You will get quite a serviceable impression of what the highlands and highlanders of Serbia and Montenegro were like in war, behind the lines when the lines still held, from The Luck of Thirteen (Smith, Elder), by Jan Gordon (colourist) and Cora his wife, if you are not blinded by the perpetual flashes of brightness—such flashes as "somebody had gnawed a piece from one of the wheels" as an explanation of jolting; "the twistiest stream, which seemed as though it had been designed by a lump of mercury on a wobbling plate;" the trees in the mist "seemed to stand about with their hands in their pockets, like vegetable Charlie——" But no! I am hanged if I will write the accurséd name. This plucky pair of souls had put in some stiff months of typhus-fighting with a medical mission in the early months of the war, and these are impressions of the holiday which they took thereafter among those fateful hills, with a little carrying of despatches, retrieving of stores and a good deal of parasite-hunting thrown in, until they were finally caught up in the tragic Serbian retreat; still remaining, of course, incurably "bright." I think I detect a certain amount of the too-British attitude that contemns what is strange and is more than a little scornful of poverty, official and private. And I suppose the artist's wife will scoff if I tell her that I was shocked that she should have taken some shots at the Austrians with a Montenegrin machine gun, as if war was just a cock-shy for tourists. But I was. If Mr. Jan Gordon found a good deal more colour in his subjects than we other fellows would have been able to see, that's what an artist's for.
SALVE.
Returning Soldier. "'Ullo, Mother!"
His Wife (with stoic self-control). "'Ullo, Fred. Better wipe yer boots before you come in—after them muddy trenches."
In Jitny and the Boys (Smith, Elder) there are those elements of patriotism, humour and pathos which I find so desirable in War-time books. Jitny was neither man nor woman, but a motor-car, and without disparaging those who drove her and rode in her I am bound to say that she was as much alive as any one of them. She certainly talked—or was responsible for—a lot of motor-shop, and I took it all in with the greatest ease and comfort. Jitny indeed is a great car, but she is not exactly the heroine of a novel. She is just the sit-point from which a very human family surveys the world at a time when that world is undergoing a vast upheaval. In the father of this family Mr. Bennet Copplestone has scored an unqualified success, but the boys are perhaps a little old for their years. This, however, is no great matter, for the essential fact is that the book is full of the thoughts which make us proud to-day and help us to face to-morrow. Yes, Jitny has my blessing.