Signed With Their Honour

—James Aldridge.

A "Gladiator" squadron in the Greek campaign and the marriage of a British officer to a Greek girl. That's all the plot there is to it, and for those seeking romance and heart-beats, look elsewhere. For this is a most realistic book. Short pithy sentences, full of meaning, pages of cryptic dialogue, and behind it, strong feeling. One can feel in turn defeatism, the dispiritedness of men without weapons, the crazy resistance of the Greek people, or the tenseness of an air-battle. The author has seen these things and he has an uncanny power of conveying their meaning to us. The outstanding thought, amidst the turmoil of ideas which form the book, is "Give us the weapons, we can do the rest." In the light of present events, that plea is Justified. If ever there was an army with the dice loaded against it, both by its own commanders and the technical superiority of the enemy, it was the B.E.F. in Greece. And when that army, after two years, has exchanged roles with the enemy, It behoves us to look back on those times, to recall our desperate position, and to be humble. There can hardly be a better book than this to convey the moral of that episode.