BRITAIN TO BELGIUM.

AS OTHERS WISH TO SEE US.

The ingenious German device of writing private letters to English friends filled with German justifications of the War and news of the gaiety and normal prosperity of Berlin is now being carried farther, and extracts from private letters purporting to be addressed by English people to German friends have begun to be printed in the Berlin papers. Here follows an illustration of this type of composition:—

My Dear Friend,—I am sure you will like to hear from me, especially as I am in a position to enlighten you as to the deplorable condition of things in England under the fear of the Mailed Fist and forebodings of the worst. For it is only too true that all the best and most knowledgable people here have thrown up the sponge and are prepared for the inevitable.

A private letter is probably the only means of communicating the real situation to you, for the English papers of course do not tell the truth. In fact you must believe nothing they say, for there is a great conspiracy here to maintain the fiction that we are high-spirited, eager and confident. Everything is done to foster that illusion.

Bernhardi's great book has been translated and is being largely sold, and it is awful to watch the faces of the people reading it—how they blanch and quiver. It is curious, you might think, that they read it at all; but you know the dread fascination of the snake for the humming-bird. The bird sees its doom, but cannot escape, and in fact draws nearer.

Would you believe it of this nation, so famous for its phlegm, that at the outset of the war there was such a panic among our intellectuals that they could not write prose at all, but all the papers were full of rhyme? As you know, there is no sign of hysteria more trustworthy than this.

You may have heard that recruiting has been brisk and keen, but do not believe this. Only by huge bribes have men been induced to join at all. The finances of the country are being taxed to the utmost to find the extra "palm-oil" which these mercenaries demand.

The Birmingham factories are feverishly busy making dum-dum and explosive bullets.

You may have gathered from the papers that football goes on as usual. This is so, outwardly, but as a matter of fact the games are played with no spirit and are kept going wholly by force applied by the Government, whose aim is thus to suggest a feeling of security in the country. A few misguided people, who completely misunderstand the situation, hold that footballers should go to the Front and fight; but the Government take a more prudent view and will not allow this, holding that their agility on the field in League Matches and so forth is of high service as an anodyne and distraction. I have heard of more than one case of a well-known herculean player, accustomed not only to big money but applause and hero-worship, seriously wondering if fighting were not his real duty and if he ought not to make a bolt for the Front, but being compelled to acquiesce in the Government's plans and go on drawing his salary for the public pursuit of an air-bladder. This shows you to what a pass things have come.

There are also hundreds of young actors in London alone who are being forcibly kept in the country to go on entertaining and playing the fool for the same sedative purpose. These youths are all healthy and fit, but it is held that their true function is to work in the theatres and halls to beguile the audiences and divert their thoughts from the terrible reality of German invasion. With each step that the Germans draw nearer the mummers redouble their efforts to excite laughter. Thus did Nero fiddle.

The terror produced by your nerve-racking Zeppelins is constant. Hardly a soul is now to be seen in the streets of London. Everyone is below the earth, in the Tubes and subways, which are packed by white and trembling crowds. Every cellar is congested, the top floors having been wholly abandoned. As a sign of the times I may tell you that a Company, called the Aerated Dread Co., has been formed to provide iron suits for those who can afford them, and on the Board of Directors are both the Prime Minister and Sir Edward Grey. So awful is the agitation from which everyone here is suffering under the Zeppelin menace that the noise of a tyre bursting in the street often prostrates as many as forty passers-by.

No more to-day, my friend. I will write again soon and add to the melancholy picture of a once powerful nation shuddering with craven fears.

Give my love to your dear children.

Your devoted K—— L——.

"On the sea dyke the Germans have posted heavy artillery.... They have also posted gunes in the dunes."—South Wales Echo.

This settles us. We shall now begin our War Poem.

ARCHIBONG.

[Encouraged by the example of some eminent followers of Tyrtæus, Mr. Punch has great pleasure in printing the following topical soldiers' song, composed by one of his young men after reading about a British force that seized Archibong in the Cameroons.]

Scalped.

From Battalion Orders of a certain regiment:—

"The Brigadier-General regrets that the 5th are noticeable throughout the brigade for the long, slovenly and unkempt condition of men's hair. The Commanding Officer considers that this reflects on the credit of the battalion and directs Company Commanders to take immediate steps to have this slight removed for good and all."

What's in a Hyphen?

From a cinema advertisement:—

It sounds rather more like Musical Comedy.

"Between them the vessels of the Allies succeeded in destroying a German battery of field artillery, dispersed a German bridging train collected to force the passage of the Yser, blew up an ammunition column, killed General von Tripp, expressed pleasure at the Russians winning in Galicia, and even regarded it as compensation for his wound."—Aberdeen Free Press.

Is there anything the Fleet can't do?

LITTLE AND GOOD.

THE MYSTERY OF PRINCE ——.

Some few weeks ago the news came that he was carried wounded into a Brussels hospital, with a velvet mask over his face, so that none might recognise him. The Prince was visited in hospital by a tall man, also heavily masked, but not so heavily as to conceal a pair of soaring moustaches, freshly waxed. None dared speculate as to Who this Visitor might be. The hush was tremendous. The Visitor silently pinned on the patient a specimen of the Iron Cross and as silently left.

It was the 37000th Iron Cross bestowed since the outbreak of war.

At the autopsy it was proved conclusively that the bullet inside the Prince was of German origin.

After the post-mortem the Prince was luckily captured by the Belgians, and held at Antwerp as hostage for the good behaviour of the German troops occupying Brussels.

When the fall of Antwerp became imminent the Prince was secretly removed to England. A fortnight ago he was seen in a motor-car driving round Battersea Park, accompanied and guarded by an English officer.

The Prince wore his saxe-blue full-dress tunic, his corn-gold moustache and his rather stout face, and was looking considerably depressed.

Since that date no word has come of him. The Censor seems to have rigidly suppressed all evidence of his movements.

Is the Prince kept prisoner on a trawler sweeping the North Sea for mines? Has he escaped in the German submarine which ventured up the Thames as far as the lower end of Fleet Street? Or is he interned in the searchlight apparatus at Charing Cross to insure it against attack by Zeppelins?

We seek exact information.

"As regards the quality of this beverage, he said he was at a loss to know on what grounds they called it coffee."—Daily Mail.

Coffee grounds, no doubt.

Journalistic Candour.

"There comes a time when no responsible organ of public opinion can keep silence without sacrificing the tacit obligation under which it lies to its readers."—The Globe.

We are glad to note that in the same article there is a subsequent and reassuring reference to our contemporary's "well-deserved reputation for straightforwardness and accuracy."

The author of Secrets of the German War Office writes of the German Foreign Minister's "atrocious taste in waistcoats":—

"The one he had on still sticks in my memory. It was a lurid peach-blossom creation, spotted with greed."

It is to guard against this that so many of his compatriots tuck their napkins in at their necks.

AN ESCAPED PRISONER.

It was summertime, years ago, in the early days of the war.

Having distributed myself quite satisfactorily within a hammock, I had just decided that nothing short of invasion or the luncheon bell should disturb me, when my flapper niece shot forth in my direction from the French windows of the morning-room.

In one hand she flourished an empty birdcage and in the other what proved to be a tin of enormous hemp seeds.

"Wake up!" she cried as she approached rapidly through the near distance. "The precious Balaam has escaped! The brute must have got out while I was fetching his clean water, and the windows were wide open!"

The prospect of a canary hunt across country with a temperature at 80 degrees in the shade positively made me shiver.

"Your father is the man to catch it for you, Eileen," I suggested. "He's most awfully good at catching things. I—er think he's somewhere on the tennis-court."

"He's not, because he was splashing about in the bathroom just now when I wanted to fill Balaam's water-bottle."

"All right," I said resignedly, "I'll come. Was Balaam the man or the ass? I forget. And while we're at it why should you call the bird Balaam at all?"

Eileen was in no mood for foolish questionings.

"Get up!" she ordered. "I call him Balaam because he's not a proper canary—he's a mule."

"Then I am not at all sure," I began hopefully, "that I can countenance the keeping of mules in birdcages! Should the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals get to hear of it, they would certainly——"

"There he is!" interrupted Eileen shrilly as something yellowish flew jerkily across a neighbouring cabbage bed. "That's Balaam! Take the cage. I'll wait here in case he comes back!"

By the time I had reached the further end of the cabbage bed I was just in time to see a tawny bird vanish over a hedge, flop tantalisingly across the road and disappear among the branches of an apple-tree on the other side.

What I now see to have been a mistaken idea of my duty towards Eileen led me painfully through two hedges to the foot of the tree in whose branches Balaam the Mule was possibly enjoying the first-fruits of his liberty.

In vain I produced vocal effects calculated to charm away the love of travel from the breast of any canary; then, as Balaam persistently refused to come to me, I proceeded slowly but surely, and accompanied by the cage, to make my way to him.

Whether tree-climbing shares the same age limit as that assigned to recruits, or whether the cage was too severe a handicap, I don't know, but halfway up I somehow found myself marooned on an obviously inadequate branch.

For several minutes I balanced uncertainly. Then someone began to pass along the road beyond the hedge. As it seemed probable that their owner might prove of use to me, I hailed the footsteps with a shout.

The footsteps stopped and I shouted again.

This time there was a faint scream in answer and a mauve-and-white bonnet bobbed agitatedly up the road.

After a few more minutes of delicate and masterly balancing I was relieved to hear the approach of quite a number of people from the other side of the orchard.

Evidently the mauve-and-white bonnet had thoroughly realized my perilous position, for my rescuers seemed to include almost the entire village. Even the Vicar was there, armed with an assegai—no doubt a missionary trophy. It was thoughtful of them to have turned out in such numbers to rescue a mere visitor, but still one ploughman with a ladder would have been ample.

Soon words floated up to me from the mouth of the leading rescuer. "I'll learn him!" he was saying with fervour. "I'll learn him to come German-spying round my orchard!"

Balaam or no Balaam, I drew the line at being assegaied to death as a Teuton spy, so I dropped the cage with a bang and, clinging to the end of my branch, I at last succeeded in gaining the ground in moderate safety.

When I had finished explaining about Balaam, they were convinced, though evidently disappointed.

"You see," explained the Vicar, prodding the apple-tree regretfully with his assegai, "poor Miss Tittlepatter said that she had been attacked by German spies from this very orchard."

At the third prod of the Vicar's assegai, a brown-and-yellow bird flew self-consciously from the top of the apple-tree and perched in full view on a five-barred gate.

"There he is!" I hissed, moving stealthily forward with the remains of the birdcage. "There's Balaam the canary!"

"Kenary!" contemptuously remarked the rescuer who had been so anxious to undertake the education of Teutonic spies. "That ain't no kenary; that's a bloomin' yellow'ammer!"

When, a dishevelled wreck, I reached my own gateway, I was met in the drive by Eileen.

"It's all right after all," she remarked cheerfully. "The stupid bird was on the curtain pole all the time. So lucky, because, if he had got out, it would have meant an awful bother. And, I say, is it true that they've caught a German spy down in the village?"

In aid of the Arts Fund for the relief of the many members of the artistic professions who are in distress owing to the War, a Matinée under the patronage of Queen Alexandra will be given at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, on Thursday, Nov. 5, at 3 o'clock. Mr. Thomas Beecham will produce Bach's Phœbus and Pan, and Mr. Granville Barker will produce Philip the King, a new play by Mr. John Masefield. Mr. Punch very heartily commends the cause to his readers.

NOTES BY A WAR-DOG.

Now I don't want to snarl at the Cause—whatever it may be—but it isn't all beef-bones and country walks by any means. I first became aware of it about the same time the Dachshund at the corner house began to declare he was an Aberdeen Terrier. From that time on I scented something wrong, though could never quite dig it out. For one thing, the parrot began to practise a new phrase about "Down with the Kai...!" and also "Veeve" the something or other. Then Mabel—who does absurd things but has to be tolerated because she waits upon me—started tying coloured ribbons in my hair, and later sticking little flags in my collar; but I put a stop to that. A week ago things came to a head, and don't look like improving.

For the last five years my daily life has been brightened in manner following. We live next door to a railway station and a pastry-cook's. Every morning Mabel gives me a round hard thing she calls a penny, and very slippery to hold in one's mouth. I carry the penny to the pastry-cook's. The girl takes it and gives me a currant biscuit in exchange. Sometimes there are people in the shop, and then I gaze upon them meltingly. If they are the right sort, they melt—according to their means; usually it's pastry. The rest of the day I spend loafing about the station and the pastry-cook's. Now all that is changed.

Last Thursday Mabel took me to a Committee, a place full of typewriters and ladies; and I was registered—so they said; Mabel being given a sheet of paper all over scribble, and a wooden box with "War Relief Fund" on it. "On Monday, dear," said Mabel, "you begin."

I have begun. Would you believe it? I had to wear that beastly box tied to my collar! Retrievers, I know, are used to that sort of thing; but I'm a Collie. All that day I hung about on my old beat, and every now and then somebody gushed and called me silly names, and dropped a penny into my box. Conceive the hideous mockery of my position! By four o'clock there was I sitting outside that confectioner's, wearing enough pennies to buy the shop out, and yet not a Bath bun to the good!

But that wasn't the worst. About five an urchin came along, looked at me, grinned, and tried to put something in my box. Clumsy little beast, he trod on my foot. I sprang forward with a growl, and his offering, whatever it was, rolled on the pavement. Round turned an old lady, and, "Oh you wicked boy," she cried, "trying to put buttons in the hospital box! No wonder the dog growled, sensible creature." She began fumbling with her purse, and I was certain I saw a macaroon in her eye. "There," she said, "there's half-a-crown for you, Doggie, dear," and, before I could stop her, put it in the box. I could have bitten her.

Yesterday an old gentleman stopped to stare at me, and, absent-mindedly putting his hand in his pocket, brought out something rather like a penny, but smaller and bright yellow, and dropped it into the box. The very next moment he gave a violent start, looked wildly about him, turned the colour of cold veal, and muttering, "Lord bless my soul ... what have I done?... thought it was only" ... made a clumsy grab at my collar. Of course I knew what he was after; he wanted my pennies; so I just ambled off, and very soon outdistanced him. An Airedale, I suppose, would have held him till the police arrived, but I'm a Collie.

That very same afternoon, wandering about the station, I chanced to saunter into the ticket-office. The clerk's a man with a very well-regulated mind. He gives me chocolate. Just then, however, he was out, but his three-year-old boy-puppy was there sitting on a table all covered with bits of cardboard and little piles of pennies, ordinary brown ones, big white ones and a few little yellow ones. Well, in less time than it takes to cock your ears, that baby was shovelling pennies through the slit in my box and chuckling with joy. I stood it as long as I could, and then, in the nick of time, snatched a big white penny out of his paw and bolted off to the confectioner's. Imagine my astonishment when the girl actually refused to serve me! "Oh, Scottie," she cried, "there must be some mistake; I know your mistress wouldn't give you a two-shilling piece."

I thought Mabel was going to be ill when she felt the weight of my box. She dragged me off that very afternoon to the Committee, and when they discovered I'd collected seven pounds ten in three days the idiotic things they said about me beat anything in my experience since the time I killed the mouse in the conservatory. But I will say Mabel did the right thing by me at the pastry-cook's.

She's going to take me to a Church Bazaar to-morrow. But I doubt if a bazaar can beat that ticket-office.

HERBERT.

"I haven't introduced Herbert to you yet, have I?"

Stella-my-niece spoke with her eyes on the matinée hat before her, and concluded, à propos of the hat, though at first I feared of Herbert—"I do hope and pray that it will come off. Hip! Hip! She's pulling out pins."

"I had no idea there was—a Herbert."

"Oh, Nunckle! and you're responsible for the fact that he's mine at all!"

"I responsible?"

"Well, but for you I never might have seen him even; and I'm sure there isn't another like Herbert in the whole round world. Everyone wants him."

Presently I enquired when she proposed to introduce this paragon to the person responsible for him.

"I've got him here to-day."

I looked at her in pained silence, for Stella-my-niece, calmly fishing for "hard ones" in a chocolate box, was, as it were, sheltered under the lee of a long-haired gentleman who occupied rather more than double half-a-crown's worth of red velvet seat.

"There?" I whispered, pointing to the long-haired gentleman who neighboured her, and wondering what her mother would have to say about it all.

Stella-my-niece smiled.

"Do you imagine that I should bring Herbert into the pit?"

"Point him out to me."

"I can't. Now they're going to begin!" She snuggled down into her place and invited me to do likewise in my own as the curtain rose and revealed the legs of one of our leading actor-managers, and the audience clapped, hoping for more. "Now we're going to enjoy ourselves! Don't forget to hold my hand if anything pops."

Stella-my-niece has made it a stern rule that we are not to talk during the Acts, contriving to telegraph her appreciation of most things by fervent clutches at my arm; but to-day the effects of this salutary regulation were spoilt for me by Herbert. My attention wandered.

"Is he an actor?" I asked sternly, as the lights leaped up again.

"Which do you mean? I think they were all perfect darlings in that scene."

"Why, Herbert, of course."

"Herbert—Sir Herbert? He isn't in this, is he? I didn't see anyone looking as bored as he does. Hunt him up in the programme—it's down there under your boots."

"I didn't mean Tree. I meant Herbert—your Herbert."

"My Herbert?" Stella-my-niece opened her mouth showing astonishment and very pretty teeth.

"Yes, your Herbert. He's an actor fellow, isn't he?"

"No, he's an umbrella—my new umbrella. I bought him with the sovereign you sent me for my birthday, and he is such a darling! I felt he ought to have a name of his own, so I called him Herbert. He looks like that."

"A girl's name—Maud, for instance, only one doesn't use them in the garden much——"

"A girl's name, like Pauline, may suit your fountain pen, and Dad may call the motor 'Mary Jane' when he's pleased with how he's mended her; but I decided I would have a man's. It sounds better to say, 'Herbert is seeing me home, thank you.' The sad thing is that I'm sure I shan't keep him long; he's so pretty. When he's waiting for me in umbrella-stands I feel nervous, and in trains. He's so unique—so utterly unlike anyone else's umbrella. I know you'll love him."

I did as soon as ever I saw him coming out of the cloak-room hanging on her arm. There was a gentle coyness in the turn of Herbert's handle, a nutty daintiness about his little gold tie which made me look involuntarily for his socks.

"Now, you wait and see if someone doesn't try to run off with him before we get home," said Stella-my-niece. "I'll hold him on a long lead so that people will think he's out by himself, and we'll await developments."

We settled ourselves by tact and firmness in a crowded après matinée 'bus, and Stella-my-niece, having set down all her belongings the better to persuade the programme to ride inside her pocket, took Herbert by his long tassels, leaving him leaning against the seat between herself and her neighbour, a lady with many trimmings and a book.

"I hope she'll go before we do," said Stella-my-niece in my ear. "I sort of feel that she'll try to take Herbert."

She did; as she read, her hand reached out and took a grip upon Herbert's immaculate head! Stella-my-niece stifled a squeak of pure excitement.

"Oxford Street," announced the conductor dispassionately, and the trimmed lady shut her book and rose to get out. Stella-my-niece, holding Herbert by his tassels, smiled indulgently.

"You have my umbrella, I'm afraid," she said sweetly. "It is such a very uncommon one that I simply couldn't be mistaken."

The trimmed lady looked round; so did everyone in the 'bus. Then she pointed to a slim object propped against the seat between Stella-my-niece's blue skirt and my own striped garments.

"That's yours by the gentleman; they're just the same pattern."

So they were!

As Stella-my-niece said afterwards at tea, the worst of it was that it proved that Herbert wasn't quite unique; at the best he was a twin. I think that privately we thought him something worse than a triplet, but we neither knew quite how to say it. Anyhow, all the Herberts are fascinating.

The Universal War.

"Into this gap the Germans placed a number of gnus—six or eight."—People.

The "Gorilla Warfare" (mentioned last week) having failed, the enemy tries a new dodge. But the Allies remain unalarmed.

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

If, as is just conceivable, the Teuton braggart fails to convert the universe into a German empire, his downfall will be partly due to his lack of humour. Among the things that go to make this saving grace are an agile imagination and a nice sense of proportion, and it is when a man starts lying about himself that he shows most clearly whether or not he has it. Some weeks ago an "Honorary Committee of thirty-four distinguished" (or, if you will, notorious) "Germans and a Board of Editors," eleven strong, gathered together to concoct an epoch-making fib, which, upon completion, was labelled "The Truth about Germany: Facts about the War," and was circulated, secretly but thoroughly, throughout the United States. The Forty-five Liars content themselves with a methodical misstatement of every fact, disregarding all the evidence, and, indeed, their own diplomatists' admissions, to the contrary. There is no ingenious perversion of the truth, no subtle invention of argument and no appeal whatever to the intelligence of the reader; it is from beginning to end heavy and quite incredible bosh. Though it was never intended to be read in this country, Mr. Douglas Sladen has been lucky or clever enough to secure a copy of it, which he reproduces cheaply under the title Germany's Great Lie (Hutchinson). I congratulate him upon having obtained such excellent copy, but I think he has somewhat spoilt the effect of it by the manner of his annotations interposed in italics. His facts and quotations are apt and useful, but his indignant denials and sarcastic epithets run to excess; every time one reads the emphatic assertion that black is white one does not want to have also to read that this is an amazing lie. I recommend the public to consume every word of the text, but to omit the larger part of the notes.

In the nature of things it is possible that the 1914 crop of gift-books for boys may not be a bumper one as far as quantity is concerned, but Mr. Henry Newbolt has already removed any danger of a famine. Indeed, he has done more than that, for, if quality can (as it should) be considered a satisfactory substitute for bulk, there is no reason why 1914 should not be remembered as a year in which the palates of discerning boys were most delightfully tickled. I find a difficulty in preventing my congratulations upon The Book of the Blue Sea (Longmans) from being fulsome. To begin with, the title itself is simply irresistible. Then, before you even get to the preface, there are some verses, "The Song of the Larboard Berth," which cry "halt" so arrestingly that after I had got by them and was fairly revelling in the entrancing pages that follow I kept on going back to have another look at

To a nicety Mr. Newbolt knows how to reproduce the spirit of the sea and of adventure thereon, and whether he is writing of Edward Pellew, John Franklin, David Farragut, or of Trafalgar, it is only possible to escape from his grip when he endeavours to be a little edifying. Boys may conceivably resent this tendency to point out what they can see extraordinarily well for themselves, but all the same they will admit their heavy debt to him. The Book of the Blue Sea (I must write that again), excellently illustrated by Mr. Norman Wilkinson, had better be confiscated forthwith by parents who do not wish their sons to become sailors. And in the end I am left wondering whether the Admiralty, overburdened by clamorous applicants, would not be wise to intern Mr. Newbolt in one of those camps where no ink or paper is provided, because, if he repeats this performance, we shall want a dozen new naval colleges and hundreds and hundreds more ships.

Shifting Sands (Lane) reads like a book with a purpose from which the purpose has been by some oversight omitted. When a young person fails to "find herself" (as the phrase used to go) there should surely be provided some foil to her instability, either implicit in the behaviour of other characters or expressed in the meditations of the author. Even if the author only means to tell us that human life is all like this, she ought at least to let us know that she means it. Gabrielle Brenda is presented to us by Alice Birkhead as a girl brought up in the remoter parts of Cornwall by a father who was a semi-retired doctor and something of a dreamer. She develops dramatic talent, and having become engaged to her instructor gives him up to her younger sister for no better reason apparently than that she has always been accustomed to give that sister everything she wants. Afterwards Gabrielle becomes the secretary of a domineering little manufacturer in the Black Country with expensive sons and daughters. She resists his proposals of marriage and also the temptation to purloin his eldest daughter's fiancé, and then reverts to her original vocation, without finding on the stage either satisfaction or any remarkable success. For I see no indication that the offer of a fairly lucrative engagement in America, with which the book ends, is regarded by the author as the golden moment of her heroine's career. Altogether I am at a loss whether to learn from Shifting Sands the disadvantages of a haphazard education, the unfair position of woman in the labour-market, or merely the irony of fate. And this is a pity because, though the manner of the story is very episodic, there are scenes and conversations of considerable vivacity and truth.

Baroness Orczy is to be congratulated on a distinctly ingenious idea. Searching about her, no doubt, for a successor to the famous Pimpernel, her attention was caught by a certain picture in the Wallace Collection, a picture everyone knows and admires for its rollicking and adventurous high spirits. "Capital!" said she (as I imagine it); "why not trace back the line of Blakeney, and make the subject of this picture the ancestor from whom he inherited his endearing qualities?" The Laughing Cavalier (Hodder and Stoughton) is the result. Having thus divined the origin of the hero, I feel that any further indication of his character would be almost superfluous. You will certainly not find this new Blakeney unworthy of his house. It is perhaps something of a surprise to find him a mercenary in seventeenth-century Holland; but the old touch is there. Thus, having been hired by a gang of conspirators to abduct the sister of one of them, who has overheard their plans for the slaying of the Stadtholder, and keep her prisoner till the deed be done, what more Blakeneyish than that he should recognise in his captive the particular object of his affections? or that, having abducted the girl according to instructions received, he should presently be offered untold gold by her distracted parent for her discovery and return. A faintly embarrassing situation this, even for an ancestor of the elusive Pimpernel. How he manages to turn it all to favour and romance you must allow Baroness Orczy to tell you herself. Incidentally, the appearance of the book at this particular moment, and in spite (so the publishers inform me on a slip) of the author's first resolve to postpone it, proves her to possess something of the sporting spirit of her creation. Hero's luck to them both!

A novelist creating a novelist-hero is on dangerous ground. If he be a little less than perfectly sincere he runs risk of being pretentious, fatuous even. But sincerity is just Mr. Charles Marriott's conspicuous quality, and here in The Unpetitioned Heavens (Hutchinson) it commands a dexterous and fastidious workmanship. You'll find, if you read a scene over again, that there's more, not less, in it than you thought. Mr. Marriott makes his characters alive by realisation of their subtleties rather than of their obviousnesses, and that's a feat to which I doff my beaver. The main theme, sensitively felt and developed, is a delicate one—the love of a middle-aged woman for a man who is rapt in worship at a distance of a younger woman, the other's friend. The manœuvring of the elder, which might easily have been vulgarised on the one hand or devitalised on the other, just remains refreshingly and believably human. Mr. Marriott's story is not a yarn, but a brocade of intricate design and exquisite colouring. Let justice be done and The Unpetitioned Heavens fall to a wide circle of perceptive readers.