Finding Midas and Son (METHUEN) described on the wrapper as a tale of "the struggle of a young man and his immense riches," I said to myself (rather like Triplet in the play) that here was a struggle at which it would greatly hearten me to assist. As a fact, however, the conflict proved to be somewhat postponed; it took Mr. STEPHEN McKENNA more than two hundred pages to get the seconds out of the ring and leave his hero, Deryk, face to face with an income of something over a million a year. Before this happened the youth had become engaged to a girl, been thrown over by her, experienced the wiles of Circe and gone in more or less vaguely for journalism. Then came the income and the question what to do with it. Of course he didn't know how to use it to the best advantage; it is universal experience that other people never do. But Deryk impressed me as more than commonly lacking in resource. All he could think of was to finance and share in an archæological venture (rather fun), and to purchase a Pall Mall club-house—apparently the R.A.C.—and do it up as a London abode for himself and his old furniture. Also for his wife, as fortune had now flung him again into the arms of his early love. But it is just here that the subtle and slightly cruel cleverness of Mr. McKENNA's scheme becomes manifest. The million-a-year had been at work on Deryk; it had slain his capacity for romance. In plain words, he found that he cared more for his furniture than for his fiancée, whose adoration soon bored him to shrieking point. So there you are. I shall not betray the author's solution of his own problem. I don't think he has proved his somewhat obvious point as to the peril of great possessions. Deryk was hardly a quite normal subject, and Idina (the girl) was a little fool who would have irritated a crossing-sweeper. But what he certainly has done is to provide some scenes of pre-war London not unworthy to be companion pictures to those in Sonia; and this, I fancy, will be good enough for most readers.
Its publishers call The Pot Boils (CONSTABLE) a "provocative" book, and certainly the title at least deserves this epithet. But I decline to be drawn into the obvious retort. Besides, with all its faults, the story exhibits an almost flaunting disregard of those qualities that make the best seller. About the author I am prepared to wager, first, that "STORM JAMESON" is a disguise; secondly, that the personality behind it is feminine. I have hinted that the tale is hardly likely to gain universal popularity; let me add that certain persons, notably very young Socialists and experts in Labour journalism, may find it of absorbing interest. It is a young book, almost exclusively about young people, written (or I mistake) by a youthful hand. These striplings and maidens are all poor, mostly vain, and without exception fulfilled of a devastating verbosity. We meet them first at a "Northern University," talking, reforming the earth, kissing, and again talking—about the kisses. Thence they and the tale move to London, and the same process is repeated. It is all rather depressingly narrow in outlook; though within these limits there are interesting and even amusing scenes. Also the author displays now and again a happy dexterity of phrase (I remember one instance—about "web-footed Socialists ... dividing and sub-dividing into committees, like worms cut by a spade"), which encourages me to hope that she will do better things with a scheme of wider appeal. But to the general, especially the middle-aged general, the contents of her present Pot will, I fear, be only caviare.
Little Sara Lee Kennedy, betrothed to one of those alert grim-jawed young Americans one sees in the advertising pages of The Ladies' Home Journal, learns of the suffering in Belgium at the beginning of the great War and finds she must do something about it. She can cook, so she will go and make soup for KING ALBERT's men. She takes her young man's photograph and his surly disapproval; also a few dollars hastily collected from her obscure township in Pa.; and becomes the good angel of a shattered sector of the Belgian line. And she finds in The Amazing Interlude (MURRAY) her prince—a real prince—in the Secret Service, and, after the usual reluctances and brave play (made for the sake of deferring the inevitable) with the photograph of the old love, is at last gloriously on with the new. It is a very charming love-story, and MARY ROBERTS RINEHART makes a much better thing of the alarms and excursions of war than you would think. It was no good, I found, being superior about it and muttering "Sentiment" when you had to blink away the unbidden tear lest your fireside partner should find you out. So let me commend to you this idealised vision of a corner of the great War seen through the eyes of an American woman of vivid sympathies.
Rovers of the Night Sky (CASSELL) is for more reasons than one a welcome addition to my rapidly bulging collection of books about flying. "NIGHT HAWK, M.C.," was in the Infantry—what he calls a "Gravel-Cruncher"—before he took to the air, and by no means the least interesting part of his sketches is the way in which he explains the co-operation which existed between the fliers and the men fighting on the ground. And his delight when a bombing expedition was successful in giving instant assistance to the Infantry is frequently shown. After his training in England "NIGHT HAWK" was attached as an observer to a night-flying squadron in France, and he tells us of his adventures with no sense of self-importance but with an honest appreciation of their value to the general scheme of operations. He has also a keen eye for the humours of life, and can make his jest with most admirable brevity. "Doubtless," he says in a foreword, "the whole world will fly before many years have passed, but for the moment most people have to be content to read about it." I am one of them, and he has added to my contentment.
My studies of recent fiction induce the belief that modern Wales may be divided into two parts, in one of which the inhabitants call each other Bach and follow a code of morals that I simply will not stoop to characterise; while the other is at once more Saxon in idiom and considerably more melodramatic in its happenings. It is to the latter province that I must assign A Little Welsh Girl (HODDER AND STOUGHTON), the Romance, with a big R, of Dylis Morgan, who pushed an unappreciated suitor over a precipice and came to London to make her fortune in revue. Really the suitor didn't go all the way down the precipice; but as, by the time he recovered, Dylis, disguised, had fled for England, he was promptly arrested for her murder, and as Dylis thought she had murdered him there was presently so much confusion (increased for me by the hopelessly unpronounceable names of a large cast) that I found it increasingly hard to keep the affair in hand. As for Dylis's theatrical career—well, you know how these things are managed in fiction; for my part I was left wondering whether Mr. HOWEL EVANS' pictures of Wales were as romantically conceived as his conception of a West-End theatre. Though of course we all know that Welsh people do sometimes make even more sensational triumphs in the Metropolis; just possible indeed that this fact may have some bearing on the recent flood of Cambrian fiction. Certainly, if A Little Welsh Girl achieves success on the strength of Mr. LLOYD GEORGE's triumph, she may thank her luck, for I have my doubts whether she could manage it unassisted.