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Mrs. HUMPHRY WARD may be numbered amongst the most indefatigable of women war-workers.  She has now followed up her former success in England’s Effort with a volume carrying on the story of our part in the War under the title of Towards the Goal (MURRAY).  The book is written in the form of a series of letters addressed to ex-President ROOSEVELT, as the onlie begetter both of it and its predecessor.  It is further equipped with a preface by the hand of this same able and clear-sighted gentleman, the chief drawback of which (from my reviewing point of view) is that it covers so well the whole ground of appreciation as to leave me nothing more to add.  “Mrs. Ward writes nobly on a noble theme”—­voila tout! Her theme, as I have hinted, is a further exposition of Britain’s war activities as those have developed since the former book was published.  In its course Mrs. WARD gives us some vivid experiences of her own as a visitor to the Western Front:  things seen and heard, well calculated (were this needed) to stiffen the resolution of the great people to whom her letters are really written. England’s Effort was, I understand, translated into many tongues (with results that can hardly fail of being enormously valuable); Towards the Goal should certainly receive the same treatment of which it is well worthy.

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Mr. WILLIAM HARBUTT DAWSON, in his After War Problems (ALLEN AND UNWIN), covers, under the four headings, Empire and Citizenship, Natural Efficiency, Social Reform, and National Finance and Taxation, bewilderingly wide ground, and drives a perhaps rather mandarinish team of contributors.  Lord HALDANE, for instance, is no longer in the real van of educational endeavour, and is it wholly insignificant that his chapter on Education appears in the section headed National Efficiency rather than in that of Social Reform?  It ought not to be difficult to give, in the light of these last years, a wider interpretation to Patriotism than that expressed by Lord MEATH on lines familiar to his public.  Sir WILLIAM CHANCE has seen no new sign in the skies in relation to the problem of poverty.  Sir BENJAMIN BROWNE, whose death all those interested in the settlement of the Capital-Labour quarrel must deplore, as for all his uncompromising individualism he brought to it a rare breadth of view, says much that is of real value, but does not refrain from appealing to the fact that the mutual confidence of man and officer in battle is a proof of the possibility of a similar confidence in the workshop.  That confidence must, and can, we dare to believe, eventually be established.  But the men don’t go over the top to put money in the Colonel’s pocket, and little good is done by exploiting these loose analogies and putting on a too easy air of optimism in the face of desperately serious and complex problems.  But enough of fault-finding, which is a poor reward for the serious and generous labours of public-spirited men and women.  After all, what one reader calls timidity of outlook another may care to praise as prudence.  Here you will find an abundance of safe analysis, wise comment and constructive suggestion from a galaxy of accredited authorities.