st depressing part,
read PATRICK MACGILL'S _The Red Horizon_ (JENKINS). Here we meet the
author of _The Children of the Dead End_ and _The Rat Pit_ as Rifleman
3008 of the London Irish, involved in the grim routine of the firing
line--reliefs, diggings and repairs, sentry-go's, stand-to's, reserves,
working and covering parties, billets; and so _da capo_. With a rare
artistic intuition, instead of diffusing his effects in a riot of
general impressions, he has confined himself to a record of the doings
of his section, and I have read nothing that gives anything near so
convincing an impression of the truth, at once splendid and bitter. It
is a privilege to be shown, through the medium of an imaginative
temperament, the fine comradeship of the trenches, the heroism that
shines through the haunting fear of death, mostly conquered with a
laugh, but sometimes frankly expressed in the pathetic desire for a
"blighty" wound--a wound just serious enough to send the envied hero
home. You won't get much of the Romance of War out of this strong piece
of work, except the jolly sort of romance of the little Cockney, _Bill_,
who, when the regiment in reserve was crouching in the trench under
heavy shelling, cheered it by delivering himself characteristically as
follows: "If I kick the bucket don't put a cross with ''E died for 'is
King and Country' over me. A bully beef tin at my 'ead will do,
and--''E died doin' fatigues on an empty stomach.'"

* * * * *

If you were the hero of a novel, the only possible mate for the heroine,
and, in short, taking you all round, an important sort of person, would
you not consider yourself hardly treated if you were not allowed to make
the girl's acquaintance till page 311, when you knew there were to be
only three hundred and thirty-two pages in the book? I disagree entirely
with _Roger Quinn_, in Miss BEATRICE KELSTON'S _The Blows of
Circumstance_ (LONG), when, reviewing the affair, he writes to a friend:
"It's amazing that we fell short of perfect understanding." My opinion
is that _Roger_ did extremely well in the little time he was given. Of
course he had conducted the case for the Crown when she was in the dock,
charged with murder, and that formed a sort of bond between them; but
even so I don't see how he could have got much nearer to a complete
understanding, considering that the girl dashed off and committed
suicide almost before he could get a word in. If my