Chapter C: G. P

_Command._ By WILLIAM MCFEE. (Doubleday, Page & Co.)

In writing a review of a sea story it is customary to hail in the names of several other sea-writers—either for laudatory, or for defamatory, purposes; or for no purpose whatever—but to hail them in, nevertheless. The process usually proves little more than the truth of the ancient observation that comparisons _are_ odious—and odiousness is associated with reviewing quite enough as it is.

The name of William McFee is great enough to stand alone, in the world of books. He writes of the sea with a sureness born of first-hand knowledge, for he was a sailor before he was an author.

“Command” is a story of the life aboard a ship in wartime. Spokesley, the hero, a British second officer, is called to duty in the Aegean immediately after becoming engaged to a girl in England. There was little love wasted in the betrothal, and therefore Mr. Spokesley has few qualms when he becomes really, passionately enamoured of a girl of the South. This is the barest hint of the thread of the plot. “Command” offers a great deal more—pictures of the torpedoing of a ship in mine-strewn waters, of a collision with a warship at night, of the surging life in sea-ports along the Mediterranean—so many that the story is in danger of growing tedious with too long sustained excitement.

The characters are memorable. Not so much by their descriptions as by their actions are they impressed. Mr. McFee has taken so much pains, by inserting a preface to the effect, to assure his readers that the story is purely fiction, that one is tempted to wonder which of the characters are drawn from life.

“Command” is, to be dogmatic, Mr. McFee’s best book; though various people will at once proceed to deny that, they will certainly agree that his work has been so uniformly good as to place it very near the top.