particular temperament. I don't recall another War novel that is so
convincing. The almost incredible confusions of the early days of the
making of K.'s army; the gradual shaping of the great instrument; the
comradeship of fine spirits and the intrigues of meaner; leadership good
and less good; action with its energy, glory and horror; reaction (with
incidentally a most moving analysis of the agonies of shell-shock and
protracted neurasthenia) after the long strain of campaigning--all this is
brought before you in the most vivid manner. Mr. GILBERT FRANKAU writes
with a fierce sincerity and with perhaps the defects of that sincerity--a
bitterness against the non-combatant which was not usual in the fighting-
man, at least when he was fighting; or perhaps it was only that they were
too kind then to say so. Also as "one of us" he is a little overwhelmed by
the sterling qualities of the rank-and-file--qualities which ought, he
would be inclined to assume, to be the exclusive product of public-school
playing-fields. I haven't said that _Peter Jackson_ gave up cigars and
cigarettes for the sword, and beat that into a plough-share for a
small-holding when the War was done. A jolly interesting book.

* * * * *

I found the arrangement of _The Clintons and Others_ (COLLINS) at first a
little confusing, because Mr. ARCHIBALD MARSHALL, instead of keeping his
_Clinton_ tales consecutive, has mixed them democratically with the
_Others_. Our first sight of the family (and incidentally the most
agreeable thing in the volume) is provided by "Kencote," a brightly-
coloured and engaging anecdote of Regency times, and of the plucking of an
honoured house from the ambiguous patronage of the First Gentleman in
Europe. I found this delightful, spirited, picturesque and original. Thence
we pass to the _Others_, to the theme (old, but given here with a pleasant
freshness of circumstance) of maternal craft in averting a threatened