ly
observed figure of _Helena_, the detestable girl who nearly ruins him,
that the whole affair had become conventional, and by so much lost
interest for its creator. Apart, however, from the bogie chapters of
Possession (which I shall not further indicate) the most moving scenes
in this latter part are those between _Archie_ and his father. I have
seldom known a horrible situation handled with more delicate art; it
is for this, rather than for its slightly unconvincing devilments,
that I would give the book an honourable place in the ranks of
Bensonian romance.

* * * * *

I quite agree with Mr. HAROLD BEGBIE, whose _Mr. Sterling Sticks it
Out_ (HEADLEY) is a generous attempt to put into the form of a story
the case of the conscientious objector of the finest type, that,
when we are able to think about this matter calmly, we shall have
considerable misgivings at least about details in our treatment of
this difficult problem. I also agree that the officials of the Press
Bureau don't come at all well out of the correspondence which he
prints in his preface, and, further, that the Government ought to have
had the courage to alter the law allowing absolute exemption rather
than stretch it beyond the breaking point. But I emphatically dispute
his assumption that the matter was a simple one. It was not the
saintly, single-minded and sweet-natured C.O.'s of _Christopher
Sterling's_ type that made the chief difficulty. There were few of
this literal interpretation and heroic texture. The real difficulty
was created by men of a very different character and in much greater
numbers, sincere in varying degrees, but deliberately, passionately
and unscrupulously obstructive, bent on baulking the national will and
making anything like reasonable treatment of them impossible. It would
require saints, not men, to deal without occasional lapses from strict
equity with such infuriating folk. Mr. BEGBIE'S book is unfair in
its emphasis, but it is not fanatical or subversive, and I can see no
decent reason why it should have been banned. I certainly commend it
to the majority-minded as a wholesome corrective.

* * * * *

That the reviewer should finish his study of the assembled
biographies of twenty-four fallen heroes of this War with a feeling of
disappointment and some annoyance argues a fault in the biographer or
in the reviewer. I invite the reader to be the judge betw