trary, it is because they
are realized as understandable creations of flesh and blood that the
disasters of _Norah_ and _Tom Spain_ and the tragedy of _Letty
Summerbee's_ enforced spinsterhood move one to so personal a concern.
From the moment when _Norah_ and _Tom_ enter their little house after
the short honeymoon to that in which the tormented young wife finally
leaves her worthless husband for the protection (word rightly used) of
his long-suffering friend one is made to feel that exactly thus and thus
the affair happened, and is happening to like persons every day. As for
_Letty_, with her restraint, her practical helpfulness and her
occasional outbursts of emotion thwarted and suppressed, she is a type
only too convincing. Perhaps one might object that Mr. HALIFAX brings an
indictment against society without suggesting any practical remedy. Also
that--as I have noticed before--his humorous characters have a tendency
to edge away from the rest into the regions of farce. But for all that
_The Right to Love_ remains a simple, sincere and very moving study.

* * * * *

I like the remark that General JOFFRE made, not to the horse-marines,
but to the remnants of the six thousand _Fusiliers Marins_ who made up
the Naval Brigade at Dixmude in November, 1914. "You are my best
infantrymen," he told them; and, if you want to know why, all you have
to do is read _Dixmude_ (HEINEMANN), by CHARLES LE GOFFIC. For four
weeks, shrapnel to right of them, "saucepans" to left of them, volleyed
and thundered, and for four weeks the six thousand stood in the valley
of death at Dixmude and held up six times as many Boches, who came on,
as one of them said, like bugs. Forty thousand was the estimate of the
number of these marines formed by a German major who was one of their
prisoners; when he learnt that they were only six he wept with rage and
muttered, "Ah, if we had only known!" Dixmude was not quite such a big
affair as Verdun, but the men who held the town, "the young ladies with
the red pompoms" on their caps, were first cousins to our own Jack Tars.
Bretons or Britons, there is nothing to choose between them. Sailors
all, they are the salt of the sea; and this fascinating and
circumstantial epic of the French marines is not at all an exaggerated
picture of the cheery courage and endurance of the Breton fisherman.

* * * * *

_Sussex Gorse_ (NISBET) is a story about