§ SIR CHARLES DILKE (Gloucestershire, Forest of Dean)I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War if his attention has been called to the official publication by the Stationery Office for the General Staff at the War Office of a quarterly review of books of military interest, and to the inconvenience of combining with approval of the volumes reviewed, quotation of unfriendly references to allies, such, for example, as those concerning the Japanese Chief of Staff and the Japanese generals, on page 6 of the January number; whether these references have been communicated 1523 by the General Staff to the Royal United Service Institution and distributed at the public expense to headquarters of commands, educational establishments, units, and reference libraries; and whether he will direct care to be taken in future to avoid unguarded official quotation of individual opinion.
§ THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (Mr. HALDANE,) HaddingtonThe aim of the reviews in the publication in question is to indicate to the officers of the Army the nature and purport of the contents of a book. To do this extracts are indispensable. These books are selected solely for their educational value as military works; and the fact that they are included in the list does not in any way imply approval of the opinions expressed in them. At the same time, I agree with the right hon. Baronet that such quotations as the one to which he has drawn my attention are better omitted, and I have directed that these reviews shall be in future confined to the purely military aspects of the books they deal with. The references were communicated as stated in the Question.