mands of the circulating
libraries is unfulfilled. We have a fair-haired heroine (victim to
cocaine), a dark and villainous foreigner, a dashing hero, a middle-aged
woman who adores him despite the presence of her husband, himself called
throughout _Baron Brinthall_, a style surely more common in pantomimic
circles than in the drawing-rooms of Mayfair; and the incidents embrace
both murder and suicide. Moreover there is "plenty of conversation," and
the intrigue moves sufficiently quickly (if jerkily) to keep one curious
about the next page. But having very willingly admitted so much I return to
my contention, that for Mr. TIGHE to neglect his sensitive and delicate art
for the antics of these tawdry dolls is to betray both himself and the
craft of which he may still become a distinguished exponent.

* * * * *

From the official who is interested in officialdom to the Infantry officer
who is interested in tactics, from the mechanical expert who can appreciate
the technical details of diagrams to the child who revels in faultless
photographs of hair-raising monsters ("I may read it, mother, mayn't I,
when I've unstickied my fingers?" was the way I heard it put), everybody, I
think, will find plenty to attract him in Sir ALBERT STERN'S finely
illustrated _Tanks 1914-1918_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON). Tanks were born at
Lincoln, and rightly so, for did not OLIVER CROMWELL'S Ironsides mostly
come from this region?--and the main theme of this book is to show how much
more formidable an obstacle they found in the files and registries of
Whitehall than in the trenches and wire-entanglements of Flanders and
France. Parents they had and sponsors innumerable. Practical soldiers and
engineers were enthusiastic about them, and the Bosch quaked in his
trenches or ran; but even so late as the autumn of 1917, after General FOCH
(as he was then) had said, "You must make quantities and quantities; we
must fight mechanically," one stout little company of obscurantists bravely
defied the creed of Juggernaut until the irresistible logic of its
successes in the field crushed them remorselessly under the "creeping
grip." And that company, of course, according to Sir ALBERT STERN, was the
British War Office.

* * * * *

Let me commend to you _The Mask_ (METHUEN) as a craftsmanlike essay in
imaginative realism; ruthlessly candid and self-revealing, but free from
that tiresome obsessio