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In the first few pages of At the Serbian Front in Macedonia (LANE), Mr. E.P.  STEBBING tells so many little anecdotes that I began to wonder if he was ever going to get there.  When, however, he has got into his stride, he gives us information which is all the more valuable because we hear so little of the Macedonian campaign.  Mr. STEBBING was appointed Transport Officer to a unit of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals that was sent to the Serbian Front.  Naturally he has much to say of the work done by these brave and untiring women.  Under exceptionally difficult circumstances their courage never failed, and it is good to remember that their arrival at Ostrovo was of the greatest possible service to the Serbs.  That is one part of the book, and it is well told.  The other is of actual war, and here Mr. STEBBING was given ample opportunities to observe.  No one can read his account of the taking of Kajmaktcalan without feeling the keenest admiration for the gallantry of the Serbs.  He also describes very graphically the frontal attack by the French upon the Kenali lines in October, 1916.  The British public is too apt to look upon the Macedonian campaign as a prolonged picnic, and for them a dose of Mr. STEBBING would be excellent medicine.  I wish someone with our own troops would do as sound a service for them as is done here for the Serbs and French.  But let him avoid anecdotes.

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I am a little puzzled about A Bolt from the East (METHUEN).  The publishers, who surely should know, call it “A modern and up-to-date romance, which deals mystically but boldly with the greatest and most pertinent of all questions—­’Is Life Worth Living?’” But for my own part the greatest and most pertinent question suggested by Mr. G.F.  TURNER’S up-to-date romance was whether it could possibly have been intended as serious.  I despair of giving you any adequate idea of its contents.  There are lots and lots of characters, and, as several of them seem to own more than one personality, it is often more than a little hard to say who is what.  The central figure is an Indian Prince of marvellous beauty and mysterious powers, who, being jilted by the girl of his heart, wishes to be revenged upon the human race.  To this end he employs the activities of a German Professor, who produces what one might call a Kultur of the sterility germ.  However, these cheery projects go astray, though in precisely what manner I have no very clear idea.  But the end came at a gathering where the Prince played psychic music, and a chance union of hands between hero and heroine transmuted the former from “a dilettante” and “polished ladies’ man” to “a virile male filled with the blasting vehemence of primary passions.”  Incidentally it proved altogether too much both for the Professor and his inoculated rabbits, all of whom expired on the spot.  Just about here that most pertinent question became more acute than ever.  Fortunately it was the last page but one of the story.