Egyptian Darkness.

"Several letters have appeared in the native Press in some of which they ask Minindirect way, as they have done, but in a indirect way they have done but in a clear clear manner which cannot be interpreted two ways."—Egyptian Gazette.

Or, so far as we are concerned, even one way.

THE BIG-GAME CURE.

[In common with everything else, wild animals have risen considerably in price.]

HOW TO ACT IN EMERGENCIES.

The Weekly Dispatch symposium, in which various celebrities discuss the way to act in the event of a burglar being found in the house, shows the need for a little advice in case of emergencies. We append the following very helpful hints:—

The old plan of offering a burglar a cigarette and asking him to take a chair while you telephone to the police is not now so successful as in the past. The best plan is to tackle the fellow right away. For this purpose you should step behind him, take hold of his coat and force it over his face. Then tie his left arm to his right leg across the back. Properly carried out, this method rarely fails.

To attract the attention of the young lady behind a post-office counter, fire a revolver three times in succession, using blank cartridges. After first aid has been rendered to the attendants step up to the counter and purchase your stamp.

If you should be knocked down by a taxi, don't be alarmed and try to creep out from under the thing. And don't blame the driver. Apologise to him, and, as you are being carried away, shake hands and tell him that while it was his cab it was your fault. Treated in this manner, drivers are not nearly so offensive when they knock you down the next time.

Should the telephone-bell ring in your house, don't get excited. Keep calm. Remember General Grant. Remove the women and children to a place of safety, lift off the receiver and say, "Good Heavens! Whoever can it be?"

Let us suppose that you are being attacked by a man with a chopper. Wait until the weapon is well poised over your head. Just as he begins the down stroke step aside smartly. The hatchet will then be found buried in the ground. This means that bygones are bygones.

PETER AND JUDY.

Except for the fact that they had different sets of parents and were born some hundred miles apart, Peter and Judy are practically twins. Consequently, after an interval of three months, strenuous efforts were made by the two young mothers to bring about a proper introduction between the two wonders.

The occasion was to be one of great importance, for it was Judy's very first tea-party, marking, as it were, the dawn of her social career. For days the post-office wrestled with the correspondence necessary to bring about the meeting. The mothers, both in person and by proxy, had scoured the precincts of Kensington and Oxford Street respectively for the necessary adornments to do their offspring justice, changing their minds so often that the assistants came to take as much interest in the party as if they were going to it themselves.

And yet, when the great moment arrived and the strong silent man was borne into the room, round-eyed and expectant, he found his hostess already tired out with her first tea-party and fast asleep. He could scarcely believe his eyes; nor could Judy's scandalised father.

Peter was very good about it. He bore this chilly reception stoically, deprecating any desire to wake the sleeping beauty—deprecating, in fact, any interest in her or her cot whatsoever. Ignoring the efforts of the Big People to fix his attention by pointing him directly at the main object of the tea-party (they should have known that babies like looking the other way always) he remained passively interested in a fascinating brass knob, the while getting his gloves into a satisfactory state of succulence before the Big People should take it on themselves to remove them.

At last his patience is rewarded. The hostess, sighing sleepily, is beginning to show signs of realising her responsibilities. Two immense arms, two enormous fistfuls of fingers gather her up and she is borne through the air triumphantly.... Peter and Judy are introduced.

I doubt whether any two people in this world ever displayed greater indifference. Solemnly they turn their eyes upon every other object in the room except each other. It is not until the number of permutations in which two people can look at everything is exhausted mathematically that their eyes meet at last.

Then they cut each other dead.

Side by side they recline on the couch. Judy, pouting with sleep, is buffeting her face with her little white boxing-gloves, while Peter stares fascinated at the fire, quite sure that social functions are not in his line. "O-o!"

With only three months' experience, Judy has not yet attained complete mastery of the art of manipulating difficult things like limbs. Inadvertently, and in excess of zeal to kick higher than any other baby, she has landed out a beautiful backhander and caught Peter hard in the tummy. Peter's eyes open wide. Creases appear on his face and widen. A cavern opens and a roar follows:—

"Ya—o-o!"

"Hullo!" (Judy looks up in amazement, for there is only one noise in the house like that, and she has the sole rights of it). "Hullo, is that me? I didn't know I was doing it"—(the roars from Peter continue)—"but I suppose I am. I must be. Let's have a lot more of this very good noise I am making—Ya—o-o!"

The duet produces a crescendo astounding to them both, for there has never been a noise so wonderful as this in all their experience. Then to Judy a very strange thing happens. She pauses for breath, but the noise goes on. "This is amazing—how do I do it?..."

She joins in again—and then Peter stops. He too is puzzled vaguely. However, bother introspection, the concert proceeds, both artists doing their level best. Now one of them pauses, now the other, and at length serious doubts begin to creep in. There is something queer afoot—something....

The matter resolves itself. Turning suddenly they behold each other, both yelling splendidly. Amazement! Cavern confronts cavern! Face to face they roar their hardest, demanding the reason for this strange phenomenon, "this other me who does when I don't."

They pause—their mouths remain agape. Slowly they close and smiles succeed. Joy! A reasonable-sized face at last. What a relief after the enormous faces, the great mouths, the Cyranese noses of the Big People who are wont to come and peer. Here at last is a true face, a face that—no, they both agree not to dwell unduly on the discovery.

Indifferent to each other once again they regard the special objects of their attention, their hands waving gently in the air, seeking the fairies that babies' hands are always trying to catch.

Ha! their hands have met.

"Hoo! It's a reasonable hand. It's got proper fingers, not stumps of bananas."

"Moreover," says Peter politely, "if you care to take advantage of my offer you will find that it is properly moistened, succulent and suitable to a baby's taste. You needn't mind; I prepared it myself."

"Goo! Gool-gur!" All is peace and chuckles. Hand-in-hand they survey their mothers. "Our mothers, yours—mine. Ha, ha—he, he—goo!"

The inner thoughts of the two babies may be hidden from me (I accept the punishment), but I know—I know what the two mothers are thinking of. Twenty years hence, a paragraph in The Times: "Peter—Judy—" Oh, you fatuous mothers!

L.

"Public interest remains unabated in the remarkable occurrences at the poultry-house farm at Brickendon, where spirit rappings in the morse code have been heard for weeks past.... One question put to the spirit last night was 'How many people are outside?' And the reply was 'Rorty,' which proved to be correct."—Liverpool Paper.

And possibly furnishes some clue to the identity of the spirit concerned.

MORE INTENSIVE PRODUCTION.

"'Oh, to be in England now that Noel's near.'

So, one might adapt one of Kipling's lines."—Indian Paper.

What do they know of Browning who only Kipling know?

"Lady wishes to travel in exquisite lingerie."—Daily Paper.

By all means; but why should she be content to wear an inferior quality when she is stationary?

AT THE PLAY.

"MR. TODD'S EXPERIMENT."

A new terror—or else a new attraction—has been added to the British Drama. Mr. Walter Hackett has brought the scent of the cinema across the footlights. When he wants to inform you of certain episodes in the hero's past career, or let you know what he is doing when he is out of sight, he throws the main stage into darkness and lights up a smaller one on which he gives you as many as six little tabloid plays within the play.

Such a scheme has its obvious conveniences for the playwright, and should greatly simplify the difficulties of stage-craft. Those introductory statements which are required to explain the opening conditions and need such adroit handling will no longer be necessary. You just put everybody wise by a series of tableaux parlants. No longer need the author worry about the best way of conveying to his audience the details of any action that takes place off the stage; he just turns on a playlet and there it is. Altogether, with a couple of the unities disposed of, he ought to have a much easier time.

On the other hand he is going to have trouble with his principal stage and put his actors to the inconvenience of playing in a painfully congested area. Thus, in Mr. Todd's Experiment, the permanent scene was the hall of a house, with a large tapestry occupying more than half of the wall. Lurking behind this tapestry was the stage for the tabloids, and the general company had to crowd themselves into the remainder or wander forlornly about in the space in front of the tapestry. The playlets again are almost bound to be just concentrated episodes, probably elemental in theme and certainly elementary in treatment.

The excuses for their interpolation in Mr. Todd's Experiment were not marked by a very great subtlety. There was really none for the first three, which simply relieved Mr. Todd of the tedious recital of the hero's disillusionments in love. The next two were introduced by way of illustrating his alleged gift of clairvoyance; and the last served frankly to fill in the interval while the rest of the company was away at dinner. The general effect of all these desultory little Guignols was perhaps rather cheap, and not very complimentary to the intelligence of those of us who had outgrown a childish penchant for peep-shows.

Mr. Todd's Experiment (for I have spoken only of Mr. Hackett's) was to restore a blasé and valetudinarian young man of thirty to a proper state of energy by recalling the memories of his past loves and so reviving in him a desire to stand well in the eyes of the sex. For this purpose he produces (1) a bunch of wood-violets to suggest (through the nose) the environment of his first passion; (2) a specially-tipped brand of cigarettes to revive (through the mouth) the sentiment of his second; and a gramophone record to recover (through the ear) the associations of his third.

So well does he succeed that the hero pulls himself together, shaves off his beard, becomes our Owen Nares again, and sallies forth, habited for conquest, to pay calls on all the three. From all the three he retires disillusioned, having found them as egoistic as himself, and in the end finds solace rather shamelessly, in the love of a devoted slave who might have been his for the taking any time in the last several years.

The matter was pleasant enough, but its interest must, I think, have left us indifferent if it had not been for the diversion afforded by the playlets. While the idea was original, the presentation of it seemed to have a touch of amateurishness, though I would not go so far as to agree with the old fogey, played by Mr. Fred Kerr, who pronounced the scheme to be "all Tommy rot." With the exception of one character—the devoted slave—the lightness of the dialogue, mildly cynical, was due not so much to its wit as to the absence of ponderable stuff. The easy trick, so popular with the modern playwright, of letting the audience down in the middle of a serious situation was illustrated by the hero when, being in deadly earnest, he tells every woman in turn that she is the only woman he has ever loved.

As Mr. Todd, Mr. Holman Clark was as fresh as he always is; but Mr. Owen Nares could hardly hope to satisfy the exigent demands of adoration in the part of young Carrington. Who, indeed, could sustain his reputation as a figure of romance when addressed as "Arthur-John"? Mr. Fred Kerr, who played Martin Carrington, the cantankerous uncle, cannot help being workmanlike; but he was asked to repeat himself too much. The best performance was that of Miss Marion Lorne, in the part of the hero's one devout lover, Fancy Phipps; her quiet sense of humour, salted with a slight American tang, kept the whole play together.

O.S.

"Tea for Three."

Playwright Mr. Roi Cooper-Megrue, and principal players Miss Fay Compton, the wife; Mr. Stanley Logan, the friend, and Mr. A.E. Matthews, the husband, made a first-rate thing of two-thirds of Tea for Three.

The wife is without blemish physically or morally. The husband is faithful with a single-minded fidelity in thought, word and deed that looks (and, I am assured by equally innocent victims, is) positively deadly. The friend "frits and flutters" about in a distinctly casual, not to say polygamous, mood, but has one sacred place in his untidy heart in which the wife is enshrined. He can manage to sustain life so long as he may come to triangular tea on Thursdays. But the faithful husband puts his foot on that.

Hence the stolen lunch for two with which the play opens. Philosophy there is, and very good philosophy too, from the flutterer and fritter, and such love-making as every virtuous woman (at heart a minx) allows. She is sorry, doubtless, for the suffering she causes, but (this is my gloss, not, I think, the author's) is really enjoying it like anything and taking jolly good care to look her best. Then follow little lies and as little and as needless and quite innocent indiscretions; and the jealous husband on the rampage.

All this excellently put together, seasoned with wisdom and wit and most capably played; Miss Fay Compton, admirable example of a pretty actress who won't let herself be captured by stage tricks, making everything explicable except her continued love for her intolerable bore (and Turk) of a husband; Mr. A.E. Matthews handling a desperately unsympathetic part, which was already beginning to look impossible, with great adroitness; and Mr. Stanley Logan, though badly hampered by a shocking cold and fighting a coughing audience, carrying the bulk of the good talk and lifting it gently over the few difficult places with a brilliant and well-concealed art.

Thus till towards the end of the Second Act. Then a bad, a very bad, fairy stuffed into Mr. Megrue's head the idea of the suicide lottery. The infuriated husband, finding his wife in her friend's room at 7 p.m. (frightfully improper hour), sternly offers his bowler (or Derby) hat, in which are two cards. The one marked with a cross is drawn by the flutterer and means that he is for it. He is to kill himself within twenty-four hours.... And all this with perfect seriousness.

You will see how the Third Act of a comedy which had tied itself in this kind of a knot simply could not be played. The author had completely sacrificed plausibility, and it was not uninteresting to see him twisting and turning, hedging and bluffing to save it; and a little uncomfortable to note the conviction oozing away out of the performers.... Queer also that it isn't more generally recognised that to come to the theatre with a loud persistent cough is a form of premeditated robbery with violence.

T.

A NEW LEAGUE OF NATIONS.

The latest development in connection with the International Brotherhood movement is the establishment of a College of Correct Cosmopolitan Pronunciation. The need of such an institution has long been clamant, and the visit of the Ukrainian choir has brought matters to a crisis. At their concert last week several strong women wept like men at their inability to pronounce the title of one of the most beautiful items on the programme—"Shtchedryk." Again, as Mr. Smillie must have bitterly reflected, how can we possibly render justice to the cause of Bolshevism so long as we are unable to pronounce the names of its leaders correctly? The same remark applies to the Russian Ballet; the Yugo-Slav handbell-ringers; the vegetarian Indian-club swingers from the Karakoram Himalayas; the polyphonic gong-players from North Borneo; the synthetic quarter-tone quartette from San Domingo; the anthropophagous back-chat comedians from the Solomon Islands; not to mention a host of other interesting companies, troupes, corroborees and pow-wows which are now in our midst for the purpose of cementing the confraternity of nations.

Suitable premises for the College have been secured in the heart of Mayfair and a competent staff of instructors has already been appointed, who, with the aid of gramophones, will be able to train the students to perfection in the requisite command of the most explosive gutturals, labials and sibilants. Doctor Prtnkeivitchsvtnshchitzky will be the director of the College; Dr. Seton Watson and Mr. Wickham Steed have kindly undertaken to supervise the Yugo-Slav section, and the list of patrons and patronesses includes the names of the Prince of Prinkipo; Madame Karsavina, so long a victim of the mispronunciation of her melodious surname; Dr. Douglas Hyde, the famous Irish scholar; Prenk-Bib-Doda, the Albanian chieftain; Sir Rabindranath Tagore; Lord Parmoor; Sir Thomas Beecham and the Dowager Begum of Bhopal.

Pegasus at Polo.

"The following teams have entered for the Lahore Polo Tournament:—4th Cavalry, 17th Cavalry, 21st Lancers, 33rd Cavalry, 39th Central India Horse, Lahore, the Fox-hunters from Meerut, and the Royal Air Horse from Delhi."—Civil and Military Gazette.

An Up-to-date Costume.

"For your evening dress I advise you simply to buy a piece of broad silver ribbon, pass it twice round the waist and knot it at the side, with a little bunch of berries and leaves caught into the knot."—Ladies' Paper.

REVOLT OF THE SUPER-GEORGIANS.

Wild Scenes at a Meeting of Protest.

An Indignation Meeting, to protest against the outrageous attacks levelled against Georgian writers and critics by Professor Noyes in his recent lecture at the Royal Institution and by Mr. A.D. Godley in an article in the current Nineteenth Century, was held last Saturday evening at the Klaxon Hall. The chair was taken by Mr. Edward Marsh, C.M.G., who was supported on the platform by a compact bevy of Georgian bards; but at an early stage of the meeting it became apparent that a majority of those present in the body of the hall were extremists of violent type, and eventually, as will be seen, the proceedings ended in something approximating to a free fight.

Mr. Marsh began by a frank confession. He had taken a First Class in the Cambridge Classical Tripos. But the days in which he had been steeped to the lips in Latin and Greek were long past, never to return. For many years he had not composed hexameters, elegiacs or iambics. He had thrown in his lot with insurgent youth, not as a competitor or rival, but as an advocate, an admirer and an adviser. Indeed, if he might venture to say so, he sometimes acted as a brake on the wheels of the triumphal Chariot of Free Verse. He was not an adherent of the fantastic movement known as "Dada." He had no desire to abolish the family, morality, logic, memory, archæology, the law and the prophets. A little madness was a splendid thing, but it must be methodic. Still, for the rest he was a Georgian, heart and soul, and it pained him when men who ought to know better raised the standard of reaction and sought to discredit the achievements of his protégés. These attacks could not be passed over in silence, and the meeting had been convened to consider how they should be met, whether by a reasoned protest or by retaliation.

Miss Messalina Stoot, who punctuated her remarks with the clashing of a pair of cymbals, observed that as a thorough-going Dadaist she had no sympathy with the half-hearted attitude of the Chairman. It was a battle between Dada and Gaga, and emphatically Dada must win.

Mr. Mimram Stoot, who accompanied himself on the sarrusophone, endorsed the iconoclastic views of his sister. The only poetry that counted was that which caused spinal chills and issued from husky haughty lips. The moanings of mediæval molluscs were of no avail, though they might excite the crustacean fossils of Oxford, the home of lost causes.

Mr. Seumas O'Gambhaoil wished to protest against Mr. Noyes' statement that there were ten thousand Bolshevist poets in our midst. This was a shameless underestimate of the total, which was at least twice that figure. Mr. Godley's offence, however, was much worse, as he was an Irishman, though of the self-expatriated type to which Goldsmith and Moore belonged. The rest of Mr. O'Gambhaoil's speech was delivered in Irish, but he was understood to advocate a repatriation of all Irish renegades to be tried and dealt with by the Sinn Fein Republic.

Mr. Caradoc Cramp applauded the sentiments of the last speaker, but considered that he avoided the real issue. The Chairman had declared himself a Georgian, but that was not enough. The worst enemies of Free Verse were to be found in that camp. In technique and even in thought there was little to choose between many so-called Georgians and the most effete and reactionary Victorians. He alluded to the War poets, or rather the "Duration" poets, most of whom were already back-numbers. Between these and the Post-war poets, the true super-Georgians or paulo-post-Georgians, it was necessary to make a clean cut. To protest against Messrs. Godley and Noyes was a mere waste of time and energy. They might just as well protest against the existence of an extinct volcano or the skeleton of the brontosaurus. The real danger to be faced was the intrinsic subjectivity of the early and mid-Georgian poets, of whom the Chairman had been so powerful and consistent a supporter. He accordingly called for volunteers to storm the platform, and, a large number having responded to his appeal, Mr. Marsh was dislodged from the Chair after a gallant fight. A resolution of adherence to the principles of "Dada" having been passed by a large majority, the meeting broke up to the strains of the famous song—

"Gentleman, Interested in Tattooing and largely covered, would like to hear from other enthusiasts to compare notes."—Times.

We trust the "bare-back" mode is not going to spread to the more modest sex.

From a "stores" circular:—

"This Week's Economy Offers.

Honey in Sections, each 3/9, three for 14/0."

The economy consists, of course, in buying them one at a time.

WATER-BABIES.

Another Mesopotamian Scandal.

"The commodious and fast ss. 40 will leave Basrah for Baghdad and all intermediate ports on Saturday morning at 9 a.m. Passengers will embark at 10 a.m."—Basrah Times.

"END OF COTTON SUIT.

DRAMATIC COLLAPSE."—Daily Paper.

We are more than ever convinced of the superior wearing qualities of woollen.

"The Government of the Commonwealth of Australia agrees to the admission on passport of Indian merchants, students, tourests, with there irrespective wives."—Indian Paper.

But ought any Government to encourage this sort of thing?

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)

Following the iconoclastic spirit of the age, Mr. Barry Pain has essayed in The Death of Maurice (Skeffington) the revolutionary experiment of a murder mystery tale that does not contain (a) a love interest, (b) a wrongly suspected hero, (c) a baffled inspector, (d) an amateur, but inspired, detective. It would be a grateful task to add that the result proves the superfluity of these time-worn accessories. But the cold fact is that, to me at least, the proof went the other way. From the first I was painfully aware of a lack of snap about the whole business, and I am more than suspicious that the author himself may have shared my unwilling indifference. Maurice was an artistic bachelor, a landowner, a manufacturer of jam, a twin (with a bogie gift of knowing at any moment the relative position of his other half, which might have been worked for far more effect than is actually obtained from it), and a reputation of making enemies. He had also an unusual neighbour, in the person of a young woman whose unconventionality led her to perambulate the common at midnight, playing the first bars of Solveig's Song upon the flute. One night, at the close of the first chapter, a gun was heard. But you are wrong to suppose (however naturally) that the flute-player was the victim. It was Maurice. And of course the problem was, who did it. I have told you my own experience of the working out; nothing written by Mr. Barry Pain can ever be really dull, just as no story starting with a mysterious murder can lack a certain intrigue; but the fact remains that my wish, heroically resisted, to look on to the last chapter was prompted more often by impatience than by any compelling curiosity. Others may be happier.

The author of A Journal of Small Things has done much to make us understand the sufferings of stricken France and the more intimate sorrows of war. Chill Hours (Melrose) deals with that dark period before the end, when, to some, it seemed all but certain that the will to victory must fail. Of the three parts of this gracious little book the first consists of six sketches of life behind the lines, life both gentle and simple, as affected by war. "Odette in Pink Taffeta," an episode of bereavement, is in particular exquisitely visualised. "Their Places" and "The Second Hay" treat, with a quiet intensity of conviction, of the absolutely deadening absorption, by overwork and anxiety, of 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.

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.

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. I imagine Mr. Agate's picture of young-man life in the Manchester of the nineties to be very much like the real thing. Relaxation was not wholly remote from it. Cotton and commandments were broken with equal facility. Also you may be impressed by the number of Germans in it. Finally, after telling us, sometimes engagingly, sometimes verbosely, all he can remember about Lancashire, Mr. Agate brings his hero to Town, levers him along, year after year, and gets (almost on his last page) to his big situation. I won't spoil it. Responsibility, which might better have been called "Garrulity," is a novel containing boredom and charm in about equal proportions; not to mention promise for the days when its author has learned to discipline his too-ready pen.

From the early part of 1915 until the end of 1917 Admiral Sir Reginald Bacon commanded at Dover, and from the preface to The Dover Patrol (Hutchinson) we can gather that he is smarting under a considerable sense of injustice and injury. Of the merits of his case—he frankly describes his dismissal as brutal—I do not pretend to judge, but can safely assume that the other side have something to say for themselves, if they care to. However, you are not to suppose that this is a bitter book. Most generous are the praises which the Admiral bestows upon his subordinates; his venom he reserves for just the chosen few who, no doubt, can bear it. Apart from personal recriminations, of which some of us must be more than tired, these two portly volumes are of real historical value. You will find in them not only a record of actual achievements, often carried out under desperately difficult conditions, but also of projects which for one reason or another were never fulfilled. "Why don't we try to land on the Belgian coast?" was a question our amateur strategists were never weary of asking. Well, here is their answer. Here, too, are countless photographs, charts, plans and diagrams—a really wonderful collection. Even if you are not in the least interested in Sir Reginald's grievances you will find him a writer who has a lot of useful things to say and knows how to say them.

AN EFFECT OF THE CRIME WAVE.