They told us how things happened, or, at any rate, how it seemed they happened, but the reason why of things they had to leave to others.  In this book we really do get at the why, and even more the why not, of the magnificent failure.  Of actual incident and human interest General CALLWELL’S account, which in a sense is only supplementary to the others, adds little to our previous knowledge.  The only point of the sort I picked up is his notice of the characteristic reluctance shown by Anzacs to report themselves as sick when urged to do so with a view to the gradual removal of troops without withdrawal of entire units.  It is hardly necessary to add that the author is an old literary hand, with a pleasantly clear and luminous style of his own, though one is free to admit he splits his infinitives almost as much as Sir IAN HAMILTON split his forces, and with less justification.

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In the very improving books which I had to read long ago the hero or heroine usually had a cross to bear.  They bore it with great fortitude, and frequently died young.  When therefore I opened Mr. JEROME K. JEROME’S All Roads Lead to Calvary (HUTCHINSON) I fancied I knew what to expect.  I read that Joan Allway was possessed of remarkable beauty, a “Stevensonian touch” and suitable introductions to editors and newspaper proprietors, and that from the pulpit of a column in the evening Press, with her photograph at the top, she attempted to reform the world.  I don’t know how the photograph came out, but there was apparently no martyrdom so far.  Afterwards she began to encourage and inspire Robert Phillips, a Labour M.P. and future Cabinet Minister, and at the same time to be kind to and educate Mrs. Phillips, who was good-natured, vulgar and middle-aged.  Falling gradually in love with the politician, she withdrew only just in time, nursed in a French hospital, married a journalist friend and settled down happily with him to reform a little bit of the world at a time, and that the part nearest to hand.  And now I am left wondering what Joan Allway’s cross was.  Would avoiding the Divorce Court be counted the roughest path of self-denial in a moral anecdote of to-day?

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Running Wild (SIMPKIN) is the expressive title of a collection of child-memories by the late Mr. BERTRAM SMITH, whom readers of Punch will remember by the pseudonym “BIS.”  They can here learn from a sympathetic little introduction by Mr. WARD MUIR under what conditions of a brave but losing battle with ill-health this delicate and vivacious work was written.  When I say that these recollections (which I decline to call by any word implying more artifice) illustrate their author, I give you their measure for honesty and charm combined.  Honesty first of all; Mr. SMITH’S young barbarians running wild and, one conjectures, rapidly reducing their elders