onality, so that one is made to see the young woman
who is clasped to the heroic breast on the last page as the logical
development of the ragged urchin stamping her bare foot into the soft
cement of _Calvary Alley_ on the first. Moreover--wonder of wonders
for transatlantic fiction!--the author is able to write about
children, and the contrasted lives of rich and poor city dwellers,
without lapsing into sentimentality, _O si sic omnes!_ But either
American bishops are strangely different from the English variety,
or Mrs. RICE, following Mr. WELLS'S example, has permitted herself
an episcopal burlesque. In either case the resulting portrait is
hardly worthy of an otherwise admirably-drawn collection of original
characters.

* * * * *

_Christine_ (MACMILLAN) contains a very illuminating picture of
Germany in the months immediately preceding the War; but I am
perplexed--and a little provoked--by the way in which it is presented.
The book opens with a pathetic foreword, signed by Miss ALICE
CHOLMONDELEY, in which we read: "My daughter Christine, who wrote
me these letters, died at a hospital in Stuttgart on the morning
of August 8th, 1914, of acute double pneumonia.... I am publishing
the letters just as they came to me, leaving out nothing.... The
war killed Christine, just as surely as if she had been a soldier
in the trenches.... I never saw her again. I had a telegram saying
she was dead. I tried to go to Stuttgart, but was turned back at
the frontier." Then follows a Publishers' note to the effect that
some personal names have been altered. After this one is naturally
surprised to find the book advertised as a "new novel." All I can
say is that, if Miss CHOLMONDELEY'S preface is true, her book is not
a novel, and that, if it is untrue, I do not think the foreword is
fair or in good taste. My opinion, for what it is worth, is that Miss
CHOLMONDELEY was herself in Germany during the summer of 1914, and
has chosen this way of telling us what she saw and heard. Anyhow the
letters are undoubtedly the work of someone who knows Germany and the
inhabitants thereof. And for this excellent reason _Christine_ should
not be missed by anyone who wants to know in what a state of militant
anticipation the Germans were living. The strongest searchlight
has been thrown over the Hun, from the habitues of a middle-class
boarding-house to members of the Junker breed. Whether these letters
ought to be cl