Books dealing with life at the Front have naturally somewhat slackened in volume of late.  Perhaps this accounts for some part of my interest in Pushed and the Return Push (BLACKWOOD).  But more must be put down to the lure of the subject, and most of all to the admirable way in which the writer, who chooses to be known as “QUEX,” has dealt with it.  Briefly, the book is a record of the two great sensational movements of 1918, and of the writer’s experiences as an officer of an Artillery Brigade in the retreat forced upon the Fifth Army by the break through of the Germans on March 21st, and subsequently in the return push which broke the Hindenburg Lino and ended the War.  The publishers say that this is the only account yet written by a participator in these happenings; I hardly think that any will appear more vivid and moving.  The amazing sequence of the events with which it deals gives to the book the thrill of arranged drama, in which disaster is balanced by the triumphant ending.  However unskilfully told, such a history could hardly fail of its effect; by good fortune, however, it finds in “QUEX” a chronicler able to do it justice.  Simply and without apparent effort he conveys the suspense of the days before the attack (a couple of chapters here are as breathlessly exciting as anything that I have yet read in the literature of the War), the long trial of the retreat, and finally the retaliation and the ever-quickening rush forward from victory to victory that makes last autumn seem like an age of miracles.  It is essentially a soldier’s story, at times technical, throughout filled with the unflurried all-in-the-day’s-work philosophy that upheld our armies in every change of fortune.  For many reasons a volume that should find its place in any collection of the smaller histories of the Great War.

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Until I had very nearly reached the end of The Cormorant (MELROSE) I could not, though I tried, make up my mind as to which of three possible claimants was filling the title-role.  When I did discover the “Cormorant’s” identity with a fourth person quite unsuspected, I found myself just a little inclined to wonder whether perhaps the authoress had not had the mystification of her readers as her real aim when she chose her title, and merely introduced a pleasant American, who called people names with a sincerity few of us would dare to imitate, in order to justify her choice.  But all the same I am not going to tell her secret here, for I feel that much will be added to the interest of a very pleasant book if readers will pause long enough at the end of chapter sixteen to try to “spot” the “Cormorant” and—­as I hope and believe—­guess wrong.  Miss ANN (or ANNE, for her publishers seem to be in two minds about it) WEAVER has compounded her tale from the somewhat ordinary ingredients of a heroine, as aggressively red-haired as only red-haired heroines can be; a philandering but finally faithful hero; a worthless but charming married man, and a number of less important people, many of whom are well drawn, though I think that I have met that scheming and malicious French maid before. The Cormorant’s lines are chiefly laid in country houses of the more delightful sort and the story is well told.  When Miss WEAVER invents a more distinguished plot she should do something very good indeed.