te wanted. L22. 2 churches. E.P."

_Church Times_.

[Illustration: _Mabel (to newly-married sister)._ "YOU DON'T MIND ME
STILL CALLING YOU 'SYBIL,' DO YOU?"]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

_(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)_

MR. JOHN GALSWORTHY is a most deceptive writer. He lures a reader on
by a display of gentleness and smoothness and moderation, and then
turns on him and makes it plain that he is really a most provocative
fellow and is engaged in matching his mind against yours. He tries
to commit you to some such statement as this: "The allegiance of the
workman in time of peace is not rendered to the State, but to himself
and his own class." Or this: "I think editors, journalists, old
gentlemen and women will be brutalised [by the War] in larger numbers
than our soldiers." Or this: "This is at once a spiritual link with
America and yet one of the great barriers to friendship between
the two peoples. We are not sure whether we are better men than
Americans." Or this: "My mind is open, and when one says that, one
generally means that it is shut." Disconcerting, very, and all to be
found in _Another Sheaf_ (HEINEMANN). Mr. GALSWORTHY'S chief object in
his little book is to arouse us to the disgrace and destruction of our
State and race if we continue to allow ourselves to be fed, not by our
own resources, but by alien corn and meat, which may so easily become
hostile corn and meat. Incidentally Mr. GALSWORTHY finds that we are
in the mass far too ugly. For instance, how few of us have chiselled
nostrils! We ought not to eat so much pure white flour.

* * * * *

On the second page of _The Secret City_ (MACMILLAN) Mr. HUGH WALPOLE
(or, to be meticulously correct, _Durward_, into whose mouth the story
is put) says that "there is no Russian alive for whom this book can
have any kind of value except as a happy example of the mistakes that
the Englishman can make about the Russian." Well, after finishing the
book, which is in some ways a sequel to _The Dark Forest_, I felt so
very disinclined to believe this statement that I consulted a Russian,
who is very much alive, and received the opinion that, if Mr. WALPOLE
has not succeeded in drawing the real average Russian, he has given us
a type whose faults and virtues sound the keynote of the situation as
it is to-day. Such an opinion is worth a thousand times more than any
judgment of mine