Chapter 4

Little _Sara Lee Kennedy_, betrothed to one of those alert grim-jawed young Americans one sees in the advertising pages of _The Ladies' Home Journal_, learns of the suffering in Belgium at the beginning of the great War and finds she must do something about it. She can cook, so she will go and make soup for KING ALBERT's men. She takes her young man's photograph and his surly disapproval; also a few dollars hastily collected from her obscure township in Pa.; and becomes the good angel of a shattered sector of the Belgian line. And she finds in _The Amazing Interlude_ (MURRAY) her prince--a real prince--in the Secret Service, and, after the usual reluctances and brave play (made for the sake of deferring the inevitable) with the photograph of the old love, is at last gloriously on with the new. It is a very charming love-story, and MARY ROBERTS RINEHART makes a much better thing of the alarms and excursions of war than you would think. It was no good, I found, being superior about it and muttering "Sentiment" when you had to blink away the unbidden tear lest your fireside partner should find you out. So let me commend to you this idealised vision of a corner of the great War seen through the eyes of an American woman of vivid sympathies.

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_Rovers of the Night Sky_ (CASSELL) is for more reasons than one a welcome addition to my rapidly bulging collection of books about flying. "NIGHT HAWK, M.C.," was in the Infantry--what he calls a "Gravel-Cruncher"--before he took to the air, and by no means the least interesting part of his sketches is the way in which he explains the co-operation which existed between the fliers and the men fighting on the ground. And his delight when a bombing expedition was successful in giving instant assistance to the Infantry is frequently shown. After his training in England "NIGHT HAWK" was attached as an observer to a night-flying squadron in France, and he tells us of his adventures with no sense of self-importance but with an honest appreciation of their value to the general scheme of operations. He has also a keen eye for the humours of life, and can make his jest with most admirable brevity. "Doubtless," he says in a foreword, "the whole world will fly before many years have passed, but for the moment most people have to be content to read about it." I am one of them, and he has added to my contentment.

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My studies of recent fiction induce the belief that modern Wales may be divided into two parts, in one of which the inhabitants call each other _Bach_ and follow a code of morals that I simply will not stoop to characterise; while the other is at once more Saxon in idiom and considerably more melodramatic in its happenings. It is to the latter province that I must assign _A Little Welsh Girl_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON), the Romance, with a big R, of _Dylis Morgan_, who pushed an unappreciated suitor over a precipice and came to London to make her fortune in revue. Really the suitor didn't go all the way down the precipice; but as, by the time he recovered, _Dylis_, disguised, had fled for England, he was promptly arrested for her murder, and as _Dylis_ thought she had murdered him there was presently so much confusion (increased for me by the hopelessly unpronounceable names of a large cast) that I found it increasingly hard to keep the affair in hand. As for _Dylis's_ theatrical career--well, you know how these things are managed in fiction; for my part I was left wondering whether Mr. HOWEL EVANS' pictures of Wales were as romantically conceived as his conception of a West-End theatre. Though of course we all know that Welsh people do sometimes make even more sensational triumphs in the Metropolis; just possible indeed that this fact may have some bearing on the recent flood of Cambrian fiction. Certainly, if _A Little Welsh Girl_ achieves success on the strength of Mr. LLOYD GEORGE's triumph, she may thank her luck, for I have my doubts whether she could manage it unassisted.

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Of _Ladies Must Live_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) one may say, in the first place, that it is fortunately unnecessary as well as unusual for the bulk of them to live in the scalp and tomahawk atmosphere that distinguishes the sexual and social rivalry of _Christine Fennimer_ and _Nancy Almar_, the two beautiful American Society dames whose duel for the affections of the eligible hero form the plot, the whole plot and nothing but the plot of Miss ALICE DUER MILLER's latest book. Nature red in tooth and claw has not mothered them--they are too well-bred for that; they simply bite with their tongues. _Mrs. Almar_, who is married and purely piratical, comes off worst in the encounter, and the more artful _Christine_, ultimately falling in love with the object of her artifices, becomes human enough to marry him, despite his lapse from financial eligibility. The plot is a thin one, but smoothly and brightly unfolded. Unhappily Miss MILLER lacks the gift of delicate satire and the sense of humour that the society novel above all others seems to require. With a lighter and less matter-of-fact treatment one would accept more easily the overdrawing of her rather impossible felines.

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"Sir Charles Sykes, Director of Wood Production, has conferred with representatives of each section of the tailoring trade, with a view to simplifying the regulations and making possible a larger output of Standard suits."--_Daily Paper_.

We look forward to the part that this new clothing will play in the general scheme of afforestation.

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"A lady visiting the town complained that she went to a licensed house and asked to be served with tea. She alleged that the licensee was very rude to her, and refused to grant her request. He [the Superintendent of Police] desired to point out to license holders that they were bound to provide proper accommodation and refreshment for man and beast."--_West-Country Paper_.

And we desire to point out to the Superintendent that that is not the proper way to refer to a lady.