peasant wives and children left to carry on in the absence of their men.  The third part is a series of hospital vignettes.  They do not attempt to be too cheery, but they have the stamp of realised truth.  “Nostalgia,” the second part, is in another mood—­recalled memories of the beauties of a loved land and of dear common things affectionately seen.  To those who dare look at war with open eyes and who take pleasure in sincere and beautifully-phrased writing I commend Mrs. HELEN MACKAY’S book without reserve.

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Somewhere in Christendom (ALLEN AND UNWIN) is somewhat embarrassing to a reviewer, for it has the theme of a great book with the manner of a trivial one.  It is the history of a very much smaller nation, Ethuria, left despoiled and starving at the end of a nine-years’ war, in which its great neighbours have used it as a battle-ground.  Revolution begins, but a woman prophet steps in and switches it off in an unusual direction.  The Ethurians perfect among themselves that fellowship which is the nice ideal behind many nasty manifestations in the real world, and, when next they are invaded by neighbouring nations anxious to use them as an excuse for belligerency, they resolutely stick to their guns (only the metaphor is most unsuitable), refuse to find any cause of quarrel with their “foreign brothers,” and finally persuade them to abandon the ideals of war, so that peace on earth becomes a reality at last.  Here is the book’s theme; its working out allows for a boxing match between the President of Hygeia and the Foreign Secretary of Tritonia as the minimum of hostilities; a wicked newspaper lord, who pulls strings in both countries, and a faithful butler to the Royal Family, who becomes assistant state nursemaid and cleans silver as a hobby.  Though I quite agree with Miss EVELYN SHARP and the Ethurians that it is love that makes the world go round, I am not so sure that either hers or theirs is the best way of advocating their common cause.

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You may remember an original and striking book of papers about the theatre under the title of Buzz-Buzz.  Its author, JAMES E. AGATE, has now followed it with another, called, rather grimly, Responsibility (RICHARDS).  You will be absolutely correct in guessing that this is not a treatise on revue, being indeed an autobiographical novel of (I feel bound to add) precisely the same calibre as, in the sister realm of drama, made the name of Manchester at one period a word of awe.  Why do these young Mancunians recollect to such stupendous purpose?  Here is Mr. AGATE, with an introduction of forty-four pages, all about time and infinity, before he can get his protagonist so much as started anywhere at all.  It is a little like one of those demon-scenes out of the pantomimes he describes so lovingly—­“Do so!  May safety and success attend on Crusoe.” But of course the subsequent action is more responsible.