lmost incredible confusions of the early days of the
making of K.'s army; the gradual shaping of the great instrument; the
comradeship of fine spirits and the intrigues of meaner; leadership good
and less good; action with its energy, glory and horror; reaction (with
incidentally a most moving analysis of the agonies of shell-shock and
protracted neurasthenia) after the long strain of campaigning--all this is
brought before you in the most vivid manner. Mr. GILBERT FRANKAU writes
with a fierce sincerity and with perhaps the defects of that sincerity--a
bitterness against the non-combatant which was not usual in the fighting-
man, at least when he was fighting; or perhaps it was only that they were
too kind then to say so. Also as "one of us" he is a little overwhelmed by
the sterling qualities of the rank-and-file--qualities which ought, he
would be inclined to assume, to be the exclusive product of public-school
playing-fields. I haven't said that _Peter Jackson_ gave up cigars and
cigarettes for the sword, and beat that into a plough-share for a
small-holding when the War was done. A jolly interesting book.

* * * * *

I found the arrangement of _The Clintons and Others_ (COLLINS) at first a
little confusing, because Mr. ARCHIBALD MARSHALL, instead of keeping his
_Clinton_ tales consecutive, has mixed them democratically with the
_Others_. Our first sight of the family (and incidentally the most
agreeable thing in the volume) is provided by "Kencote," a brightly-
coloured and engaging anecdote of Regency times, and of the plucking of an
honoured house from the ambiguous patronage of the First Gentleman in
Europe. I found this delightful, spirited, picturesque and original. Thence
we pass to the _Others_, to the theme (old, but given here with a pleasant
freshness of circumstance) of maternal craft in averting a threatened
mesalliance, to a study of architecture in its effect upon character, to a
girls' school tale; finally to the portrait of a modern _Squire Clinton_,
struggling to adjust his mind to the complexities of the War. This last, a
character-study of very moving and sympathetic realism, suffers a little
from a defect inherent in one of Mr. MARSHALL'S best qualities, his gift
for absolutely natural dialogue. The danger of this is that, as here in the
bedroom chatter of the Squire's daughters, his folk are apt to repeat
themselves, as talk does in nature, but should not (I suppose