onspicuously in the limelight.
The writer of these modest but thrilling records veils his identity
under the technical _nom de guerre_ of "CONTACT." With regard to his
method I can hardly do better than repeat what is said in a brief
preface by Major-General W.S. BRANCKER, Deputy Director-General of
Military Aeronautics: "The author depicts the daily life of the flying
officer in France, simply and with perfect truth; indeed he describes
heroic deeds with such moderation and absence of exaggeration that
the reader will scarcely realise," etc. But he will be a reader poor
indeed in imagination who is not helped by these pages to realise some
part of the debt that we owe to these marvellous winged boys of ours;
As for the heroic deeds, they are of a kind to take your breath--tales
of battles above the clouds, of trenches captured by aeroplane, of men
fatally wounded, thousands of feet above the enemy country, recovering
consciousness and working their guns till they sank dead, while their
battered machines planed for the security of friendly lines. Surely
the whole history of War has no picture to beat this in devotion.

* * * * *

EVELYN BRANSCOMBE PETTER has much that is interesting to say about
men and women, and packs her thought (I risk the "her") into a
quasi-Meredithian form of phrasing which does not always escape
obscurity. But how much better this than a limpid flow of words
without notable content! _Souls in the Making_ (CHAPMAN AND HALL) is
mainly an analysis of two love episodes in the life of a young man,
the liberally educated son of an ambitious self-made soapmaker.
The first--with _Sue_, the pretty waitress--is thwarted by a very
persistent and unpleasant clerk; the second--with _Virginia_, a girl
of birth and breeding--is threatened by the intrusion of the girl's
cousin, a queerly morbid ne'er-do-well. There is no action to speak
of, so one can't speak of it. I can only say that the interest of
the shrewd analysis held me, and that if my guess as to the sex of
the writer be sound it is noteworthy that more pains and skill are
bestowed upon the characters of the men than of the two girls, who are
some thing shadowy--charming unfinished sketches. There is a vigour
and an effect of personality in the writing that put this novel above
the large class of the merely competent.

* * * * *

Odd what a vogue has lately developed for what I might ca