If it be true art, as I rather think someone has said it is, to state what is obvious in regard to a subject while creating by the manner of the statement an impression of its subtler features, then Mr. Percy Brown, in writing Germany in Dissolution (Melrose), has proved himself a true artist. For in Germany about the time of the Armistice and during the Spartacist rising certain things happened which got themselves safely into the newspapers, and these he sets forth, mostly in headline form. Beyond this Germany was a seething muddle of contradictions and cross-purposes, which, it is hardly unfair to say, are capably reflected in his pages. Mr. Brown is a journalist of the school that does not stick at a trifle, a German prison, for instance, when his dear public wants news. His crowning achievement was to persuade Dr. Solf, when Foreign Minister, to send through the official wireless an account of an interview with himself, which would, as he (Solf) fondly hoped, help to bamboozle British public opinion. When the article appeared, so well had the author's editor read between the lines of the message that the journalist had to run for his life. He was particularly fortunate too, or clever, in getting in touch with the Kiel sailors who set the revolution going, but in spite of much excellent material, mostly of the "scoop" interview variety, nothing much ever seems to come of it all, and we are left at the end about as wise as we started. All the same, much of the book's detail is interesting, however little satisfaction it offers as a whole.
Ann's First Flutter (Allen and Unwin) will not arouse any commotion in the dovecotes of the intellectually elect, but it provides an amusing entertainment for those who can appreciate broad and emphatic humour. Mr. R.A. Hamblin has succeeded in what he set out to do, and my only quarrel with him is that I believe him to have a subtler sense of humour than he reveals here. Ann was a grocer's daughter, and after her attempt to flutter for herself had failed she married Tom Bampfield, a grocer's son. Tom had literary ambitions, and was the author of a novel which his father thought pernicious enough to destroy his custom. Strange however to relate, the novel failed to destroy anything except the author's future as a novelist, and when Tom did succeed in making some pen-money it was by means of a series of funny articles in The Dry Goods Gazette—articles so violently humorous that the author's father thoroughly appreciated them. Mr. Hamblin's fun, let me add, is never ill-natured. Even bilious grocers will not resent his jovial invasion of their kingdom.
THE PRUDENT LOVER.
"City gunsmiths have been busy these days furbishing up sportsmen's rifles for the '12th.'"—Scotch Paper.
Personally we use a machine-gun.