recalls those early manuscripts that most
novelists must have burnt before they were quit of boyhood, or preserved to
smile over. Still, in these winter days, when only Prime Ministers go to
Rome (and then not to bask) and Luxor is equidistant with the moon, you may
well find respite in a book so full of sunshine and memories of happy
places; but I am bound to repeat my warning that your fellow-travellers
will perhaps not be quite such stimulating society as the publishers would
have you expect.

* * * * *

Sir THEODORE COOK has already done sound work in dealing with German
methods, and in _The Mark of the Beast_ (MURRAY) he pursues his labours a
step further. So careful is he to give incontestable proofs for the charges
he brings against the Huns that even the most anaemic neutrals must find a
difficulty in reading this volume without recognising the truth. Especially
he emphasizes the dangers of peace-making with an enemy whose whole policy
and programme have been based on lies. And if he insists many times and
again upon this point he has his excuse in the fact that some of us are so
extraordinarily forgetful and forgiving that we cannot be reminded too
often of what the future has in store for us if we do not now remember the
past. With such an absolutely flawless case in his hands I find myself
wishing sometimes that Sir THEODORE had been less prodigal of the
denunciatory language which he hurls at Teutonic heads. Not for a moment
would I suggest that the Hun does not deserve vituperation, but I am
inclined to think that a less violent manner of attack is more effective.
In his own way, however, Sir THEODORE is inimitable, and I can pay no
higher praise to his book than to say that I know of no War-literature so
admirably calculated to make BETHMANN-HOLLWEG ("more double than his name")
really sorry for himself.

The War has not been lacking in fine memorials of the dead. To what extent
the Germans have commemorated the fallen I have no notion; but in France
and Italy the papers constantly print tender and eloquent tributes, usually
to the young. And in England we have the same thing too, touchingly,
proudly and generously done. For the most part such tributes are mere
records, but now and then they reconstruct; and the most remarkable example
of such reconstruction--to the world at large, absolute creation--is the
memoir of _Charles Lister_ (UNWIN), which his father, Lord RIBBLESD