until the coming of peace, since Mrs. HARKER has
resolutely refused to guarantee the survival of the soldier-sweetheart, you
must join me in wishing him the best of good fortune. He is still rubbing
it into the Bosches. Perhaps some day the author will be able to reassure
us.

* * * * *

When I have said that _Twentieth-Century France_ (CHAPMAN AND HALL) is
rather over-weighted by its title my grumble is made. To deal adequately
with twentieth-century France in a volume of little more than two hundred
amply-margined pages is beyond the powers of Miss M. BETHAM-EDWARDS or of
any other writer. But, under any title, whatever she writes about France
must be worth reading, and to-day of all times the French need to be
explained to us almost as much as we need to be explained to them. Miss
BETHAM-EDWARDS can be trusted to do this good work with admirable sympathy
and discretion. Here she writes intimately of many people whose names are
already household words in France. The more books we have of the kind the
better. VOLTAIRE, we are reminded, once said that "when a Frenchman and an
Englishman agree upon any subject we may be quite sure they have reason on
their side." Well, they are agreeing at present upon a certain subject with
what the Huns must regard as considerable unanimity. If in the last century
there was any misunderstanding between us and our neighbours it is now in a
fair way to be removed to the back of beyond; and in this removal Miss
EDWARDS has lent a very helping hand.

* * * * *

What chiefly impressed me about _Marshdikes_ (UNWIN) was what I can only
call the blazing indiscretion of the chief characters. To begin with, you
have a happily married young couple asking a nice man down for the week-end
to meet a girl, and as good as telling him that the party has been
arranged, as the advertisements put it, with a view to matrimony. Passing
from this, we find a doctor (surely unique) blurting out to a fellow-guest
at dinner that a mutual friend had consulted him for heart trouble. To
crown all, when the match arranged by the young couple has got as far as an
engagement, the wife must needs go and tell the girl that the whole affair
was manoeuvred by herself. Which naturally upset that apple-cart. It had
also the effect of making me a somewhat impatient spectator of the
subsequent developments, mainly political, of the plot. I smiled, though,
when