*

I have read with deep interest and appreciation and with a mournful
pleasure the _Letters of Arthur George Heath_ (BLACKWELL, Oxford). It
is the record, in a series of letters mostly written to his parents,
of the short fighting life of a singularly brave and devoted man.
There is in addition a beautiful memoir by Professor GILBERT MURRAY,
whose privilege it was to be ARTHUR HEATH'S friend. HEATH was not
vowed to fighting from his boyhood onward. He was a brilliant scholar
and afterwards a fellow of New College, Oxford. The photograph of him
shows a very delicate and refined face, and his letters bear out
the warrant of his face and prove that it was a true index to his
character. Until the great summons came one might have set him down
as destined to lead a quiet life amid the congenial surroundings of
Oxford, but we know now that the real stuff of him was strong and
stern. He joined the army a day or two after the outbreak of war,
being assured that our cause was just and one that deserved to be
fought for. He had no illusions as to the risk he ran, but that didn't
weigh with him for a moment. On July 11th, 1915, he writes to his
mother from the Western Front: "Will you at least try, if I am killed,
not to let the things I have loved cause you pain, but rather to get
increased enjoyment from the Sussex Downs or from Janie (his youngest
sister) singing Folk Songs, because I have found such joy in them,
and in that way the joy I have found can continue to live?" Beautiful
words these, and typical of the man who gave utterance to them.
The end came to him on October 8th, his twenty-eighth birthday. His
battalion of the Royal West Kent Regiment was engaged in making a
series of bombing attacks. In one of these ARTHUR HEATH was shot
through the neck and fell. "He spoke once," Professor MURRAY tells us,
"to say, 'Don't trouble about me,' and died almost immediately." His
Platoon Sergeant wrote to his parents, "A braver man never existed,"
and with that epitaph we may leave him.

* * * * *

The scenes of _A Sheaf of Bluebells_ (HUTCHINSON) are laid in
Normandy, where they speak the French language. But the Baroness ORCZY
does not take advantage of this local habit, and is careful not to put
too heavy a strain upon the intelligence of those who do not enjoy the
gift of tongues. "_Ma tante_," "_Mon cousin_," "_Enfin"_--these are
well within the range of all of us. Indeed, though I shrink fr