VON FALKENHAYN'S _General Headquarters 1914-1916 and its Critical Decisions_ (HUTCHINSON) seems an honester book than LUDENDORFF'S; less political, less querulous, less egoistic. VON FALKENHAYN, who was War Minister when the War began and retained his office after he had superseded VON MOLTKE as Chief of the General Staff, shows himself incurably Prussian, refusing even to consider the possibility that any State which could wage war effectively would hesitate to do so from any ethical or humanitarian scruple. "Don't bother about a just cause, but see that it appears just before men," he seems to say. "The surprise effect of gas (at Ypres) was very great," is all the comment that tragic episode draws from him. He was a submarine campaign whole-hogger. But he has his own soldierly virtues of modesty and loyalty, and refuses to air his personal grievances in the matter of his supersession by the HINDENBURG-LUDENDORFF syndicate. If, as seems likely, he speaks the truth, as he had opportunity to see it, we must revise our too flattering estimates of the German superiority in numbers and attribute a good deal of the stubbornness of their defence to their quicker appreciation of the character of siege war. The holding of front-line trenches with few men and consequent immense saving of life was, according to the General, practised by the German Command long before we discovered its value. He gives a reasoned criticism, which has to the layman a plausible air, to the effect that the relative failure of Joffre's great combined Champagne-Flanders offensive of 1915 was due to the overcrowding of the attacking armies. General VON FALKENHAYN, though he has a prejudice for the German soldier, can bring himself to testify to the valour of his British and French opponent. A readable and conscientious account of a difficult stewardship. * * * * *