w, when we are all, or like to think ourselves, soldiers
in the greatest of England's wars, and inheritors of the traditions here
shown in the making.

* * * * *

A short hour's reading and you will have laid down, with a sigh for its
brevity, a little book that is a very model of artistry. It is by Mr. E.V.
LUCAS, and _Outposts of Mercy_ is its happy name. But I am not to seek
reflected glory by the praising of a colleague; simply for the sake of the
cause that he pleads I wish to commend this fascinating account of the
author's visit, in the company of Lord MONSON, Chief Commissioner, to the
stations of the British Red Cross on the Carso, at Gorizia and among the
Carnic and Julian Alps. Resisting sternly the temptation to embroider his
theme with the distractions of scene and circumstance (of course he had to
tell us of that dinner at the mess of an Alpine regiment where he met the
man who had discovered the "Venus of Cyrene"), he keeps as closely as may
be to his main subject, but cannot escape from infusing it with his own
sense of colour and romance and the unconscious appeal of his personality.
One may envy him his rare experience, yet fully share his pride in the
fearless devotion of the men and women of our race (one can imagine it of
no other) in these perilous and lonely outposts of mercy. A little paper
book, illustrated with little photographs, and costing just a shilling. The
author and his publishers (METHUEN) are devoting the profits to the British
Red Cross; so you who buy and read it--and I don't see how anybody can
refuse--may extract a claim to virtue from an hour of pure delight.

* * * * *

A quiet style, keen powers of observation, and a delightful assumption of
his own unimportance combine to make Mr. FREDERICK PALMER'S _With the New
Army on the Somme_ (MURRAY) a book that will be read long after the Hun has
returned to the place from which he came. "Those whose business it was to
observe, the six correspondents ... went and came always with a sense of
incapacity and sometimes with a feeling that writing was a worthless
business when others were fighting." There we have his apology for doing
what obviously seemed to him a second-best thing; but much as I like his
modesty I can assure him that no finer tribute has yet been paid to our new
army. Mr. PALMER was the accredited American correspondent at the British
Front, and though the da