EDGWICK.
You know already (I hope) how wonderfully delicate is her almost
passionate sensibility to the finer shades of a situation. It is,
I suppose, this quality in her writing that makes me still have
reminiscent shivers when I think about that horrible little
bogie-tale, _The Third Window_; and these "Flower Pieces" (as 1860
might have called them) are no whit less subtle. I wish I had space to
give you the plots of some of them; "Daffodils," for instance, a quite
unexpected and thrilling treatment of perhaps the oldest situation of
literature; or "Staking a Larkspur," the only instance in which Miss
Sedgwick's gently smiling humour crystallizes definitely into comedy;
or "Carnations," the most brilliantly written of all. As this liberty
is denied me you must accept a plain record of very rare enjoyment and
take steps to share it.

* * * * *

Chief among the _Secrets of Crewe House_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON),
now divulged to the mere public, are the marvellous efficiency and
superhuman success achieved by the British Enemy Propaganda Committee,
which operated in Lord CREWE'S London house under the directorate of
Lord NORTHCLIFFE. "What is propaganda?" the author asks himself on an
early page, and the right answer could have been made in four letters:
ADVT. It is endorsed by the eulogistic manner in which the Committee's
work is written up by one of them, Sir CAMPBELL STUART, K.B.E., and
illustrated by photographs of Lord NORTHCLIFFE (looking positively
Napoleonic) and of the sub-supermen. As in all great achievements, the
main principle was a simple one. A good article is best advertised by
truth; and it was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the
truth which the Committee, with admirable conciseness and no little
ingenuity, so promulgated that it could no longer escape notice even
in the Central Empires. Not the least of the Committee's difficulties
and achievements was to get the truth of our cause and policy so
defined as to be susceptible of unequivocal statement by poster,
leaflet, film and gramophone record. Sir CAMPBELL STUART perhaps tends
to underrate the rival show, the German propaganda organization, whose
work, if it did Germany little good, has done and is still doing
colossal harm to us. Also he tends to forget that Lord HAIG and his
little lot in France at any rate helped the Committee to effect the
breakdown of the German _moral_ in 1918 and so to win the war.