in the least like
it, or any such method; too honest for irony, too detached for sentiment
and, as I said above, entirely merciless. Towards the end I found myself
falling back on the old frightened protest, "People don't do these things."
I still cling to this belief, but the fact remains that Miss HOLDING has a
haunting trick of persuading one that they might. Minor faults, such as an
irritating idiom and some carelessness of form, she will no doubt correct;
meanwhile you have certainly got to read--"to suffer" would be the apter
word--this remarkable book, whose reception I await with curiosity.

* * * * *

A much misunderstood man is Count BERNSTORFF, formerly German Ambassador at
Washington. While we were all supposing him to be a bomb-laden conspirator,
pulling secret strings in Mexico or Canada or Japan from the safe
protection afforded to his embassy, really he was the most innocent of men,
anxious for nothing but to keep unsophisticated America from being trapped
by the wiles of the villain Britisher. One has it all on the best of
authority--his own--in _My Three Years in America_ (SKEFFINGTON). Of course
awkward incidents did occur, which have to be explained away or placidly
ignored, but really, if the warlords at home had not been so invincibly
tactless in the matter of drowning citizens of the United States, this
simple and ingenuous diplomat might very well have succeeded, he would have
us believe, in persuading President WILSON to declare in favour of a
peace-loving All-Highest. As an essay in special pleading the book does not
lack ingenuity, and as an example of the familiar belief that other peoples
will shut their eyes and swallow whatever opinions the Teuton thinks good
to offer them, it may have interest for the psychologist. For the rest it
is a very prosy piece of literature, only saved occasionally in its dulness
by the unconscious crudity of the hatreds lurking beneath its mask of
plausibility. One of these hatreds is clearly directed against Ambassador
GERARD, to whose well-known book this volume is in some sort a counter-
blast. Neither a historian seeking truth nor a plain reader seeking
recreation will have any difficulty in choosing between them.

* * * * *

Mr. D.A. BARKER, in _The Great Leviathan_ (LANE), doesn't merely leave you
to make the obvious remark about his having taken Mr. H.G. WELL'S loose,
tangential and, for a b