lucky to have in Colonel WARD as senior British officer a man who was not afraid to shoulder his responsibility.  Under conditions so exasperating that anyone might have been excused if he had been overwhelmed with anger and bewilderment he was resolved to uphold our prestige.  Upon the Bolshevist horrors in Siberia he does not dwell, but he says enough in passing to make one shudder.  Colonel WARD is a true friend of Russia.  “This great people are bound to recover, and become all the stronger for their present trials,” are the concluding words of his preface.  That this prophecy may come true must be the prayer of all of us who remember what we owed to Russia during the earlier part of the War.

* * * * *

It was perhaps my misfortune that, not having read the book in which Mr. EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS recorded the earlier adventures of his hero, John Carter, in the red planet Mars, when that gentleman precipitated himself thither (from the banks of the Hudson, of all places), I found myself in more senses than one out of my element.  Not that it really matters; since the Martian existence of Mr. Carter was apparently of that wild and whirling character, familiar to patrons of the Continuous Programme, in which one thrill follows upon another so fast that their precise order becomes of small moment.  When I tell you that the opening chapters of this remarkable nightmare—­The Gods of Mars (METHUEN)—­contain monsters with one white eye and mouths in their hands, flying pirates, an air-ship that sinks down a volcano, an ageless witch who—­but why continue?  The publishers call these happenings “bold;” but this is a pitiful understatement.  Really they are of a character to make the wildest imaginings of JULES VERNE, friend of my youth, or Mr. WELLS, companion of my riper years, read like the peaceful annals of a country rectory.  To quote again from the publishers, “only the man who created Tarzan could write such stories.”  If Tarzan were in any way comparable with the present volume, it would perhaps not be unfair to add the corollary that only those readers who appreciated the one could swallow the other.  Mercifully, Mr. BURROUGHS writes so continually at the top of his voice that after a time the clatter comes to have an effect merely soporific.

* * * * *

Since Major-General Sir C.E.  CALLWELL has, in The Dardanelles (CONSTABLE), added a volume to a series called Campaigns and Their Lessons, it is clear that he is writing mainly for military students, but none the less at least one man in the street—­meaning myself—­has been glad, after reading plenty of merely descriptive accounts of the Gallipoli affair, to find a book that frankly and justifiably does lay claim to technical proficiency.  The exponents of vivid narrative, modestly disclaiming expert knowledge, have been painfully liable to break off just short of what one wanted most to know.