BOOK REVIEWSThe Story of Rhodesian Sport: Volume 1 1899-1935 By J. de L. Thompson.Bulawayo, Books of Rhodesia, 1976, 423 pp., illustr., Z$7,20.Rhodesian Sports Profiles 1907-1979 By G. Byrom. Bulawayo, Books ofZimbabwe, 1980, 256 pp., illustr., Z$22,00.Rhodesian Rugby: A History of the National Side 1898-1979 By J. Winch.Salisbury, The Zimbabwe Rhodesia Rugby Union, 1979, 151 pp., illustr.,Z$6,00.Works on the social history of this country are surprisingly few, and so these books,however slight, are welcome. Thompson's general survey of European sports,originally published in 1935, was a useful book in its time but this reprintunfortunately has no analytical introduction, merely a new foreword by Ian Smith.The review of this book was deliberately held up pending the publisher's plannedsequel to it but, in the changed conditions of the country, that is probably remotenow, unless an author can be found who will widen his approach from purelyEuropean sporting activities to include African sport, notably, of course, soccer.The same publisher's more recent Sports Profiles is clearly not such a sequel; it is amere listing of some fifty prominent personalities in twenty different sports, ofwhom only three are Black (one soccer player and two runners). The third book byvirtue of its subject, rugby football, also deals only with Europeans. The process bywhich Europeans were brought to Rugby, in imitation of English Public Schools,and then largely gave up soccer, to avoid racial mixing, is in itself a study that wouldbe well worth scholarly attention; African soccer, lucidly, is now receivingattention from one of my research students.R.S.R.Ragtime Soldiers: The Rhodesian Experience in the First World War By P.McLaughlin. Bulawayo, Books of Zimbabwe, 1980, 159 pp., Z$12,90(Z$3,5O, p/b).War has traditionally spotlighted two consistently courageous groups of people:the frontline soldier and the conscientious objector. The stark antithesis betweenthe actual fighting in Flanders and the chairborne warfare of the women at homebrandishing white feathers is one of the dominant motifs of McLaughlin's-Ra^ftmeSoldiers. Although the book is about White Rhodesians banging the imperial dramduring the Great War, interwoven are many subtle comments on the futility of otherwars. Eerie parallels with the bush war of the 1970s abound, especially when theauthor deliberately uses modern phrases such as 'take-out' to describe an action in1914. Sometimes the analogy is explicit: 'Patriotism took many forms, but doingone's bit became an obsession with the patriots, not for the last time in the century'(p. 84), or 'The mining industry was the key sector in the survival of sanctions-bound Rhodesia during the 1960s and 1970s, and played the same role during theGreat War' (p. 104).7778 BOOK REVIEWSThe timeless predicaments and the vigorous style help the book to transcend theapparently limited appeal of an historical treatise on the 1914-18 war. This isMcLaughlin's aim. For, as the author makes clear in his rather pretentious preface,he is trying to interest the general reader in the history of his own country. And hesucceeds. With a cosmopolitan wit, he scans all aspects of the Rhodesianinvolvement in the war: from the music-hall to the trenches; from the dust of EastAfrica to the sting of savage death in the mud of the Somme and then back to thehome-spun humour of a repertory company in Umtali.McLaughlin is a professional historian, but he does not blind his reader withtechnocratic gobbledygook, even when it comes to the specifics of weaponry. Bothhis tactical and strategic analyses are helpfully straightforward. For example, onthe repercussions of the tank: 'Until someone conceived the idea of putting meninside armoured boxes, there was no answer to the combination of trench andmachine gun'. McLaughlin is as incisive when he analyses the social impact of theconflict He explains how the bellicose frivolities of the settler women contributedtowards political emancipation after the war. But such a benediction did notdescend upon the Blacks who had volunteered to fight for an already senescentBritish Empire. Over 31 Africans were killed in action, 116 were wounded and 142died from disease and other causes while in uniform.While the war did little to change White Rhodesian attitudes towards race, theclass barriers were eroded. For this was the first total war; and to 'defenddemocracy' the public was often undemocratically manipulated by newspapers, aswell as by poets: 'The Great War turned poetry from an exquisite public schooltorture into a popular literary form.' But it was the cinemas, the music-hall and the'troopie shows' which brought the classes into proximity en masse for the first timeand gave the middle and upper classes 'a first glimpse of the working classes atplayŠbawdy, irreverent, sentimental and unselfconscious, but above all alive'.War is a great auditor of institutions; and White RhodesiaŠalthough sufferingits 'lost generation' (700 Europeans died as a result of the war)Šbegan forgingsettler nationalism. A (lost) generation or two later, it was no coincidence that IanSmith chose the Great War's armistice day to launch his U.D.I. It was both areminder of the kith-and-kin factor to inhibit retaliation and a touch of Et tu, Brutedefiance. In the most recent audit of the war, White Rhodesia was found wanting;and ironically Britain provided the instruments for the final reckoning.Ragtime Soldiers entertains and instructs the modern reader about a strugglethat ended 63 years ago; McLaughlin concludes poignantly by asking: 'Seventyyears from now will there be [White?] Rhodesians to look back on what theirancestors did in the 1970s?'Salisbury P. L. MOORCRAFT