signed photograph that put all that right. Why, I wonder, is Mr. W. E.
NORRIS always so sharp with the dramatic profession? Was it not in one
of his earlier stories that somebody quite seriously questions whether a
good actor can also be a good man? On the whole, as you may have
gathered, while I should call Proud Peter a comfortable tale of the
eupeptic type, I enjoyed it rather less than other stories from the same
facile pen.

* * * * *

ARTHUR GREEN'S _The Story of a Prisoner of War_ (CHATTO AND WINDUS) can
be recommended to all who can still digest the uncooked facts. "I can
swear," he says, "that all that is written is Gospel truth," but without
any such assurance it would be impossible for even the most sceptical to
doubt the writer's honesty. Wounded and taken prisoner in August, 1914,
he suffered severely at the hands of the Germans, and his account of the
camp at Wittenburg does nothing to decrease one's loathing for that
pestilential spot. For many reasons it gives that a civilized race can
sink to such depths of cruelty and cowardice. Perhaps the only people to
whom it will give any comfort are those who have sent food and clothing
to our prisoners. But I am glad that this book came my way, because I
would choose to read facts of the War baldly written by a soldier rather
than any war fiction composed by imaginative civilians. "Of course I'm
not an author," he writes, and as far as grammar and spelling go it is
not for me to contradict him, but he has seen and suffered, and in these
days no one who has handled a bayonet need apologise for taking a turn
with a pen.

* * * * *

Encouraged, no doubt, by the reception accorded to that cheery little
volume, _Minor Horrors of War_, its author, Dr. A. E. SHIPLEY, has now
followed it with an equally entertaining sequel in More Minor Horrors
(SMITH, ELDER). This deals more especially with the pests attached to
the Senior Service, and familiar to those who go down to the sea in
ships--the Cockroach, the Mosquito, the Rat, the Biscuit-Weevil and
others. Of each Dr. SHIPLEY has some pleasant word of instruction or
comment to say, in his own highly entertaining manner. I like, for
example, his remark about the mosquito (whose infinite variety is
recognised in no fewer than five chapters), that, if he could talk, the
burden of his song would be that of the guests at the dinner-party in
_David Copperfield_