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Since it is natural to expect that a much-heralded book will fail, when it does eventually appear, to fulfil the promise of its publishers, it is the more pleasant to find oneself agreeing with Messrs. HODDER AND STOUGHTON that bashfulness on their part would have been out of place in regard to Mr. JAMES W. GERARD’S memoirs, My Four Years in Germany.  As read in their completed and collected form these papers are not only, as one could foresee, of historic importance, but they are moreover capital reading.  There is a world of unaffected geniality and humour about them that forms a most admirable complement to such serious matters as the protracted negotiations over the U-boat campaign, or the now famous incriminating telegram addressed by the ALL-HIGHEST to President WILSON in the days before the Huns had quite decided with what lies to defend the indefensible.  This document is reproduced in facsimile as the egregious sender of telegrams wrote it for Mr. GERARD to transmit, and is one link more in the thrice-forged chain of evidence.  But even stronger witness to German guilt is to be found in the series of minor corroborations appearing incidentally in the course of Mr. GERARD’S narrative, whether the author is pretending to be in awe of Prussian Court Etiquette, or openly laughing at the Orders of the Many Coloured Eagles, or simply detailing his work at Ruhleben and the other prison camps.  His devotion there has earned a gratitude throughout this country that it would be mere presumption to try to put into words.

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Those of us who have loitered with Mr. DE VERE STACPOOLE by blue lagoons and silent pools know that he is a master of atmosphere, and so he proves himself again in The Starlit Garden (HUTCHINSON), though it takes him some time to get there.  When a young American finds himself the guardian of an Irish flapper—­a distant relation—­and comes over to take her back with him to the States, it does not require much perspicacity to guess what will happen. Phyl Berknowles strongly objects to the intrusion of Richard Pinckney into the glorious muddle of her Irish menage, and irritates him so successfully that he returns in a considerable tantrum to America, leaving her with some friends in Dublin.  So far the tale is lively enough, but not until Phyl feels the call of her blood and goes to stay with her relatives in Charleston does the author find scope for his peculiar charm.  Then we get a most delightful picture of a starlit garden in the south of America, where Phyl’s experiences, without placing a tiresome strain upon our powers of belief, produce a sensation at once romantic and unusual.  Memories of the past hang over this garden, and although Mr. STACPOOLE’S attempt to reconcile the period of which he writes with the years that are gone is not uniformly successful I am cordially glad that he made it.