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Of the late Mr. JACK LONDON’S alternative methods of writing, the defiantly propagandist and the joyously adventurous, I, being an average reader, have always preferred the latter; so that, remembering how separate and distinct he usually kept his two styles, I expected, in taking up The Strength of the Strong (MILLS AND BOON), to be immediately either disappointed or gratified.  But, as it turns out, the half-dozen essay-stories that make up this slender volume are by no means characteristic, for there is very little plot in any, and even less attempt forcibly to extract a moral; and amongst them are two not very successful North of Ireland studies that seem to have no connection at all with the author’s usual manner.  The volume is made up of social pictures, all (as Mr. LONDON liked to pretend) within his own experience, presented impartially for you to study, and draw, if you choose, your own conclusions.  That experience ranges, comprehensively enough, from a first-hand sketch of primeval man attempting rather unhappily to group himself in clans and tribes, to a journalistic note of the Yellow Peril that materialised, we learn, somewhere late in the twentieth century and was overcome by science liberating disease—­a Hunnish method no longer novel.  Of the series I like best the tale of the San Francisco professor of dual personality, who by dint of much practical study of labour problems came at last to cut loose from his own circle and disappear in the army of industry.  In this chapter alone is there a spark of the volcanic fire, now unhappily no longer in eruption, that blazes in such great stories as The Sea Wolf, Adventure and Burning Daylight.

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Though there may be no very particular reason why you should be invited to read The Love Story of Guillaume-Marc (HUTCHINSON) it is, I vouch, a vivid enough tale of its genre.  Squeamish folk, perhaps, may think that this is not the most opportune time at which to draw attention to the blood-lust that was so marked a feature of the French Revolution.  But, granted that you do not suffer from squeams, you will find Miss MARIAN BOWER a deft weaver of romance.  Here love and adventure walk firmly hand-in-hand, and from the moment Guillaume-Marc makes his entrance upon the stage until the happy ending is reached any day might have been his last.  The villain, too, is a satisfactory scoundrel, and cunning withal.  “Brains,” he considered, “may conceive revolutions, but it is the empty stomach which propagates them.”  I wonder whether they have the brains for it in Berlin.

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[Illustration:  Helen (who has been reckoning termination of the War by counting opposite diner’s prune stones).  “MOTHER, I DO BELIEVE IT’S GOING TO BE THIS YEAR!”]

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