this help till the old man's selected moment for abasing him. An
intelligent woman who read the tale objected that no man, even a
journalist, could long remain ignorant that he was spending fifteen
hundred pounds more than he earned. I think she had a case. But the book
remains a remarkable one.

My own feeling about _A Soldier of the Legion_ (METHUEN) is that it
suffers from some excess of plot. That clever couple, C. N. and A. M.
WILLIAMSON, can handle a complicated intrigue better than most; but here
their battle-front, so to speak, is of such extent that even they seem
to have found it impossible to sustain the attack at every point. We
began splendidly. When _Max Doran_, rich, popular and just betrothed to
a star of musical comedy, hears suddenly that he isn't _Max Doran_ at
all, but a pauper changeling, and that the real child of his parents (if
I make myself clear) is a dull-witted girl who has been spirited away to
Africa--I said to myself, now there is an exciting time ahead. So there
was, but not in the way I had expected. For when _Max_ goes out to
Africa to find the missing one he finds her all right, but himself gets
involved in a totally different and not so promising complication. The
consequence is that the career of the enriched _Josephine_ and her union
with the wicked lawyer (all things about which I greatly wanted to hear)
have to be dismissed in a few lines. As compensation we get some good
desert pictures and a moving description of life in the Foreign Legion,
of which _Max_ becomes a member. But his other African adventures, and
the sub-sub-plot of the abduction of a Moorish maiden by her Spanish
lover, left me disappointed and detached. Of course _Max_ embraces the
heroine on the last page; and I could not but admire the resource with
which, having dropped the curtain upon this climax, the authors ring it
up again for an added paragraph (my metaphor is getting somewhat
uncertain, but no matter), which brings the story to the warlike
present. On the whole a readable book, but not quite equal to the best
from the same firm.

* * * * *

Since the short prefatory note to _Raymond Poincare_ (DUCKWORTH) tells
me that the book was not hastily mobilised and sent into the firing line
earlier than its author had intended, I must conclude that he is
prepared to meet the onset of the critic. I will therefore suggest to
him--and this the more boldly because he is anonymous--