One of the most interesting features, to an English observer, in the impressive spectacle of America girding herself for war is the sight of our great Ally passing through all those phases of initiation that to us are now remote memories.  Such a phase is the coming of the first war-books, exemplified for me by the appearance of From the Fire Step (PUTNAMS).  As his sub-title indicates—­Experiences of an American Soldier in the British Army—­the writer, Mr. ARTHUR GUY EMPEY, has proved himself something of a pioneer.  In a singularly vivacious opening chapter he tells how, after waiting with decreasing expectation during the months that followed the Lusitania crime, he decided to be a law unto himself, and came alone to offer his personal service in the cause of freedom.  You will hardly read unmoved (by laughter as much as by sympathy) his story of how this offer was at first refused, then accepted.  Throughout indeed you must prepare to find Mr. EMPEY an entirely independent, though generous, critic of our men and methods; it is precisely this attitude that gives his book its chief interest as a survey of all-too-familiar things from a refreshingly new angle.  I hardly suppose there will be anything in the actual matter, from church parade to gas-attacks, which readers on this side will not by now have seen or heard about, times beyond number; but one can imagine sympathetically with what concern it will all be received in the homes oversea; and after turning its high-spirited and encouraging pages can warmly echo the admonition of their writer:  “Pacifists and small-army people please read with care!”

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Since there is probably no writer who can approach Mrs. FLORA ANNIE STEEL in the art of telling Indian tales about Indian people, one is specially happy to find her in Mistress of Men (HEINEMANN) with her foot once more upon her special terrain.  Not for the first time, I think, she has gone to the records of the House of AKBAR for her material; the result here is hardly to be called a novel so much as amplified history, since it is really the life story of an actual (and wonderful) woman, NURJAHAN THE BEAUTIFUL, wife of the Emperor JAHANGIR.  Naturally the writer has experienced not only the great advantages but the hazards of such a building upon fact.  To explain the marriage of your heroine with the Imperial lover by whose orders her first husband was killed, and not to lessen sympathy for her in the process, is a problem to test the skill of any novelist.  One sees, however, even without Mrs. STEEL’S own declaration, that it has been for her a grateful task to set down “a record of the most perfect passion ever shown by man for woman.”  This was the adoration of the EMPEROR for his consort, an amazing romance of Oriental domesticity, which makes the story of the pair stranger and more fascinating than fiction.  A love-tale indeed; and, since ’tis love that makes a book go round, one may trust the circulating libraries to see to it that Mistress of Men is well represented on their shelves.  As a study of an alluring, dazzling and masterful personality it was well worth writing.