In The Immortal Gamble (A.  AND C. BLACK), by A.T.  STEWART and C.J.  PESHALL, the Acting Commander and Chaplain of H.M.S.  Cornwallis describe the part taken by their ship and its gallant complement in the bombardment of Gallipoli and the subsequent landings down to the final evacuation.  The account is clear, concise, unemotional, and uncontroversial.  As a glimpse rather than a survey of the Dardanelles campaign it strengthens our faith in the spirit of the race without hopelessly undermining our confidence in its intelligence.  Beyond the fact that it records deeds of brave men the book has no mission, and its cheerful detachment might not, in the absence of sterner chronicles, be salutary.  But as long as there are enough Commissions to publish scathing reports on this or that phase of national ineptitude it is not the publishers’ business to provide cathartics for the fatted soul of a self-satisfied people.  As the passing of time obliterates the futilities and burnishes the heroisms of the noblest and most forlorn adventure in the history of the race, The Immortal Gamble will find a just place among the simple chronicles of courage which the War is storing up for the inspiration of the generations to come.

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I fancy that of late the cinema has somewhat departed from its life-long preoccupation with the cow-boy, otherwise, I should have little hesitation in predicting a great future on the film for Naomi of the Mountains (CASSELL).  For this very stirring drama of the wilder West is so packed with what I can’t resist calling “reelism” that it is almost impossible to think of it otherwise than in terms of the screen.  It is concerned with the wooing, by two contrasted suitors, of Naomi, herself more or less a child of nature, who dwelt in the back-of-beyond with her old, fanatic and extremely unpleasant father.  But, though the action is of the breathless type that we have come to expect from such a setting, there is far more character and serious observation than you would be prepared to find.  Mr. CHRISTOPHER CULLEY has drawn a real woman, and at least two human and well-observed men.  I will not give you in detail the varied course of Naomi’s romance, which ends in a perfect orgy of battle, with sheriffs and shooting, redskins and revolvers—­in short, all the effects that Mr. HAWTREY not long ago so successfully illustrated on the stage.  To sum up, I should describe Naomi of the Mountains as melodrama with a difference—­the difference residing in its clever character-drawing and some touches of genuine emotion which lift it above the ordinary.  And this from one to whom the Wild West in fiction has long been a weariness is something more than tepid praise.

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