minals. To estimate the accuracy of its technical details
the critic must be a secret service specialist, the mustiest of bookworms
and a highly-trained expert in the science and language of the American
advertising business. Speaking as a general practitioner, I like Mr.
CHRISTOPHER MORLEY best when he is being cinematographic; he hits a very
happy mean with his spies and his sleuths, giving a nice proportion of
skill and error, failure and success, to both. There is a strong love-
interest which will be made much of and probably spoilt by the purchasers
of the film-rights; and, though strong men will doubtless applaud hoarsely
and women will weep copiously, as the bomb in the bookshop throws the young
lovers into each other's arms, I feel that the book gives a more attractive
portrait of _Titania Chapman_, the plutocrat's daughter, than ever can be
materialised in the film-man's "close-up." I am afraid that Mr. MORLEY will
not thank me for praising his brisk melodrama at the cost of his ramblings
in literature. But, if he has the knowledge, he lacks the fragrance; not to
put too fine a point on it, he is long-winded and tends to bore in his
disquisitions upon books and bookishness; which is no proper material for a
novelist. The story is all about America and is thoroughly American;
inevitably therefore there is some ambitious word-coining. The only novelty
which sticks in my memory and earns my gratitude is the title for the
female Bolshevik, to wit, Bolshevixen.

* * * * *

Wayward and capricious heroines who marry young are entitled, I think, to a
certain amount of introspective treatment by their authors. Without some
knowledge of their mental working it is not very easy for the reader to
have patience with them. I was introduced to _Anne_ (HEINEMANN) when she
was fifteen, and in the act of snatching a loaf of bread from a baker's
cart and running away with it merely to annoy the baker; and, as she had
large blue eyes and two young men as self-appointed guardians, I was
prepared for a certain amount of heart trouble later on. One of these
heroes she married at the age of seventeen, and, after various innocent but
compromising vagaries (including a flight to Paris after the death of her
son in order to study art), she followed the other one, still innocently,
to Ireland, because he had been in prison and she was sorry for him. Both
these guardians discharged their duty to _Anne_ at lea