_Iron Times with the Guards_ (MURRAY), by an O.E., is emphatically
one of the books which one won't turn out from one's war-book shelf.
It fills in blanks which appear in more ambitious and more orderly
narratives. This particular old Etonian, entering the new Army by way
of the Territorials in the first days of the War, was transferred, in
the March of 1915, to the Coldstreams and was in the fighting line
in April of the same year. A way they had in the Army of those great
days. Details of the routine of training, reported barrack-square
jests and dug-out conversations, vignettes of trench and field,
disquisitions on many strictly relevant and less relevant topics,
reflections of that fine pride in the regiment which marks the best
of soldiers, an occasional more ambitious survey of a battle or a
campaign--all this from a ready but not pretentious pen, guided by a
sound intelligence and some power of observation, makes an admirable
commentary. Our author's narrative carries us to those days of the
great hopes of the Spring of 1917, hopes so tragically deferred.
Perhaps the best thing in an interesting sheaf is the description
of the attack of the Guards Division--as it had become--on the
Transloy-Lesboeufs-Ginchy road, with its glory and its carnage.

* * * * *

It is to be feared that _Battle Days_ (BLACKWOOD), a new work by Mr.
ARTHUR FETTERLESS, author of _Gog_, will lose a good many readers as
the result of the armistice. There are battle stories and battle books
that are not stories that will live far into the piping times of peace
because they are human documents or have the stamp of genius. These
attractions are not present in _Battle Days_, which in truth is rather
a prosy affair, though ambitious withal. It is not fiction in the
ordinary sense. Mr. FETTERLESS essays to conduct the reader through