* * * * *

I am feeling a little peevish about Ladies in Waiting (HODDER AND STOUGHTON), because Miss KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN has often charmed me by her writing in the past, and now she has disappointed me.  Her latest book contains five stories, all nicely written and set in charming scenes; but their innocent sweetness is very nearly insipid, and the fact that Miss WIGGIN’S only concern has been to find suitable husbands for her six heroines (there are two in one story) makes them curiously unexciting.  Of course we all know that in American fiction the hero and heroine will in the end marry, to their mutual satisfaction; but unless the author can contrive en route a few obstacles which will intrigue the reader a marriage announcement in the newspapers would be more economical and quite as interesting.  It is difficult to be “nice” and “funny,” I know, and it was very noble of Miss WIGGIN if one quality had to be left out to cling to the niceness; but I hope that in her next book she will manage to be both.

* * * * *

While reading With the Mad 17th to Italy (ALLEN AND UNWIN) I could not help feeling sorry that the public’s appetite for war-literature is reported to have become a little jaded for anything that is not a book of revelations; and this because Major B.H.  HODY, who was in command of the 17th Divisional Supply Column, describes his trek from Flanders to Italy with uncommon zest.  It is an admirable account of an achievement well worth recording, and the author in his advice to C.O.’s, which seems to me full of wisdom and sound common-sense, explains how it was that “the mad 17th” were from first to last “a happy family.”  There is cause for deep sorrow in the thought that Major HODY died suddenly at Cologne only a few weeks after his preface was finished.  He has left behind him a book which will be valued not less for what it contains than for the sake of the man who wrote it.

* * * * *

In Songs of the Links (DUCKWORTH) Mr. Punch commends to his readers the work of two of his contributors, Mr. R.K.  RISK and Mr. H.M.  BATEMAN.

[Illustration:  GENTLEMAN (LATE OF PARACHUTE SECTION, R.A.F.) AFTER A BAD WEEK’S RACING LEAVES HIS HOTEL WITHOUT UNNECESSARY OSTENTATION.]