A SOLDIER OF FORTUNE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22562, 4 May 1935, Page 4

A SOLDIER OF FORTUNE

VARIED ADVENTURE "Sword for Hire." By Douglas V. Duff. London: John Murray. 16s. The increasing popularity of the autobiography is a major literary phenomenon of recent years. Every sort of personal relation and confession is eagerly devoured, from the diplomatic frivolities of Lord Frederick Hamilton to the complacent mysticism of Dr Munthe. Whether this lust for actuality in their vicarious adventuring is a new thing, or whether the amateur author has only recently awakened to the golden harvest that awaits him, is not quite clear. But that he is now awake is very certain. It is a pleasure, therefore, in “ Sword for Hire,” to come across a book which has a real character of its own. Douglas Duff, son of an unloving mother and a soldier father, was soon thrown on his own resources. An infancy in the Argentine followed by a youth ou H.M.S. Conway in training for the navy was no bad prelude to adventure. The author’s adventures thereafter show how much the world offers to him who seeks. A short spell in a monastery, _ that cured him of desires for the religious life, was followed by enlistment in the notorious Black and Tans. The picture of that much-maligned corps that this book gives is very different from the popular conception. Mr Duff strikes one as eminently fair, and his interpretation of the struggle as a fight as reasonably fair and as reasonably clean as was possible under the inflamed conditions of the time seems extremely probable. He does not lack the saving grace of humour, and the description of the epic fight between R.I.C. and “Shinners,” where an expenditure of 31,000 rounds of ammunition resulted in total casualties of three pigs and two goats, is almost worthy of Cervantes. The blame for most of the savagery of the struggle he assigns to the British Government. which ordered the cold-blooded and ill-judged official reprisals. His indictment of the ways of that Government grows heavier, when he passes to the period of his life as a recruit in the British Gendarmerie of Palestine. The ill-treatment and mishandling to which they were subjected by the dug-out general in charge makes the blood boil, even at this distance of time. The incidents are so typicaj that one has no difficulty in accepting their accuracy. What gives the book its unique character, however, is the extremely colourful description of the author’s daily work as inspector of police in Palestine. His various and peculiar troubles in the chapels of the Holy Sepulchre and the other holy places, the problems he had to face, and the extremely ingenious methods he devised of dealing with them, and of keeping the peace between Latin Greek and Coptic, between Christian Jew and Arab, are worthy of a book in themselves. His ingenuity was not always entirely disinterested, for on one occasion, deputising for his immediate superior during the latter’s holiday, he recommended himself for a decoration in the warmest terms, and, to his own intense surprise, received it. Students of the Near East will be interested in his views on the mistakes of the British in handling the Jewish-Arabian situation. The book is written in a typically amateur manner; that is, directly, without tricks, but often with a certain naivete. If it occasionally suffers from a lack of knowledge of the writer’s trade, there are no glaring defects of style, and nothing to irritate the reader. And so stirring arc the adventures related, so wide and unusual the range of scene and incident, that this is unlikely to detract from the enjoyment of the book.