able." Even when allowance is made for the differences between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries there would seem to be nothing very worthy of remark in such energy if one may judge from the attitude of our War Office to the Volunteers. Naturally one turns eagerly to see what this distinguished soldier has to say about campaigns in which he took a personal part, but, although shrewd criticism is not lacking, Sir Evelyn's sword has been more destructive than his pen. In these days of tremendous events this volume may possibly be slow to come to its own, but in due course it is bound to arrive.
"I haven't had any address for the last few months, so the authorities have overlooked me. I'd like to join all right, but the missus can't spare me. I'm a bit of a fisherman and I play the concertina. Now, what sort of an armlet do I get?"
I find, on referring to the "By the same Author" page of The Lad With Wings (Hutchinson), that other reviewers of "Berta Buck's" novels have been struck by the "charm" of her work. I should like to be original, but I cannot think of any better way of summing up the quality of her writing. Charm above everything else is what The Lad With Wings possesses. It is a perfectly delightful book, moving at racing speed from the first chapter to the last, and so skilfully written that even the technically unhappy ending brings no gloom. When Gwenna Williams and Paul Dampier, the young airman she has married only a few hours before the breaking out of war, go down to death together in mid-Channel after the battle with the German Taube, the reader feels with Leslie Long, Gwenna's friend, "The best time to go out! No growing old and growing dull.... No growing out of love with each other, ever! They at least have had something that nothing can spoil." I suppose that when Mrs. Oliver Onions is interviewed as to her literary methods it will turn out that she re-writes everything a dozen times and considers fifteen hundred words a good day's work; but she manages in The Lad With Wings to convey an impression of having written the whole story at a sitting. The pace never flags for a moment, and the characters are drawn with that apparently effortless skill which generally involves anguish and the burning of the midnight oil. I think I enjoyed the art of the writing almost as much as the story itself. If you want to see how a sense of touch can make all the difference, you should study carefully the character of Leslie, a genuine creation. But the book would be worth reading if only for the pleasure of meeting Hugo Swayne, the intellectual dilettante who, when he tried to enlist, was rejected as not sufficiently intelligent and then set to painting omnibuses in the Futurist mode, to render them invisible at a distance. A few weeks from now I shall take down The Lad With Wings from its shelf and read it all over again. It is that sort of book.
When old Lady Polwhele asked the Reverend Dr. Gwyn to let his daughter Delia go with her as companion to a very smart house party, I doubt whether the excellent man would have given so ready an assent had he known what was going to come of it. For my own part I suspected we were in for yet another version of Cinderella, with Delia snubbed by the smart guests, and eventually united, as like as not, to young Lord Polwhele. However, Miss Dorothea Townshend, who has written about all these people in A Lion, A Mouse and a Motor Car (Simpkin), had other and higher views for her heroine. True, the house party was ultra-smart; true also that there was one woman who spoke and behaved cattishly; but it was a refreshing novelty to find that throughout the tale the ugly sisters, so to speak, were hopelessly outnumbered by the fairy godmothers. Later, the visit led to Delia's going as governess to the children of a Russian Princess, and finding herself in circles that might be described as not only fast but furious. Here we were in a fine atmosphere of intrigue, with spies, and Grand Dukes, and explosive golf balls and I don't know what beside. It is all capital fun; and, though I am afraid the political plots left me unconvinced, the thing is told with such ease and bonhomie that it is saved from banality; even when the amazing cat of the house-party turns up as a female bandit and tries to hold Delia and her Princess to ransom. And of course the fact that the period of the tale is that of the earliest motors gives it the quaintest air of antiquity. Somehow, talk of sedan chairs would sound more modern than these thrills of excitement about six cylinders and "smelly petrol." In short, for many reasons Miss Townshend's book provides a far brisker entertainment than its cumbrous title would indicate.
Mr. Stephen Graham is fast becoming the arch-interpreter of Holy Russia. In The Way of Martha and the Way of Mary (Macmillan) he returns with even more than his customary zeal to his good work, wishing herein specifically to interpret Russian Christianity to the West. A passionate earnestness informs his discursive eloquence. I cannot resist the conviction that he has the type of mind that sees most easily what it wishes to see. He moves cheerily along, incidentally raising difficulties which he does not solve, ignoring conclusions which seem obvious, throwing glorious generalisations and unharmonised contradictions at the bewildered reader, too bent on his generous purpose to glance aside for any explanations. Perhaps this is the best method for an enthusiast to pursue. He certainly creates a vivid picture of this strangely unknown allied people, with its incredible otherworldliness, its broad tolerant charity, its freedom from chilly conventions, its joyous neglect of the hustle and fussiness of Western life, its deep faith, its childish or childlike superstitions, the glorious promise of its future. An interesting—even a fascinating—rather than a conclusive book.