The author, watching the very moulding of history with every advantage of proximity, has written down, if not much bare statement, yet an amazing sequence of heroic detail, associated with such stirring names as Arras or Givenchy or Cambrai.  Curiously enough, though each chapter is intensely vivid, they become, through much instancing of the same unconquerable spirit, something monotonous, though never wearisome, in bulk.  One trusts that a future generation will realise that the value of a book of this order consists in its first-hand record of such incidents of valour; it would be pitiful to have it hastily assumed, because so much is slurred or omitted to deceive the enemy, that England was so feeble-hearted as to require her evil news predigested before consumption in this manner.  It should be added that the writer gives us a good sound introduction that goes a long way to fill the yawning gaps.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Gatekeeper (at castle of unpopular baron—­to new grocer’s boy). “YOU SILLY IDIOT!  WHY DON’T YOU GO ROUND TO THE TRADESMEN’S GATE?  GOOD THING YOU DIDN’T PULL THE BELL, OR YOU’D ’AVE GOT A ‘ALF TON OF BOILING LEAD ON TOP OF YOU.  THIS IS THE VISITORS’ DOOR!”]

* * * * *

    “GIRL WANTED.—­A reliable girl for the summer months to go across
    the Arm.”—­Halifax Evening Mail.

To prevent misapprehension we ought to say that the western part of the bay at Halifax, Nova Scotia, is locally known as the “Arm.”

* * * * *

END.