I quite agree with Mr. HAROLD BEGBIE, whose Mr. Sterling Sticks it Out (HEADLEY) is a generous attempt to put into the form of a story the case of the conscientious objector of the finest type, that, when we are able to think about this matter calmly, we shall have considerable misgivings at least about details in our treatment of this difficult problem.  I also agree that the officials of the Press Bureau don’t come at all well out of the correspondence which he prints in his preface, and, further, that the Government ought to have had the courage to alter the law allowing absolute exemption rather than stretch it beyond the breaking point.  But I emphatically dispute his assumption that the matter was a simple one.  It was not the saintly, single-minded and sweet-natured C.O.’s of Christopher Sterling’s type that made the chief difficulty.  There were few of this literal interpretation and heroic texture.  The real difficulty was created by men of a very different character and in much greater numbers, sincere in varying degrees, but deliberately, passionately and unscrupulously obstructive, bent on baulking the national will and making anything like reasonable treatment of them impossible.  It would require saints, not men, to deal without occasional lapses from strict equity with such infuriating folk.  Mr. BEGBIE’S book is unfair in its emphasis, but it is not fanatical or subversive, and I can see no decent reason why it should have been banned.  I certainly commend it to the majority-minded as a wholesome corrective.

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That the reviewer should finish his study of the assembled biographies of twenty-four fallen heroes of this War with a feeling of disappointment and some annoyance argues a fault in the biographer or in the reviewer.  I invite the reader to be the judge between us, for The New Elizabethans (LANE) must certainly be read, if only to understand clearly that there is no fault in the heroes, at any rate.  Mr. E.B.  OSBORN describes them as “these golden lads ... who first conquered their easier selves and secondly led the ancestral generations into a joyous captivity” (whatever that may mean), and maintains, against the father of one of them apparently, that he is apt in the title he has given to them and to their countless peers.  I agree with the father and think they deserve a new name of their own; such men as the GRENFELL brothers, HUGH and JOHN CHARLTON and DONALD HANKEY did more than maintain a tradition.  There is about DIXON SCOTT, “the Joyous Critic,” something, I think, which will be recognised as marking a production and a surprise of our own generation—­the “ink-slinger” who, when it came to the point, was found equally reckless and brave in slinging more dangerous matter.  Again, I feel that there is needed a clearer motive than is apparent to warrant “a selection of the lives of young men who have fallen in the great war.”  Selections in this instance are more odious than comparisons; there should be one book for one hero.  Thirdly, I disapprove the dedication to the Americans; and, lastly, I found in the author’s prose a certain affectation that is unworthy of the subject-matter.  An instance is the reference to HARRY BUTTERS’ “joyous” quotation of the quatrain:—­