NS) is
the kind of thesis-book which it is wise to read in a deliberately
incredulous mood. Mr. HAYDEN TALBOT is an American newspaper man of
immense resourcefulness but, I should judge, of a not conspicuously
judicial habit of mind. That, perhaps, is hardly a newspaper man's
business. He is after copy, and certainly there's good enough copy in
his interviews with Count BERNSTORFF and Dr. RATHENAU, and one
must admire his feat of getting out of these and seven other German
publicists, including MAXIMILIAN HARDEN, the draft of a manifesto to
the people of America, composed in the hope, vain as it happened,
that the KAISER would break his long silence and sign it. It is the
author's theory that it is the inner camarilla, working for a speedy
restoration of the monarchy, that is responsible for the certainly
uncharacteristic reticence of Amerongen. Mr. TALBOT also interviewed
HINDENBERG, whom he found a "broken-down, inconsequential, garrulous
example of senility" LUDENDORFF, who was very stiff and proud and
rude; and the _fiancee_ of the man who sank the _Lusitania_. His
general idea of Germany is summed up in the remark of Mr. MANDELBAUM,
of New York: "All this talk about Fritz being down and out is all
bunk!" Germany is full of energy and hate; she will soon be a monarchy
again; will undersell the world; is assiduously preparing for air
supremacy as the way to _revanche_. I take it that this is not so
much a book as a _rechauffe_ of newspaper articles, which alone
will account for its formlessness and frequent changes of plane. Mr.
TALBOT, confessing to a total ignorance of the German tongue, seems
quite unconscious that this imposes certain limitations on his
capacity to make an adequate survey of a difficult problem.

* * * * *

I may confess at once that I finished the first chapter of _The Woman
of the Picture_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) in a mood of slight derision,
induced by Mr. G.F. TURNER'S allowing one hero to say of the other
that he had "the interminable limbs" of an aristocrat. To the end of
the book indeed I was uncertain whether such occasional lapses were
meant to illumine the character of the supposed speaker or were
unintentional. But again to quote, this time a phrase in which Mr.
TURNER clearly shares my own delight, "before we were through with
the affair" such details had ceased to be of moment. The plain fact is
that _The Woman of the Picture_ is the most breathless, i