devastating verbosity.  We meet them first at a “Northern University,” talking, reforming the earth, kissing, and again talking—­about the kisses.  Thence they and the tale move to London, and the same process is repeated.  It is all rather depressingly narrow in outlook; though within these limits there are interesting and even amusing scenes.  Also the author displays now and again a happy dexterity of phrase (I remember one instance—­about “web-footed Socialists ... dividing and sub-dividing into committees, like worms cut by a spade"), which encourages me to hope that she will do better things with a scheme of wider appeal.  But to the general, especially the middle-aged general, the contents of her present Pot will, I fear, be only caviare.

* * * * *

Little Sara Lee Kennedy, betrothed to one of those alert grim-jawed young Americans one sees in the advertising pages of The Ladies’ Home Journal, learns of the suffering in Belgium at the beginning of the great War and finds she must do something about it.  She can cook, so she will go and make soup for KING ALBERT’s men.  She takes her young man’s photograph and his surly disapproval; also a few dollars hastily collected from her obscure township in Pa.; and becomes the good angel of a shattered sector of the Belgian line.  And she finds in The Amazing Interlude (MURRAY) her prince—­a real prince—­in the Secret Service, and, after the usual reluctances and brave play (made for the sake of deferring the inevitable) with the photograph of the old love, is at last gloriously on with the new.  It is a very charming love-story, and MARY ROBERTS RINEHART makes a much better thing of the alarms and excursions of war than you would think.  It was no good, I found, being superior about it and muttering “Sentiment” when you had to blink away the unbidden tear lest your fireside partner should find you out.  So let me commend to you this idealised vision of a corner of the great War seen through the eyes of an American woman of vivid sympathies.

* * * * *

Rovers of the Night Sky (CASSELL) is for more reasons than one a welcome addition to my rapidly bulging collection of books about flying.  “NIGHT HAWK, M.C.,” was in the Infantry—­what he calls a “Gravel-Cruncher”—­before he took to the air, and by no means the least interesting part of his sketches is the way in which he explains the co-operation which existed between the fliers and the men fighting on the ground.  And his delight when a bombing expedition was successful in giving instant assistance to the Infantry is frequently shown.  After his training in England “NIGHT HAWK” was attached as an observer to a night-flying squadron in France, and he tells us of his adventures with no sense of self-importance but with an honest appreciation of their value to the general scheme of operations.  He has also a keen eye for the humours of life, and can make his jest with most admirable brevity.  “Doubtless,” he says in a foreword, “the whole world will fly before many years have passed, but for the moment most people have to be content to read about it.”  I am one of them, and he has added to my contentment.