book reviews . Raglan &apos;s sorry role in the Crimea . the destruction of Lord Raglan : a tragedy of the Crimean war . by Christopher Hibbert . ( Longmans . 30 s ) . by Raymond Mortimer . there never was a Crimean war : the whole story must be the invention of some satirist frantic with hatred for warfare and aristocracy . so at least I felt more strongly than ever when reading the book under review . not that Mr Hibbert denounces our government for feebly drifting into so unnecessary a war : his account of its origins is restricted to three colourless pages , for he writes as a military historian concerned only with the conduct of the campaign . the picture that emerges is often , however , too horrid to seem credible . to vindicate Lord Raglan , the Commander-in-Chief , is his purpose - as it was Kinglake &apos;s ; but Kinglake was animated also with hatred of Napoleon 3 , with whose mistress he had been in love ; and Mr Hibbert is not biased by frustrated desire . his book seems to me far the most trustworthy account yet written of the Crimean campaign . it is based upon vast research into unpublished material , including not only the Raglan papers but hundreds of letters from obscure fighting men . he quotes also from Russian books that have not been translated . cowardly government . the battles are described in great detail and illustrated with the usual plans - rectangles showing troop-positions among vermiculated hills . readers who share my distrust of such tactical exegesis must not skip the superb account of Inkerman with its hand-to-hand tussles in the fog . unfortunately the author throws little light upon the military departments at home , which with their archaic incompetence and divided responsibilities were chiefly to blame for the suffering of the troops . otherwise he has been admirably thorough ; and the writing is lucid , correct and lively . our exceptionally pacific government declared war only because it had not the courage to resist the jingoism of the public and the newspapers . the pretext was an invasion of what is now Rumania by Russian troops , who were quickly expelled by the Turks with no help from us . however , having sent an army as far as Turkey , we felt something or other must be done with it , and the Crimean port of Sebastopol seemed easy to capture . after over a year of fighting captured it was , but with no lasting advantage to us or our allies . the jaunt cost the lives of over half a million men . experienced Generals from our Indian army were available , but they did not belong to the nobility : and so the commands were given to men who had seen active service , if at all , not less than thirty-nine years previously . two of them suffered from feeble eyesight ; one refused to wear spectacles . an officer could bring unlimited luggage , his wife , his French cook , and a yacht to live in ; there were not even tents for the men , and what little equipment they were given was for the most part shoddy , boots that fell to pieces , swords so soft that they would bend instead of cutting . rotting cargoes . though we boasted far the largest navy and mercantile marine in the world , these could not bring enough supplies for our expeditionary force ; and cargoes moreover were allowed to rot unloaded . the two admirals were at odds with one another . the commissioners in charge of supplies , when asked for a few nails , refused to issue less than a ton . half-starved and unprotected against the Russian winter , our troops died in their thousands : lack of fodder killed the horses and mules ; there was no other transport . the C.O of the grenadiers would not allow a mere line regiment to fight on the flank of his beautiful guardsmen , who were therefore compelled to retreat in disorder . officers like Lord Cardigan and Lord George Paget found the war so disagreeable that they returned to England in a huff . of course no such escape was possible for the men , who at first fought with staggering courage . gradually those who survived grew bitter ; the reinforcements were for the most part raw recruits ; morale collapsed . in the final action at Sebastopol our troops refused the order to advance ; and the fortress was taken by the French , who throughout the campaign had been better equipped , better fed and better led . worn out by his labours , insulted in parliament and by the press , no longer supported by his Queen , Raglan had died three months previously . a wiser man would not have accepted the command at the age of sixty-five after forty years of sitting at a desk . he did accept it , not from conceit but from a sense of duty . no one could have been more courageous , more hard-working , more fair-minded , more amiable . he behaved to the French with exemplary and invaluable patience . but then he proved equally patient with the military departments at home that were murdering his troops . he could not bear to say an unkind word to anyone . creature of habit . we can not refuse him our pity . he worked himself to death at a Herculean task for which he was fitted by neither character nor experience . we must remember at the same time that he had been for the previous twenty-eight years Secretary at the horse guards apparently without attempting any reform in the administration of the army . he was described by Palmerston as a creature of habit ; and in the Crimea he found himself a victim of the grotesque system he had helped to maintain . the conservative who dislikes changes even when they are improvements may , like Raglan , be a good man . he can not be a good Commander-in-Chief . iron duke on paper . Wellington at war . letters selected and edited by Anthony Brett-James . ( Macmillan . 42 s ) . by Sir Arthur Bryant . not even Dr Johnson could hit a verbal nail on the head more effectively than the Duke of Wellington . he once said that there was nothing in life like a clear definition , and during his years of command he was incessantly engaged in defining things clearly . it was one of the qualities that made him so great a Commander ; as with Field-Marshal Montgomery it was almost impossible to mistake his meaning , however unpalatable . as the human capacity for getting the wrong end of the stick , especially in the fog and confusion of war , is almost infinite , this quality is an essential part of the military art . if good writing be the art of conveying meaning with the greatest possible force in the fewest possible words - and I can think of no better definition - Wellington was a very good writer . his military correspondence , like his recorded conversation , is delightful reading . it is not very agreeable to anybody , he reminded a complaining Portuguese magnate , to have strangers quartered in his house ; nor is it very agreeable to us strangers , who have good houses in our own country , to be obliged to seek for quarters here . we are not here for our pleasure ; the situation of your country renders it necessary . could anything be neater ? or anything more true than this ? half the business of the world , particularly that of our country , is done by accommodation and by the parties understanding each other . or this , quoted by Mr Brett-James in his admirable introduction - I do not know how Mr &amp;hellip; has discovered that my channels of intelligence are of doubtful fidelity . I should find it very difficult to point out what channels of intelligence I have : but probably Mr &amp;hellip; knows . Mr Brett-James has done modern readers - who turn to the great classics of our past too little - a service by producing a new selection from Wellington &apos;s letters . most of them are taken from twelve volumes and two and a half million words of Colonel Gurwood &apos;s dispatches of the Duke of Wellington and from the fifteen volumes of the Duke &apos;s supplementary dispatches . I will not say that no better selection could have been made ; Mr Brett-James &apos;s book does not compare , for instance , with the much fuller selection made by Colonel Gurwood himself and published in early Victorian days in a single volume of nearly a thousand pages . in deference to the reading tastes of our day Mr Brett-James &apos;s compass is far smaller . the truth is that at least a dozen selections of equal size , equally good and equally representative , could have been made from the same source . what matters is that the editor has given us the essence of Wellington &apos;s genius - his clarity , his good sense , his powers of observation , his understanding of human nature , his dry irony , his wonderful balance and foresight . it is like offering the reader a small parcel of a superb cellar ; it is all there for his buying if he wants more . I can not help adding one sample of Wellington &apos;s style . he had been approached about the return to England of a major whose fianc&amp;eacute; was pining in his absence . I can not say that I have ever known of a young lady dying of love . they contrive , in some manner , to live and look tolerably well , notwithstanding their despair and the continued absence of their lover ; and some even have been known to recover so far as to be inclined to take another lover , if the absence of the first has lasted too long . I do n&apos;t suppose that your prot&amp;eacute;g&amp;eacute;e can ever recover so far , but I do hope that she will survive the continued necessary absence of the Major , and enjoy with him here-after many happy days . advice for a lady in love . to a young actress : the letters of Bernard Shaw to Molly Tompkins . ( Constable . 63 s ) . by Hesketh Pearson . for sheer entertainment and humorous common sense the letters and criticisms of Bernard Shaw are unrivalled . much of their scintillation and gaiety is due to his emotional detachment from life , and his peculiar genius derives from the fact that , being removed from the complicated agitations of ordinary human beings , he could observe with cool clarity the actions resulting from their temperamental disturbances . this oddity in his nature appears again and again in his letters to women , who fell in love with him and had to be coaxed out of their enraptured condition . one of them , a young actress named Molly Tompkins , arrived in England from America with her husband and small son , for the sole purpose of meeting the prophet Shaw , who sent her well over a hundred letters and post-cards between 1921 and his death . is it not delightful , to be in love ? he wrote to her ; it has happened to me twice . it does not last , because it does not belong to this earth ; and when you clasp the idol it turns out to be a rag doll like yourself ; for the immortal part must elude you if you grab at it . but while he was content with dreams of fair women , they were looking for something more corporeal , which he could only supply by giving them excellent advice on how to order their lives . in this handsome volume many of his letters to Molly Tompkins are reproduced in photostat . with a few alterations carbon copies could have been sent to any of his adoring female correspondents without surprising them . they contain advice on such matters as the disadvantage of an actress using make-up off the stage and the advantage of using it when interviewing managers , on the correct pronunciation of words , on how to behave as a mother and the proper way to bring up a son , on the process of buying white oxen in Italy , on the necessity in England of putting Esq not Mr on envelopes addressed to men , on how to catch a bat , and on the expediency of keeping a parrot instead of a dog : parrots are amusing , and never die . you wish they did . frequently in these letters his intuition or observation is crystallised in a phrase , e.g , learning to live is like learning to skate : you begin by making a ridiculous spectacle of yourself , and the fear of God may be the beginning of wisdom , but the fear of man is the beginning of murder , and it is useless to try to help people whom God does not mean to be helped . 