Mr. CHRISTOPHER CULLEY, whom you may remember for a bustling, rather cinematic story called Naomi of the Mountains, has now followed this with another, considerably better. Lily of the Alley (CASSELL) is, in spite of a title of which I cannot too strongly disapprove, as successful a piece of work of its own kind as anyone need wish for, showing the author to have made a notable advance in his art.  Again the setting is Wild West, on the Mexican border, the theme of the tale being the outrages inflicted upon American citizens by VILLA, and what seemed then the bewildering delay of Washington over the vindication of the flag.  The “Alley” of its unfortunate name is the slum in Kansas City where Dave, stranded on his way westward, met the girl to whom the laws of fiction were inevitably to join him.  I fancy that one of Mr. CULLEY’S difficulties may have lain in the fact that, when the tale, following Dave, had finally shaken itself from the dust of cities, the need for feminine society was conspicuously less urgent.  Even after a rescued and refreshed Lily is brought up-country, she is kept, so to speak, as long as possible at the base, and only arrives on the actual scene of Dave’s activities in time to be bustled hurriedly out of the way of the final (and wonderfully thrilling) chapters.  The explanation is, I think, that the cowboy, whom he knows so well, is for Mr. CULLEY hero and heroine too. Dave, round whom the story revolves, is a pleasant study of a type of American youth which we are coming gratefully to estimate at its true worth; but in the development of the theme Dave soon becomes almost insignificant beside the greater figure of the cowboy, Monte Latarette.  For him alone I should regard the book as one not to be missed by anyone who values a handling of character at once delicate and masterful.

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Keeling Letters and Recollections (ALLEN AND UNWIN) is a book that will perhaps rouse varied emotions in those who read it.  Regret there will be for so much youth and intellectual vigour sacrificed; admiration for courage and for a patriotism that circumstances made by no means the simple matter of conviction that it has been for most; and vehement opposition to many of the views (on the War especially) held by the subject of the memoir.  By sympathy and environment KEELING was, to begin with, a wholehearted admirer of Germany.  Strangely, in one of his social views, he carried this admiration even to the extent of advocating a Teutonic control that should include Holland.  To such a mind the outbreak of war with Germany may well have seemed the last horror.  But he admitted no choice.  Within a few days he was a private soldier; he was killed, as sergeant-major, while bombing a trench on August 18, 1916.  The spirit in which he entered the War is shown in an extract from a letter:  “What we have got to do in the interest of Europe