of national welfare are
in this country continually subordinated to party politics." Possibly
now that we have been taught by painful experience all we want to know
about U-boat warfare, excitement in this tale is rather to seek, but
it remains a most successful prophecy. In the last story of the book
we have the author in his very worst form. "Three of Them" is a study
of children, and the only excuse I can find for it is that it must
be intended as a sop to the sentimentalists. Of the others my first
vote goes to "The Surgeon of Gaster Fell," and my second to "The
Prisoner's' Defence;" but if you are susceptible to Sir ARTHUR'S
sense of fun I can also recommend "The Fall of Lord Barrymore" and
"One Crowded Hour." Not a great collection, but just good enough.

* * * * *

Mr. ROMER WILSON has devoted the nearly three hundred pages of his
_Martin Schuler_ (METHUEN) to describing what it feels like to be a
genius, and, speaking from a very limited knowledge of this class, I
should say that he had mapped the mind of a genius of a certain sort
very well. His estimate of the creative artist's anguish of emptiness
rings true, and will, perhaps surprise the people who think that his
lot, like a policeman's, is a very happy one. His _Martin_, who struck
me as a very unpleasant young man, was a composer who meant to achieve
immortality, but turned down the broad way of musical comedy and
acquired money instead. Just in time he repented and wrote a grand
opera, and then Mr. WILSON cut short his career in a fashion that
seemed to me regrettably hackneyed, which was the only reason why I
shared the other characters' sorrow. Why so many people, all rather
nasty people too, came to devote themselves to _Martin_ I could not
discover, although I had the publisher's word for it that he was
"attractive"; but perhaps his genius accounted for it. Probably it
is my duty to declare here that _Martin_ and his friends were almost
all made in Germany before the War, but as they are exceptionally
disagreeable and quite unlikely to inspire anyone with an unjust
tenderness for their nation I have no hesitation in recommending the
book as a clever study of temperament and a just picture of a part
of the German musical world as it was when one last knew anything
about it.

* * * * *

It is all a matter of taste, of course, but personally I don't
envy Mr. J.G. LEGGE his self-imposed t