odesty which is very pleasing. America came to the job of fighting as a
learner. Her soldiers did not boast of what they were going to do, but
sat down solidly to learn, in order that she might be useful in the
fighting-line. How she achieved her purpose the world now knows. If any
fault is to be found with the author's style, it is that the limpidity
and evenness of its flow make great events less easy of distinction than
perhaps they might be; but most people will hail this as a merit rather
than a fault, and I agree with them. Colonel PALMER records the names of
the first three Americans who died fighting. The French General to whose
unit they were attached ordered a ceremonial parade and made a speech
in which he asked that the mortal remains of these young men be left in
France. "We will," he continued, "inscribe on their tombs, 'Here lie the
first soldiers of the United States to fall on the soil of France for
Justice and Liberty' ... Corporal Gresham, Private Enright, Private Hay,
in the name of France I thank you." As another matter of historical
interest it may be stated that the first shot of the War on the American
side was fired by Battery C of the 6th Field Artillery, "without waiting
on going into position at the time set. The men dragged a gun forward in
the early morning of October 23rd, and sent a shell at the enemy. There
was no particular target. The aim was in the general direction of
Berlin. The gun has been sent to West Point as a relic."

* * * * *

I must assume that _Such Stuff as Dreams_ (MURRAY) was written by C.E.W.
LAWRENCE with a purpose, but it remains obscure to me. A smart young
married clerk in the oil business falls off the top of a bus on to his
head and, from a confirmed materialist, becomes something not unlike a
confirmed lunatic, with a faculty for seeing flaming emanations which
enable him to place the owners of them in the true scale of human and
spiritual values. He discovers that his wife's uncle, a whimsical but
essentially tedious drunkard, is a better man than the egregious New
Religionist pastor--a discovery I made for myself without falling off
a bus. I was forced to the conclusion that these and equally dull, or
duller, folk must exist or have existed, and that it could not possibly
have been necessary to invent them. And if I am right then it obviously
needs a greater sympathy than I can command to do justice to this type
of narrative, wit