The evil that wars do lives after them, in many shapes and kinds. It would be well, or rather best if man could destroy this evil at the root, so that it might never be seen on earth again; but, failing that, he must at least strive to mitigate the evil in every way he can, using all the techniques at his command, including the comparatively new science of psychotherapy. This, in brief, is what Vera Brittain says at length in "Account Rendered," a novel that should please those readers who like their fiction to be cast in tendentious mould.

To animate her thesis, Miss Britain tells the story of Francis Halkin, whose life was one of those left shattered by the War of 1914–18. In Halkin's case, as in so many others, the damage done was long invisible: the psyche, not the body, had been hurt. Francis had...