eds of brave men the book has no mission,
and its cheerful detachment might not, in the absence of sterner
chronicles, be salutary. But as long as there are enough Commissions
to publish scathing reports on this or that phase of national
ineptitude it is not the publishers' business to provide cathartics
for the fatted soul of a self-satisfied people. As the passing of time
obliterates the futilities and burnishes the heroisms of the noblest
and most forlorn adventure in the history of the race, _The Immortal
Gamble_ will find a just place among the simple chronicles of courage
which the War is storing up for the inspiration of the generations to
come.

* * * * *

I fancy that of late the cinema has somewhat departed from its
life-long preoccupation with the cow-boy, otherwise, I should have
little hesitation in predicting a great future on the film for _Naomi
of the Mountains_ (CASSELL). For this very stirring drama of the
wilder West is so packed with what I can't resist calling "reelism"
that it is almost impossible to think of it otherwise than in terms
of the screen. It is concerned with the wooing, by two contrasted
suitors, of _Naomi_, herself more or less a child of nature, who dwelt
in the back-of-beyond with her old, fanatic and extremely unpleasant
father. But, though the action is of the breathless type that we
have come to expect from such a setting, there is far more character
and serious observation than you would be prepared to find. Mr.
CHRISTOPHER CULLEY has drawn a real woman, and at least two human and
well-observed men. I will not give you in detail the varied course
of _Naomi's_ romance, which ends in a perfect orgy of battle, with
sheriffs and shooting, redskins and revolvers--in short, all the
effects that Mr. HAWTREY not long ago so successfully illustrated on
the stage. To sum up, I should describe _Naomi of the Mountains_ as
melodrama with a difference--the difference residing in its clever
character-drawing and some touches of genuine emotion which lift it
above the ordinary. And this from one to whom the Wild West in fiction
has long been a weariness is something more than tepid praise.

* * * * *

Sir CHARLES WALDSTEIN, author of the thoughtful _Aristodemocracy_, is
a thinker with an internationalist mind. But pray don't think he's
not a whole-hogger about the War. In _What Germany is Fighting For_
(LONGMANS) he analyses the