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 1922 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 599 (p. 88). Indeed David Dundas testified that Hood had been unremitting in his efforts to help the troops. Still one cannot help feeling that Dr. Kose has never quite got to the root of the failure, or at any rate never points it out with proper emphasis. The root of the failure lay at home. Thefleetwas sent to the Mediterranean with instructions so indefinite that one wonders what Pitt and Dundas thought they would achieve by sending it out. They talk vaguely of assisting our allies, but do not seem to have ever contemplated how that was to be done or what the fleet could do if the Toulon fleet declined battle. When the royalist rising in Provence placed a splendid opening in their hands they made no adequate effort to send out promptly a body of troops capable of improving the opportunity, but relied on paper promises from unstable, jealous, and quarrelling allies. If there were some British soldiers at Toulon it was only because, owing to the inadequacy of our naval as well as our military preparations, they were serving on the fleet in lieu of marines or to make up the shortage in the seamen. So we have soldiers trying to take the place of sailors and ships and sailors trying to do the work of soldiers, and, as the inevitable result, a far- reaching and costly failure. Pitt was not ready for war in 1793 despite Dr. Rose's eulogies of his ' wise and liberal ' expenditure on the navy (p. 5) the fact remains that Hood's fleet did not reach the Mediterranean till four months after the rupture with France and when war came he took as his adviser Dundas, who on his record in the matter of Toulon alone is convicted of incompetence and ignorance. C. T. ATKINSON. The Island of Roses and her Eleven Sisters, or the Dodecanese from the Earliest Time down to the Present Day. By MICHAEL D. VOLONAKIS, Litt.D. (London : Macmillan, 1922.) THE Italian occupation of the thirteen Southern Sporades since 1912 has produced a number of publications, either describing their monuments or intended for purposes of propaganda. 1 But the present is the first attempt that has been made to write a consecutive history of the twelve or, counting Leipso as a separate entity, thirteen islands. To compose a history of Rhodes is easy ; but, with the occasional exception of Kos, the other islands, alike in antiquity and the middle ages, scarcely possessed a separate life of their own, but followed in her orbit. Occasionally Nisyros furnished, during the lordship of the Assanti of Ischia, a chapter to the record of Italian feudalism in Greek waters, while the Venetian rulers of Astypalaia, Karpathos, and Kasos were distinctive personalities, and Kasos played a prominent part in the Greek war of independence. Dr. Volonakis is a scholar, who was one of the Dodecanesian delegates at the Peace Conference. The present book represents him in the former quality, and it seems, therefore, unfortunate that he was advised to preface an historical work by a portrait and an electioneering address of President Harding. Otherwise, propaganda is kept in the background, and the chapter upon the Italian occupation is written with moderation and based upon documentary evidence which speaks for itself. The author's personal familiarity with the islands has enabled him to give much local colour, which is specially noticeable in the geographical section. 1 See ante, xxxi. 309, and Zervos, Modes Capitale du Dodecanese (Paris, 1920).