me that publishers should suppose that books, intimate
about the invisible but abiding shadow which is often more potent than
present May sunshine, should not be wanted. Take for example this book I
was reading, _The Squadroon_, by Ardern Beaman. To induce readers to buy
it it has a picture on its dust-cover which kept me from reading it for
weeks. This wrapper shows a ghostly knight in armour leading a charge of
British cavalry in this War. I should have thought we had had enough of
that romantic nonsense during the actual events. The War was written for
the benefit of readers who made a luxury of the sigh, and who were told
and no doubt preferred to believe that the young soldier went into battle
with the look we so admire in the picture called The Soul's Awakening. He
was going to glory. There are no dead. There are only memorial crosses
for heroes and the Last Post. The opinions of most civilians on the War
were as agreeable as stained-glass windows. The thought of a tangle of a
boy's inside festooned on rusty wire would naturally have spoiled the
soul's awakening and the luxury of the sigh. I heard of a civilian
official, on his way to Paris after the Armistice, who was just saved by
rapid explanations from the drastic attention of a crowd of Tommies who
mistook him for a War Correspondent.

But Mr. Beaman's book is not like war correspondence. It can be commended
to those who were not there, but who wish to hear a true word or two. Mr.
Beaman as a good-natured man remembers how squeamish we are, and being
also shy and dainty indicates some matters but briefly. I wish, for one
thing, that when describing the doings of his cavalry squadron after the
disaster on the Fifth Army front--the author enables you to feel how
slender was the line of resolute men which then saved the Army from
downfall--he had ventured to record with more courage the things which it
shamed him to see. Why should only such as he know of those shocks to
affability? But all he says about some unpleasant matters is: "During
those days we saw things of which it is not good to speak--of which
afterwards we never did speak, except late at nights, in the privacy of
our own mess."

Mr. Beaman's simple narrative, however, with its humanity and easy
humour, often lets in light on strange affairs, as though he had
forgotten what had been locked up, and had carelessly opened a forbidden
door. He shuts it again at once, like a gentlemen, and we follow him