erhaps the preposterous Mr. LANSBURY, the only
outstanding question is who casts it. The ordinary man would probably
have little hesitation about his answer to that. Mr. WELLS has even
less. He unhesitatingly names you and me and the French investors and
several editors. Well, I have no space for more than an indication of
what you will find in this undeniably vigorous and vehement little
volume. But I must not forget the photographs. Some of these, of
devastated streets and the like, have rather lost their novelty.
Unfortunately, however, for Mr. WELLS as propagandist he has also
included a number of the most revealing portraits yet available of the
men who are hag-riding a once great nation to the abyss. I can only
say that for me those portraits put the finishing touch to Mr. WELLS'S
argument. They extinguish it.

* * * * *

The pictorial wrapper of _A Man of the Islands_ (HUTCHINSON) is
embellished with a drawing of a coffee-coloured lady in a costume that
it would be an under-statement to call curtailed, also (inset, as the
picture-papers say) the portrait of a respectable-looking gentleman in
a beard. In the printed synopsis that occupies the little tuck-in
part of the same wrapper you are promised "an entrancing picture
of breaking seas on lonely islands and tropical nights beneath the
palms." In other words Mr. H. DE VERE STACPOOLE as before. Lest
however you should suppose the insularity of this attractive
pen-artist to be in danger of becoming overdone, I will say at once
that the six tales from which the book takes its name occupy not much
more than a third of it, the rest being filled with stories of varied
setting bearing such titles as "The Queen's Necklace," "The Box of
Bonbons," and the like--all frankly to be grouped under the head of
"Financial Measures." This said, it is only fair to add that the
half-dozen _Sigurdson_ adventures--he was the Man of the Islands, a
bearded trader, murderer, pearl thief and what not--seem to me a group
of as rattling good yarns as of their kind one need wish to meet,
every one with some original and thrilling situation that lifts it far
above pot-boiling status. I could wish (despite anything above having
a contrary sound) that Mr. STACPOOLE had given us a whole volume with
that South Sea setting that so happily stimulates his fancy.

* * * * *

Mr. S. P. B. MAIS has not yet extricated himself from the gro