is
knowledge of history. Feeling that here is a new class of shooting for
him to try his hand at, he will hasten to acquaint himself with the
details and will discover that the first of the essentials is a
European war in full blast. Whether or not he will see his way to
arrange that for himself, I don't know and, since I shall not be
present, I don't care. But in any case he will be absorbed in an
eminently scientific and indeed romantic study of perhaps the most
thrilling and deadly-earnest big game hunting there has ever been, and
he will be left not a little impressed with the work of the author,
Major H. HESKETH PRICHARD, D.S.O., M.C., his skill, energy and
personality. As to this last he will find a brief summing-up in the
foreword of General Lord HORNE, and he will be able to visualise the
whole "blunderbuss" very clearly by the help of the illustrations of
Mr. ERNEST BLAIKLEY, of the late Lieut. B. HEAD, and of the camera.
There is undoubtedly much controversial matter in the book, which must
necessarily give rise to the most remarkable gun-room discussions. I
can well imagine some stout-hearted Colonel, prompted by his love for
the plain soldier-man and his rooted dislike of all "specialists,"
becoming very heated in the small hours of the morning about the
paragraph on page 97, in which a division untrained in the Sniping
Schools is in passing compared to a band of "careless and ignorant
tourists."

* * * * *

Senor IBANEZ' new novel, _Mare Nostrum_ (CONSTABLE), is ostensibly a
yarn about spies and submarines, its hero a gallant Spanish captain,
_Ulysses Ferragut_, scion of a long line of sailormen. And there can
be no doubt of the proper anti-German sentiments of this stout fellow,
even though his impetuous passion for _Freya Talberg_, a Delilah in
the service of the enemy, did make him store a tiny island with what
the translator will persist in calling combustibles, meaning, one
supposes, fuel. But more fundamentally it is an affectionate song
of praise of the Mediterranean and the dwellers on its littoral,
especially the fiery and hardy sailors of Spain, and of Spaniards, in
particular the Valencians and Catalonians. Signor IBANEZ' method
is distinctly discursive; he gives, for instance, six-and-twenty
consecutive pages to the description of the inmates of the Naples
Aquarium and is always ready to suspend his story for a lengthy
disquisition on any subject, person or plac