ys are happily passed when he was a neutral in name
his position as an impartial spectator gives him an advantage denied to the
most veracious of our own correspondents. Our French Allies too may be
congratulated, by themselves as well as by us, on being observed by eyes so
shrewd and friendly. "No two French soldiers seem quite alike on the march
or when moving about a village on leave. Each seems three beings--one a
Frenchman, one a soldier, a third himself." Anyone who has been in the
war-zone and seen a French regiment resting cannot fail to be struck by the
acuteness of this remark; indeed it provides the key to what, for an
ordinary British mind, is a puzzle. It is one of Mr. PALMER'S many virtues
that, although his main business was to watch the soldiers and the
fighting, he never forgets the man inside the uniform. This gives to his
historical record the added interest of a study in psychology.

* * * * *

_The Unspeakable Perk_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) and his attendant puppets
are, to put it kindly, selected from the stock characters of Lesser
American Fiction. There is the "radiant" heroine from Squeedunkville, Wis.
(or Mass.); the tame Poppa with the simoleons, the hero heavily disguised
as a worm, and a worm or so to do the real heavy worming when the hero's
turn comes to pull off the grand-stand play (this doesn't sound like
English but it is really the standard "line of talk" in Lesser American
Fiction). And last but not least there is the "fiery" Southerner. In real
life Southerners are melancholy men with a tendency to _embonpoint_ and
clawhammer coats of ante-bellum design. But in Lesser American Fiction they
are for some undiscovered reason always "fiery." To the fiery one the
heroine "unconsciously turns" when the apparent earmarks of the hero's
wormhood are dramatically revealed, and of course she hands him what she
would probably describe as the "sister" stuff when the gentleman emerges in
his natural colours. That is what makes the story-book Southerner so fiery.
Place these complex characters in an imaginary Carribean Republic, a sort
of transpontine Ruritania; add a revolution fostered by the serpentine
diplomats of a European power; let the American eagle issue a few screams,
and there you have the environment in which _The Unspeakable Perk_ lives
and moves and has his unreal being. The keynote of SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS'
story is what the _Perk_ person would describe a