt how to treat advice which docs not suit our convenience. There never was a people so ostrich-like as the British for burying its head in the sand of its own complacency. Lord Wisher is no more infallible thoo any other human being. But the hard facts of recent experience have proved him so unquestionably right in certain respects—the "all big gun" ship for ex ample and the concentration of all our naval power in the North Sea, that his advice in further matters of naval policy ought at least to have* been received with more consideration than it has. Similarly his "rightness" in many proved particulars may excuse a little vanity part of which is merely the "I told you so" sort of stuff that we are getting nowa. days in one form or another from many sources, part of which the absolute confidence in himself which all great men of imagina tion and foresight must have or they cannot do great things. The style of the book is perhaps its greatest demerit. But here xord Fisher trips up just where he sporially hopes to succeed. He tells us that he dictates as the ideas come to him in order to avoid the stiffness of considered writing and to give as far as possible through the printed page the pungency of actual conversation. What he has failed to un derstand, we think, is that this urgency, this appearance of reating ordinary talk in print, 1s only to be acquired by long practice and is never achieved until the writer has learnt what to leave out. By a paradox common to most arts writing can never produce the appearance of trueness to life until it has learnt how to be untrue.
But when every possible objection has been made, Lord Fisher's "Memories" remain extraordinarily interesting and surely a valuable contribution to history. His account of his precise share in the Dardanelles expedition is
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.