horrors of to-day’s warfare and to emphasize the ideal of fighting service as a fine discipline and proof of manly worth.  He shows an obvious, honest, aristocratic bias, but he does not forget another side of the matter, as a fragment of an imaginary conversation between a young lord and a squire present at the great tourney at St. Inglebert’s between the Gentlemen of England and of France pleasantly shows.  The Englishmen were worsted and took their defeat in a fine sporting spirit.  “How is it we’re beaten?  We always win the battles, don’t we?” asks the boy.  “The archers win them for us,” says the Squire.  Quite a characteristic little touch of subaltern modesty!  One thought occurs to me especially.  It is unthinkable that a book like this should appear in the Germany of to-day.  It will be worth your while giving it to your boy to find out why.

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Since the practice of writing first novels is becoming increasingly popular with young authors it was inevitable that a “First Novel Library” should find its way on to the market.  Whether the classification is to be construed as an appeal for forbearance for the shortcomings of the neophyte, or as a warning which a considerate publisher feels is due to the public, is not for me to say.  But the policy of charging six shillings for these maiden efforts—­all that is required of us for the mature masterpieces of our MAURICE HEWLETTS and ARNOLD BENNETTS—­is open to question. The Puppet, by JANE HARDING (UNWIN), is not without merit, but the faults of the beginner are present in manifold.  The heroine tells her story in the first person—­a difficult method of handling fiction at the best—­and in the result we find a young lady of no particular education or apparent attainments holding forth in the stilted diction of a rather prosy early-Victorian Archbishop.  The effect of unreality produced goes far to spoil a plot which is wound and unwound with considerable skill.  Miss HARDING will write a good novel yet, but she must learn to make her characters act the parts she assigns to them.

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We all must be writing books about the War.  It is natural enough to suppose one’s own share of war-work is worthy of record, and indeed, when we come to think of it, the historian of the future will get his complete picture of the time only when he realises how every scrap of the national energy was absorbed in the one master purpose.  That being so it is arguable that Mr. WARD MUIR was thinking far ahead in compiling his hospital reminiscences, Observations of an Orderly (SIMPKIN).  One hastens to make it clear that the last thing intended or desired is to disparage the usefulness or the stark self-sacrifice of the men who are serving in menial capacities in our war hospitals, but to tell the truth this account of sculleries and laundry-baskets, polishing paste and nigger minstrels, bathrooms and pillow-slips,