Gentlemen at Arms, by “Centurion” (Doubleday, Page & Co.). This volume stands out as a distinguished record from the host of personal experiences which the war has produced. I think it quite the best of the English collection, and a volume which the earlier Kipling might have been proud to sign. There is a poignancy about these studies which is relieved by a well-considered art.
Under the Hermes, by “Richard Dehan” (Dodd, Mead & Company). This book is written solely with the worthy object of entertaining the reader. Five or six years ago, I remember steaming down the Labrador in a decrepit little boat called, rather magnificently, the Stella Maris (and fisherman’s rumor had it that Lady Morris was so honored by the christening), and my only companion for a week in the stuffy cabin was an independent fur trader on his way to his winter post near Nain. His baggage consisted of two crates of jam and two volumes by “Richard Dehan,” and I remember how we banished sleep for several nights and days by reading them to each other, and then beginning all over again. If I knew where Richard White was now, I would send him a copy of “Under the Hermes” to see if the old magic still lingered. It is a collection of good stories imaginatively told.
Tales of War, by Lord Dunsany (Little, Brown & Company). This volume is a series of sketches and essays dealing with Lord Dunsany’s experiences in the Great War, but it contains one of his best short stories,—“The Prayer of the Men of Daleswood,”—and several fine imaginative fables.
Five Tales, by John Galsworthy (Charles Scribner’s Sons). This collection of short stories and novelettes should be set on the book shelf beside “The Dark Flower” as one of Galsworthy’s two most signal contributions to the poetic interpretation of life. It is not too much to say that this volume takes its place in the great English line.
The Quest of the Face, by Stephen Graham (The Macmillan Company). This volume does not represent the author at his best, but the passionate mysticism which Mr. Graham has voiced so nobly in his Russian books still flames through these pages, and there are several sketches in the volume which I should have felt sorry to have missed.
Children of the Dear Cotswolds, by L. Allen Harker (Charles Scribner’s Sons). These quiet pastoral studies, to be fully enjoyed, should be read aloud slowly by the winter fire, and I think the reader will agree with me that they are a very delicate series of studies in place. Mrs. Harker’s readers have a freemasonry of their own to which the password is a love for England and its forgotten Cotswold places.
The Country Air, by L. P. Jacks (Henry Holt & Company). It is my particular pride that I was one of the first to hail the remarkable qualities of Mr. Jacks’ “Wild Shepherds.” I suppose that the present volume will never be widely popular, but to those who enjoy clean human observation, a broad philosophical outlook, and an imaginative transmutation of facts, this volume will be always welcome.
Waysiders, by Seumas O’Kelly (Frederick A. Stokes Company). As Daniel Corkery was the Irish discovery of last year, so Seumas O’Kelly is the most remarkable Irish find of the present season. These studies lack the disciplined art of Mr. Corkery, but they have the same rich imagination, deep folk spirit, and close observation which distinguished “A Munster Twilight.”
Chronicles of Saint Tid, by Eden Phillpotts (The Macmillan Company). Mr. Phillpotts has done well to collect his magazine stories of the past ten years. As a novelist he seems to me inferior to “John Trevena,” who also deals with Dartmoor characters, but the short story with its narrow confines affords him an excellent opportunity to chronicle the whims of human nature which he has observed, and to set down simple chronicles of the countryside which have a romantic atmosphere of their own.
Nine Tales, by Hugh de Sélincourt (Dodd, Mead & Company). To those of us who found in “A Soldier of Life” last year a novel which revealed far more of the spiritual realities of this war than “Mr. Britling Sees it Through,” these stories have been awaited with eagerness. In “The Sacrifice,” Mr. de Sélincourt has surpassed this novel for human revelation of war’s spiritual effect on England, and “Sense of Sin” is as fine a story in a different manner. The whole book is an eloquent plea for spiritual freedom based on physical health and imaginative life. An art so delicate as this is rare.