IND YOU READING?"

_Jane._ "I THINK IT MUST BE THEM RUBBER 'EELS YOU WEARS, MA'AM."]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)

Mr. JOHN HASTINGS TURNER, who had already to his credit a play, a novel and
various successful revues, has now produced, in _A Place in the World_
(CASSELL), what is, I understand, to some extent a fictional version of his
play. How far this may be so I am uncertain (not having seen the play), but
I am by no means uncertain that it makes here a wholly admirable story, one
moreover that shows a notable advance in Mr. TURNER'S art as novelist,
being firmer in touch and generally more matured than anything he has yet
written. The plot concerns the adventures, spiritual and other, of _Madame
Iris Iranovna_, pampered cosmopolitan beauty, when fate or her own
egotistical whim had dumped her as a temporary dweller in the semi-detached
villas of suburbia. The theme, you observe, is one that might excuse the
wildest farce, since the effect of _Iris_ upon her unfamiliar surroundings
was naturally devastating. Mr. TURNER however has chosen the more ambitious
path of high comedy. In _Iris_ herself, and even more in the kindly old
vicar who so unexpectedly confronts her with her own weapons of wit and
worldly wisdom, he has drawn two characters of genuine and moving humanity.
I shall not tell you how the conflict (essential to real comedy) works
itself out, nor after what fashion the empty brilliance of _Iris_ is
humiliated and transformed. If I have a criticism of Mr. TURNER'S method,
it is that, as with _Bunthorne_, a "tendency to soliloquy" is growing upon
him which will need watching. But he clothes his reflections pleasantly
enough. Already known as what the old lady called "an agreeable
rattlesnake," he has now proved himself a story-teller of conspicuous
promise.

* * * * *

VON FALKENHAYN'S _General Headquarters 1914-1916 and its Critical
Decisions_ (HUTCHINSON) seems an honester book than LUDENDORFF'S; less
political, less querulous, less egoistic. VON FALKENHAYN, who was War
Minister when the War began and retained his office after he had superseded
VON MOLTKE as Chief of the General Staff, shows himself incurably Prussian,
refusing even to consider the possibility that any State which could wage
war effectively would hesitate to do so from any ethical or humanitarian
scruple. "Don't bother abou