South African story, not concerned
however with Boers and natives and the trackless veld, but with coastwise
civilization and suburban garden-parties. As before, the author excellently
conveys the place-feeling, so well indeed that I was sorry when the love
intrigues of the two protagonists necessitated their quitting Africa for a
more conventional Italian setting. I may summarise the plot by telling you
that the particular almond that fell too late to the heroine was somebody
else's husband. But it wasn't so much that she was unable to eat him as
that he proved indigestible when swallowed. The lady was _Gerda_, young and
dazzling bride of the middle-aged _Fred Wooten_, and the gentleman one of
her husband's closest friends, also (before the arrival of _Gerda_) happily
married to a wife whom I found the most attractive person in the book. I
need not further detail the crooked course of untrue love, though I may
hint at a fault in balance, where your sympathy, previously and rightly
enlisted for poor betrayed _Fred_, is demanded for _Gerda_ in her
difficulty with the almond. As usual, Miss YOUNG unfolds her plot with
admirable directness, chiefly through a natural and unforced dialogue, so
easy that it disguises its own art.

* * * * *

If any reasonable man still possesses a grain of sympathy with Bolshevism I
invite him to purge himself by reading _With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia_
(CASSELL). In August, 1918, Colonel JOHN WARD, M.P., reached Vladivostok in
command of the 25th Battalion Middlesex Regiment, and from the time of his
arrival until his departure nearly a year later his position was almost
grotesquely difficult. Of our Allies in Siberia and of their policy he
writes with justifiable frankness. Our own is not excused, but he lets us
clearly see that however ineffectual it may have been there was honesty of
purpose underlying it. In the medley of confusion which prevailed we were
lucky to have in Colonel WARD as senior British officer a man who was not
afraid to shoulder his responsibility. Under conditions so exasperating
that anyone might have been excused if he had been overwhelmed with anger
and bewilderment he was resolved to uphold our prestige. Upon the
Bolshevist horrors in Siberia he does not dwell, but he says enough in
passing to make one shudder. Colonel WARD is a true friend of Russia. "This
great people are bound to recover, and become all the stronger for their
pres