COAST. I ARTILLERY JOURNAL, - Air Defense Artillery

500 THE COAST ARTILLERY JOURNAL
During the last two decades of the nineteenth century a new school of historians
arose, in which interest was centered on getting at the exact truth of
past events. History was removedfrom literature to science; presentation became
a secondary matter; and with the consequently increasing dryness of histories,
public interest waned. Historians, no longer able to make a living from writing,
turned to teaching, with resultant divided interests. The result has been that
the present generation has been unable to produce a Gibbon or a Macauley or a
Parkman.
Such, in brief, are the findings. No solution is offered; but historiographic
courses in the curricula of colleges are suggested as tending to bring about an
improvement. The subject requires further investigation, and to the student of
history this little book affords an excellent starting point.
Facts About Oriental Rugs. By Charles Wells Jacobsen. C. W. Jacobsen, Syracuse.
1926. 4"x 8%". 56 pp.
One cannot, of course, learn from a book alone how to select rugs, but there
is a certain minimumof information one must have before attempting to purchase
anything so variable in quality and price as oriental rugs. Such information is
briefly given in Captain Jacobsen's monograph. He cl8;Ssifiesoriental rugs and
points out a few of the salient features of each; he discusses antique, semiantique
and new rugs, and mentions the various weaves in each group; he tells
us somewhatof washed and unwashed rugs; and he gives some idea of the relative
values of the different kinds and weaves of rugs now obtaihable in the
market. The pamphlet is not a rug manual, but it contains much of value to the
unwary rug purchaser.
Warriors in Undress. By F. J. Hudleston. Little, Brown and Company. 1926.
5%/'x 8%,". 229 pp. Ill. $3.50.
This book is a volumeof chatty sketches of various soldiers--Wellington, the
Duke of York, the Crimean generals, Garibaldi, Washington's generals, Henry
lloyd, John Shipp; and, as if this were not enough, it ends with chapters on
"Maxims: Moral and Immoral," "The Warrior's Library," "Librarians in Undress,"
and a dissertation on "What They Fought Each Other For." The book
is not much relieved by humor, and has no military value.-S. M.
The World War was a conflict of materials,
almost as much as of men. All participants mo.
bilized their industrial resources in a manner, and
t9 an extent, undreamed of in times of peace.-
Benedict CTou;ell, America's Munitions.