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