A quiet style, keen powers of observation, and a delightful assumption of his own unimportance combine to make Mr. FREDERICK PALMER'S With the New Army on the Somme (MURRAY) a book that will be read long after the Hun has returned to the place from which he came. "Those whose business it was to observe, the six correspondents ... went and came always with a sense of incapacity and sometimes with a feeling that writing was a worthless business when others were fighting." There we have his apology for doing what obviously seemed to him a second-best thing; but much as I like his modesty I can assure him that no finer tribute has yet been paid to our new army. Mr. PALMER was the accredited American correspondent at the British Front, and though the days are happily passed when he was a neutral in name his position as an impartial spectator gives him an advantage denied to the most veracious of our own correspondents. Our French Allies too may be congratulated, by themselves as well as by us, on being observed by eyes so shrewd and friendly. "No two French soldiers seem quite alike on the march or when moving about a village on leave. Each seems three beings—one a Frenchman, one a soldier, a third himself." Anyone who has been in the war-zone and seen a French regiment resting cannot fail to be struck by the acuteness of this remark; indeed it provides the key to what, for an ordinary British mind, is a puzzle. It is one of Mr. PALMER'S many virtues that, although his main business was to watch the soldiers and the fighting, he never forgets the man inside the uniform. This gives to his historical record the added interest of a study in psychology.
The Unspeakable Perk (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) and his attendant puppets are, to put it kindly, selected from the stock characters of Lesser American Fiction. There is the "radiant" heroine from Squeedunkville, Wis. (or Mass.); the tame Poppa with the simoleons, the hero heavily disguised as a worm, and a worm or so to do the real heavy worming when the hero's turn comes to pull off the grand-stand play (this doesn't sound like English but it is really the standard "line of talk" in Lesser American Fiction). And last but not least there is the "fiery" Southerner. In real life Southerners are melancholy men with a tendency to embonpoint and clawhammer coats of ante-bellum design. But in Lesser American Fiction they are for some undiscovered reason always "fiery." To the fiery one the heroine "unconsciously turns" when the apparent earmarks of the hero's wormhood are dramatically revealed, and of course she hands him what she would probably describe as the "sister" stuff when the gentleman emerges in his natural colours. That is what makes the story-book Southerner so fiery. Place these complex characters in an imaginary Carribean Republic, a sort of transpontine Ruritania; add a revolution fostered by the serpentine diplomats of a European power; let the American eagle issue a few screams, and there you have the environment in which The Unspeakable Perk lives and moves and has his unreal being. The keynote of SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS' story is what the Perk person would describe as a want of "pep." Even the villains turn out to be comparative gentlemen in the end, the dirty work being conveniently fastened upon some "person or persons unknown." The yarn is well enough to wile away an hour; but in these days of burning realities fiction has lost its bite unless it too is informed with the spirit of reality.
I have to warn you that the early chapters of The Moulding Loft (METHUEN) are liable to plunge you into some mental agitation, due to the author's deliberately baffling method of starting her plot. The hero, for example, is introduced to us abed, and semi-delirious, waited upon by a pale and sinister young female whom he detests. He appears to be in a house strange to him, which contains also an unpleasant old woman and a queer little boy whose behaviour is wrop in mystery. Slowly, perhaps somewhat too slowly, it is revealed that the hero has been knocked silly by a large stone dropped upon his unoffending head by the small boy. But why? And why does the child protest his innocence with such apparent good faith? These problems I must leave MARGARET WESTRUP (Mrs. W. STACEY) to resolve in her own unhurried way. Of course before long the "little aversion" between hero and heroine gives place to an emotion more appropriate. But there remains an obstacle to their union, one concerned (also, of course) with the detestable grandmother and the mysterious small boy. Shall I give you one clue? Somebody is mad; nor is it (as you may at one time have been tempted to suppose) either the author or reader. More than this wild horses should not extort from me. But I confess to a rewarding thrill and a very grateful relief when the mystery was finally cleared up. A good and interesting book, both for its plot and for some very agreeable Cornish scenes, which would have been even more welcome had the delectable Duchy not already engaged the pens of our novelists more than enough.
Mrs. "J.E. BUCKROSE" is one of those writers whose work can always be depended upon. A pinch of pathos, a soupçon of sentiment, a spice of humour—there you have the recipe, and a very palatable mixture it makes. The common element that pervades the dozen stories which compose War-Time in Our Street (HODDER AND STOUGHTON), all in the author's best manner, is the staunch devotion to duty displayed by her heroines under stress of war. Pangs of hunger are endured nobly, hard-hearted folk are softened, lonely women fight and win the battle against depression. If these pictures of life behind the windows of our village streets are too couleur de BUCKROSE to be quite true, there is nevertheless a real quality in them. They are not for the cynic, but for readers who can appreciate simple tales of simple people, told without affectation.
The Airman. "I SAY, HAVE YOU SEEN A CIGARETTE-HOLDER ANYWHERE ABOUT? I DROPPED MINE YESTERDAY WHEN I WAS FLYING OVER THIS PLACE."