Recoxps—By Admiral of the Fleet ord Kisner. Hodder & Stoughwu. London, New York. toronto.
The sequel to Lord Fisher's earlier "Memories," though, as he says im the foreword "confirming what has already been written," 4s in a milder, mellower mood. the first volume one felt that he was consumed with a flame of indignation, tersely to be described, in the now famous words "Sack the lot." Now although it would be impossible for Lord Fisher not to feel strongly on anything which he feels at all, he writes more calmly, he is more reminiscent, less explosive. The book is one of infinite charm and variety. One knows well that there are a number of people who are extremely indignant with him for writing at all. Some speak rudely of "senile Gecay"'; the mildest is a patronizing regret that he should "spoil his repute by such a record of bad taste and indiscretion." As we said in reviewing "Memories," one recalls precisely the same charges against the late Lord Roberts when he was labouring to arouse England to the German menace. There is not an atom of "senile decay" in Lord Fisher's writing. On the contrary every line bespeaks a remarkably vigorous and alert mind. As for "indiscretion" that is merely another word for "inconvenient"—to the Tite Barnacles and Red Tapeists And there are so many things in which the war proved Lord Fisher right wp to the hilt that at least one might allow him the right of a courteous hearing where his ideas differ from those which Parliament likes best because they are least troublesome.
To Sea at THrrteey-
The book contains so much and so greatly varied material that reviewing can go no farther than to pick and choose a few anecdotes: and sayings. Lord Fisher begins by refuting the once popular, story that his mother was a Cingalese Princess ('of all the curious fables T've ever come across the oddest'') and gives an interesting account of his family, which included once a baronetcy (which lapsed after the reign of Charles IT), an officer who fought under Nelson and another who fought at Waterloo. He himself was born in 1841 and went to sea at 13. He regrets that boys are no longer sent as young even as seven as in Nelson's day. He quotes a letter from a midshipman who was killed just after Trafalgar, then only eleven years old:
"We live on beef which has been 10 or 11 years in a cask and on biscuit makes your throat cold in owing to the maggots which vere cold when you eat them. Like calves-foot jelly or blomonge—being very fat
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.