declared that Japan had agreed to return full sovereignty to China, retaining only the economic privileges granted Germany and the right to establish a settlement under the usual conditions at Tsing-tao. The railway in the province, which is to become a joint Chino-Japanese undertaking, would be guarded by Japanese police forces only to the extent necessary for security of traffic.

The Chinese delegates at the Peace Conference took the ground that by China's entry into the war, all special agreements made with Japan were canceled, and an entirely new settlement of the question should be attempted. This attitude was supported by the Chinese Parliament, which on April 30 passed a resolution directing the Foreign Office to protest against the proposed transfer to Japan.

It is pointed out by Japan that Germany was driven out of Kiao-Chau almost entirely by Japanese forces, while China was still a neutral, and hindered by protests; and that the proposed settlement is in accordance with Japan's secret agreement with the Allied Powers made in February, 1917.

NEW CONSORTIUM FOR CHINESE LOAN.-A new consortium "for undertaking joint financial, administrative, and industrial loans to the Chinese Government " was organized at Paris on May 12 by American, French, British, and Japanese bankers, Mr. Thomas W. Lamont, of J. P. Morgan & Co., presiding. The meeting was called at the instance of the United States, and is said to have resulted from a proposal of Japan to advance $15,000,000 to China secured by a first lien on the Chinese Government's tobacco monopoly. The amount of the forthcoming loan is put at $100,000,000, in four equal annual installments.

Washington, May 12.-The announcement in Paris to-day of the formation of a new consortium for loaning money to China was confirmed officially here. The old consortium will expire on June 18. Four American banks were originally included in it, but they withdrew because of the adverse policy of the State Department under William J. Bryan. Germany was excluded from the existing consortium by the war. Russia's collapse took that country out, and the strain of the war caused Belgium to retire. Japan was never a member of it.

In the new consortium, 37 American banks will participate, following President Wilson's idea of a more democratic arrangement, whereby a larger number of each country's financial institutions may be represented than was the case with the expiring consortium.

American participation in the consortium results from a new policy adopted by the United States Government with respect to Chinese loans, which in effect is that, if the terms of the loan are just and the conditions fair, the government of the United States will assure the American banks participating, after the matter shall have been submitted to the State Department, that the United States will protect the interests secured in good faith.-N. Y. Times, 13/5.

REVIEW OF BOOKS

ON

SUBJECTS OF PROFESSIONAL INTEREST

"The Naval Architects' and Shipbuilders' Pocket Book." By Clement Mackrow and Lloyd Woodard. Twelfth Edition. 741 pages. (New York: The Norman W. Hanley Publishing Company.)

This is the 12th edition of Mackrow's "Naval Architect and Shipbuilders' Pocket Book," bearing the date of August 1, 1919. An extensive revision of the pocket book was made for the 11th edition, which appeared in January, 1916. Most of the work on the 11th edition was done by Mr. Mackrow himself who, however, died before its completion. It remained to Mr. Lloyd Woolard of the Royal Corps of Naval Constructors to complete Mr. Mackrow's unfinished work. The pocket book contains the usual treatment of the mathematics of engineering common to all handbooks, with such additional mathematics and tables as are specially applicable to naval construction. A chapter is also devoted to aeronautics. It is, perhaps, at first sight not obvious why a handbook on naval architecture should concern itself with the science of aeronautics. The inclusion of this subject is however logical, because the mathematics of stability, displacement, strength calculations, etc., are the same for aircraft as for ships, particularly for the lighter-than-air types of aircraft.

In an appendix to the 12th edition a number of pages are devoted to estimating the cost and weight of merchant vessels. While estimating the weight of structural steel has been covered in some detail, the article is hardly of much help in estimating costs. Reliable and usable data for estimating the cost of ship construction are still a conspicuous omission from handbooks and other treatises on naval construction. Data as to the cost per ton of building vessels in the past are of little use to the estimating department of a shipyard. Something more fundamental is needed. It should be possible to compile data giving the man hours required per ton, or other unit, to produce the various parts entering into the building of a ship. The man-hour unit eliminates fluctuations in wages and differences in local conditions. There will be a great demand for any book which treats the subject of cost estimating on this basis and it is hoped that some one will fill this long-felt need. Unfortunately, those who have the time and are interested in writing are usually not the ones who have access to cost data.

Mackrow's pocket book is more valuable to the British naval architect and draftsman than to the American user, as the data are based principally on British mill and engineering practice.

J. A. F.

"The Grand Fleet, 1914-1916, Its Creation, Development and Work." By Admiral Viscount Jellicoe of Scapa. (Cassell, February, 1919.)

This stout volume of 464 pages of text, with an appendix, 9 plates and 13 diagrams, will be found interesting reading by men equipped with the technical knowledge to appreciate the significance of the information it gives as to the employment of the British Grand Fleet during the greater part of the war; but it has another importance almost equally as great, for it is an historical document of the very first rank, and as such it is here considered.

It is a consecutive narrative in the direct and impartial style of military men, who are trained to deal with facts rather than opinions or sentiments, and its language and tone are those of the official report. It begins with an account of the circumstances under which its author, then Sir John Jellicoe, was selected at the beginning of the war to command the newly constituted Grand Fleet, and it gives a chronological record of the movements of that force, of the conditions under which it operated, and of the ideas and convictions in accordance with which it was directed up to the author's relinquishment of its command in November, 1916.

Historically it is important as the first public revelation of serious deficiencies in British naval equipment at the outbreak of the war. The small number of effective destroyers comes as a surprise, but it has a parallel in the lack of frigates which Lord Nelson felt so bitterly that he said the phrase "lack of frigates" would be found graven on his heart. Modern conditions make the destroyer an even more indispensable type of craft than the frigate was a century ago; so the British paid a heavy price, in the way of greater losses from submarines and greater immunity on the part of the German fleet, for their failure to establish the same superiority in destroyers that they possessed in other classes of ships.

Other ways in which Lord Jellicoe declares the Germans to have had an advantage were: In cruising radius and surface speed of submarines; in fire-directing devices on fighting ships; in thicker and more extensive armor on their larger craft, as a result of better design and the use of small tube boilers which gave greater horsepower for a given weight; in superior range-finding devices; and in a delay-action fuse that ensured the bursting of the shell inside instead of outside of the armor of the ship hit.

These are advantages due to superior technical skill on the part of the Germans, but there were others that arose from the conditions under which the war was fought. The vastly greater responsibilities of the British fleet imposed much more wear and tear on it than on the Germans, who were also in a position to conduct such operations as they chose at times when their power was at its maximum, and who also, from operating near their bases, could carry less fuel, and so gain slightly in speed. Apparently Lord Jellicoe attributes the high angle at which the German shells struck to the long range at which the battle was fought rather than to greater power of elevation in the German guns, and their greater effectiveness on such ships as the Invincible and Queen Mary would therefore be due to the thinner

armor and lack of magazine protection on those ships more than to superiority in German gun control.

Yet another disadvantage under which the British operated Admiral Jellicoe points out to have been a lack of adequate docks; a deficiency he attributes to the government's indisposition to spend money for these unspectacular but necessary adjuncts; a parsimony which, he says, seriously restricted the design of ships of large displacement, and necessitated the sacrificing of advantages in them that the possession of docks of sufficient capacity would have made possible. He also cites the strike of the Welsh miners as having for a time restricted the movements and threatened the power of the Grand Fleet, and he had to face and overcome a serious lack of harbor defences at the beginning of the war.

All these things in Admiral Jellicoe's book make the German fleet seem to have been a much more formidable and effectively employed force than would be inferred from its abject surrender without a fight; but the historian, although he will assume that Admiral Jellicoe has proved to those equipped to judge that he was proficient as an organizer and thoroughly conscientious and competent in the technique of his profession, will probably be inclined to think that he emphasizes too strongly the inferiority in matériel of the British fleet. There is a very obvious reason for this in the fact that the book, while in no sense contentious, is still written mainly to justify Admiral Jellicoe's record while he was in command of the Grand Fleet, and to demonstrate that the battle of Jutland was a British and not a German success. Undoubtedly the Grand Fleet accomplished much during the first two years of the war. Undoubtedly the results of the battle of Jutland proved it a British victory. Undoubtedly also the British fleet was maneuvered with superior skill during that battle, but, from the point of view of history, it does not appear a brilliant victory, and Admiral Jellicoe's book does not remove the possibility of arguing plausibly that better results might have been obtained in that engagement if the unquestioned British superiority in most respects had been brought to bear with more decision and persistency. The book, in short, does not make it evident that the leadership in the battle of Jutland displayed the "Nelson touch."

S. G.

"Submarine and Anti-Submarine." By Sir Henry Newbolt. 312 pages, frontispiece in color and 20 other illustrations in pen and ink by Norman Wilkinson, R. I. $2.25 net. (New York: Messrs. Longmans, Green & Co.) This book, while written for general circulation, and untechnical save in the accurate accounts of maneuvers during engagements and the correct use of nautical terms, should prove exceedingly interesting and valuable reading to any one connected with the naval service. The opening chapter 'is a comparison of the national spirit and ideals of the British and German nations and the second a very complete historical review of the conception and development of the submarine. The remaining chapters are, in the

main, a collection of concise narratives, based on official reports, logs and other authentic sources, covering practically the entire range of British submarine and anti-submarine activities during the present war, together with a chapter discussing the part the submarine played in the war policies of Great Britain and Germany; a chapter on "The Hunted," which contains an account by both sides of the Fanning-Nicholson vs. U-58 engagement; and, in the closing chapter, an excellent account of the Zeebrugge and Ostend affairs. The illustrations have no particular merit and, considering the character of the binding and the quality of the paper used, the price seems rather high.

L. A.

"Official Aero Blue Book and Directory, 1919." Henry Woodhouse, Editor. (Published by the Century Co., New York, at $5.00)

The handsome volume with the above high-sounding title contains a good deal of information interesting from a purely historical standpoint. In order to command the price at which it is sold, however, it has been padded with propaganda, advertisements (not confined to the advertising pages) and irrelevant pictures.

Although the book was not published until March, 1919, much of the material applies only to conditions existing during the war. In this connection I was interested in the advocacy, on page seven, of the Postal Air Service as a training for bombing aviators on account of the similarity (sic) between dropping mail bags and bombs. I hardly think that the postal aeroplanes will be forced to operate at the heights which were found necessary for bombing machines towards the close of the war.

Over 70 pages are devoted to the description in utmost detail of eight "airways," five transcontinental and three coastal, proposed by the Aero Club of America.

A chapter entitled "A Flight Across the Atlantic" is an attempt to anticipate the experiences of an actual crossing. In a foreword the editor has the good grace to state that it is an account of an "hypothetical" flight. When it originally appeared in Flying there was no such explanation and some of the London newspapers accepted the account at its face value, which is either a commentary upon the appalling lack of technical knowledge of the "aviation experts " of the journals or a great tribute to the imagination of the writer.

Following are chapters giving the histories of various sporting events beginning with the Gordon Bennett Aviation and Balloon Trophies. As these events were run under the auspices of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale of which the Aero Club of America is the representative I expected that care would be taken to have the accounts correct if for no other reason than to justify the title of the book. I was disappointed however.

The history of the Gordon Bennett Aviation Trophy contains many errors in spelling and gross inaccuracies in the times. As an example, the time for