natural incapacity for seeing a joke. So far Lord MIDLETON; but he omits
Mr. REID'S crushing retort. "Even a Scotsman," said Mr. REID, "may be
pardoned for not seeing a joke which has to be certified by affidavit."

* * * * *

Mr. JEFFERY E. JEFFERY has been playing cheerful tricks on the British
public. We must forgive him, because he has for a long time been doing far
worse than that to the Huns; but it is undeniable that in following the
winding trail of his beloved guns we are in no small danger of losing our
sense of direction. This is because along with imaginary tales, some of
them written before August, 1914, when of course he could not fix precisely
the chronology and locality of his fights, he has mixed almost
indiscriminately the record of his own actual experiences during two
distinct phases of the War. Not until the last page does he abandon the
jest to explain--with something of a school-boy grin--just where fact and
fiction meet, and so enable me to recover from my bewilderment and pass on
a word of warning. Once on your guard, however, you will find his story of
the _Servants of the Guns_ (SMITH, ELDER), and more especially the first
half of it (dealing, in diary form, with his recent adventures as an
officer of Artillery--he does not state his present rank), as vivid and
real as anything of the sort you have seen. Field-gun warfare of
to-day--mathematics, telephones and mud--with little more of old-time dash
and jingle than the hope that some to-morrow may revive them in the Great
Pursuit--this is his theme; and above all the loyalty of the gunner to his
guns. Even the story-book part in the middle of the volume speaks of this
finely and movingly; but here and there amongst his personal experiences
comes a passage less consciously composed that tells it even better in the
bareness of a great simplicity.