cidents of murder and insanity
introduced without any excuse of necessity. The book contains a
considerable element of lively if undiscriminating humour, but its
insistence on the gruesome is so unfortunate that unless his hero's future
fate be already irrevocably fixed in manuscript one would like to remind
the author that essays in this kind are the easiest form of all literary
effort and the least supportable.

* * * * *

_With Serbia into Exile_ (MELROSE) is a book that will suffer little from
the fact that its tragic tale has already been told by several other pens.
Mr. FORTIER JONES, the writer, has much that is fresh to say, and a very
fresh and vigorous way of saying it. His book and himself are both American
of the best kind--which is to say, wonderfully resourceful, observant,
sympathetic and alive. From a newspaper flung away by a stranger on the
Broadway Express, Mr. JONES first became aware that men were wanted for
relief work in Serbia, and "in an hour I had become part of the
expedition." That is a phrase characteristic of the whole book. Though the
matter of it is the story, "incredibly hideous and incredibly heroic," of a
nation going into exile, Mr. JONES has always a keen eye for the
picturesque and even humorous aspects of the tragedy; he has a quick sense
of the effective which enables him to touch in many haunting pictures--the
delusive peace of a sunny Autumn day among the Bosnian mountains; the face
of KING PETER seen for a moment by lamplight amid a crowd of refugees; and
countless others. More than a passing mention also is due to the many quite
admirable snapshots with which the volume is illustrated. The author seems
successfully to have communicated his own gifts of observation and
selection to his camera, an instrument only too apt to betray those who
look to it for support. One is glad for many reasons to think that our
American cousins will read this book.

* * * * *

_The Man in the Fog_ (HEATH, CRANTON) is a book that I find exceedingly
hard to classify. Its author, Mr. HARRY TIGHE, has several previous stories
to his credit, all of which seem to have moved the critics to pleasant
sayings. But for my own part I have frankly to confess that I found _The
Man in the Fog_ somewhat wheezy company. The _Man_ of the title was a kind
of Northern Joseph, dismissed from a promising partnership with Potiphar
after a domestic intrigue