of middle age, and they speak out of their experience, elliptically, with allusion to the much more that they do not say. Consequently, even in reading, the play demands pondering, pauses, occasional goings back. In the theatre, where there is no opportunity for such things, one cannot but feel that it would be bewildering. Nevertheless, one would like to see it there; for it is possible that, as happens with Tchehov, its significance would be brought out by intelligent acting.

Naval Operations, Volume III., by Sir Julian Corbett (Longmans, Green & Co.) Sir Julian Corbett had written the whole of this volume before he died, and it was only necessary to revise and edit it before publication, a work undertaken by Lieut.-Col. Daniel. The book deals with naval operations during the war from the spring of 1915 to the Battle of Jutland, and contains, besides the story of that engagement in the North Sea, an account of the Dardanelles campaign and of the naval operations in Mesopotamia. The main interest of the book naturally centres around the Battle of Jutland, which is told, one may say, in its development hour by hour. But the narratives of the Dardanelles and of Mesopotamia are equally thrilling. As in the case of the previous volumes it can be said of this one that it is eminently readable, and that the man in the street will find pleasure in a story written by the pen of a ready writer.

A Dictionary of Applied Physics, edited by Sir Richard Glazebrook. Volumes III., IV., and V. (Macmillan & Co.). The three volumes published in 1923 complete this great work which will surely rank as one of our standard reference books. The dictionary is not a dictionary in the ordinary sense of the word, it is more in the nature of a collection of monographs by specialists. The alphabetical order of treatment and the numerous cross-references have afforded a means of handling a mass of material which by its sheer magnitude might well have defied successful treatment by any other means. From its very nature the book is one for specialists-scientists, engineers, and technicians. Nevertheless, it may safely be predicted that its thousands of pages which also contain matter of general interest will act as a medium of general education among non-specialist readers in reference libraries.

It would be difficult adequately to convey the scope and standard of these three volumes, but a reference to some of the articles and their authors will demonstrate their value. Volume III. is devoted to meteorology in its widest interpretation, and includes articles on "The Investigation of the Upper Air and Radiation" (W. H. Dines); "Atmospheric Electricity" (C. T. R. Wilson); "Oceanography" (D. J. Matthews); "Tides and Tide Prediction" (F. J. Selby); and "Earthquakes" (the late Prof. Knott). In the section on measurement, the article on "Gauges" by F. H. Rolt, is practically a treatise, and sets forth admirably much of the exact workshop and test-room procedure developed during the war. In this volume, too, there are interesting articles on barometers, balances, "clocks and time-keeping" (Prof. Sampson), and maps (A. R. Hinks), and an excellent introduction, by Dr. S. Brodetsky, on the fascinating method of graphical solutions now known as "Nomography." Vol. IV. deals with Light, Sound, and Radiology, and both theoretical and practical aspects receive adequate treatment.

Then there are articles on Glass, Coloured Glasses, the Kinematograph, the Microscope, the Pianoforte and Piano-players. Vol. V. includes Aeronautics, the youngest of the applied sciences, and Metallurgy, one of the oldest. Dr. Rosenhain and Dr. J. M. Haughton are responsible for much of the information under the latter heading; these two names are sufficient recommendation for the excellence of the treatment. One suggestion in conclusion may perhaps not be out of place it is that steps should be taken to keep up-to-date the information in a work which may be expected to remain a standard reference book in its particular sphere.

FICTION.

Memories of the Future: 1915-1972, by Ronald A. Knox (Methuen). Mr. Ronald Knox presents himself as the editor of the reminiscences of Opal, Lady Porstock, who wrote in 1988 this valuable survey of an era that is still vivid in the nightmares of our own day. Lady Porstock lived to see the Great War of 1972 and it is interesting to learn that during her long life she suffered from an air-raid complex set up by the primitive skirmishes of her childhood in 1917. Her schooldays (19301934) were made hideous by the ridiculous restraints and brutalising punishments prevailing in those dark days. At Oxford, in the early days of fees and bonuses for attendance at lectures and chapels, when Proctresses and moving pavements could be spoken of as novelties, and when Canon Dives was first formulating his "Explanation of the Existence of God," she was the first woman President of the Union. Over the amusing details of railway travel on the Continent in 1938, before the jarring units of Middle Europe were, by the genius of a renowned Tourists' Agency, welded into the hotel-state of Magiria, it would be tempting to linger. No one, however, will envy Lady Porstock her experiences with the crude psycopathy of 1940-the auto-suggestion course, the colour-cure, mental homoeopathy-and even the placid ruralities of the chapter on "Business and Pleasure are doubtless best appreciated in retrospect. "London Society and its Follies" (1945-1953) will console many for their absence from the scene, though there can be few of to-day's readers to whom the story of the Parliamentary Election of 1953 will not have an intimate appeal. Lady Porstock's visit to the U.S.A., shortly after the discharge of the British debt by the sale of peerages to American citizens, and at the height of the anti-chewing-gum campaign, led to her marriage to Wilse Harkness, Lord Porstock. Her home life and Parliamentary career, her reminiscences of the great men of the day, her religious pilgrimage from relativism to Rome, and her reflections on the unfit, overcrowded, restless, indisciplined, materialistic England of 1972, the very eve of the Great War, complete a memorable volume. Mr. Knox has edited these important memoirs with rare discrimination; his satire has an attractive freshness, and the fertility of his ideas furnishes abundant amusement for his readers.

Told by an Idiot, by Rose Macaulay (Collins). Miss Macaulay has written a satirical history of the last half-century, its movements, fads, and cults, in illustration of the passage from which her title is taken. The Garden family is large enough and responsive enough to all the

influences of its times to afford a collection of diverse and entertaining types. Mr. Garden samples all brands of religion and its substitutes; gentle Mrs. Garden keeps up with him until advancing years dispose her to the comfort of Anglicanism. Their sons and daughters, and the grandchildren in their turn, are always intellectually up to date. Miss Macaulay has assembled with a devout malice all the necessary detail for the domestic and social setting of their continual quest. One daughter, Rome, remains an unmoved spectator of life after a love affair which, however burlesqued, is tragic. Stanley, her sister, brings an unchanging earnestness to an endless variety of causes. The many attractive qualities of Stanley's husband, Denman, do not include fidelity. Imogen has the poetic temperament in its finest disorder; Maurice is an iconoclast; Vickey is bright and practical. The general theme, perhaps over-stressed, is reminiscent of Milestones: the younger generation is always in rebellion against the standards of the old; the wheel goes round; the same situations repeat themselves; it has all happened before and will happen again. The reception of Miss Macaulay's book showed that our readiness to laugh at demoded follies is an equally permanent characteristic of the race.

Their

The Back Seat, by G. B. Stern (Chapman & Hall). Robert Carruthers occupies the back seat in the household. He has been a failure in business, and Leonora, his wife, is the most charming and successful of London's actresses. The position is by no means uncomfortable, for he has some solace in carpentering, Leonora is the embodiment of affection and generosity, and domesticity has for her a publicity value to be exploited with grace and humour; but Robert does not accept the situation so utterly without question as she does. elder daughter, Faith, nineteen years old, is sufficiently like her mother for a certain rivalry to be possible between them, however little Leonora may realise it. Her younger sister, Sally, is wholly absorbed in posing as the forlorn, loving, little figure whom every one overlooks; and the company usually includes young Pat Ormond, assiduously attendant on Leonora. Pat writes a play with a young girl part intended for Leonora, the plot of which has a curiously direct application to the Carruthers household, although its author has not perceived this. Part II. interrupts a reading of the play at the point when Pat and Robert realise that Faith is the ideal interpreter of the part meant to be her mother's. It is Robert who, disconcerting Pat by his unexpected insight, and winning Leonora over by a sentimental appeal for a few months of her company away from the stage, secures the part for Faith. There is an abundance of pretty comedy in Part III., "Family Life of an Actress," the period of Faith's rehearsals and her conquest of Pat, and of Robert's attempted recapture of his youthful idyll. Part IV. shows Faith on the first night of the piece, broken by the realisation of failure in the first two acts, and unable to bring herself to face the audience for Act III. It is then that Leonora, entering the dressing-room, interprets the part to her daughter and conveys to her sufficient of her own genius for the situation to be saved. In Part V. Faith accepts Pat and leaves the stage; Leonora makes ready for her American tour; Robert returns to the back seat. The author has not allowed the real drama of the

position to overweight her novel. The story is so swiftly and concisely told as to suggest the dialogue of a play held together by what the film world calls "continuity," and Miss Stern's wonted cleverness and irony are employed with delightful effect.

The End of the House of Alard, by Sheila Kaye-Smith (Cassell & Co.). The author chooses the ancient Sussex family of the Alards to display one of the most painful of contemporary social phenomena, the decay of the landed proprietors. Sir John Alard is a gouty old tyrant; Lady Alard is completely under his dominion; with that ruthlessness which characterises a roman à thèse, they and their children are made the victims of family pride and family necessity. Peter, the eldest son, the chief sufferer in the struggle between inclination and the need for money, gives up the doctor's daughter, Stella, and marries a wealthy Jewess. George, the second son, anything but a zealous clergyman, holds the family living. The eldest daughter, Doris, finds no one worthy of her hand, and sinks into a soured spinsterhood. Mary, the second daughter, marries a rich man she does not love. After the fairytale fashion, it is the youngest children who have a happier fate, through choosing a path of their own. Gervase brings on himself the wrath of his father by taking to motor engineering, and at last enters a Brotherhood. Jenny, after giving up a desirable but impoverished equal, seeks contentment in a lowlier sphere, and secretly marries a local farmer. Sir John has his final stroke; Peter commits suicide; Mary is divorced; angina pectoris makes an end of George. Gervase, now Father Joseph, becomes heir, and announces to the survivors the sale of the estate. Miss Kaye-Smith shows her indisputable power, but her story is unduly sombre, and an express and obtrusive Anglo-Catholicism is out of place in a work of fiction.

Love's Pilgrim, by J. D. Beresford (Collins). The pilgrimage of Foster Innes is made up of no more than four episodes, a modest allowance for modern fiction, and the second of these hardly justifies much expense of spirit. His sufferings are not due to external circumstance. He is a young man of birth and possessions, morbidly sensitive of a congenital malformation of the foot. Between him and his mother there is intense but selfish affection, "the love that cannot stand the test of jealousy," under the tyranny of which Mrs. Innes adds to the acuteness of her son's emotional crises, and he in turn frustrates what would probably have been a happy second marriage. Foster Innes first tells the story of his idealisation of Tertia Whitefield, and the agony of his disillusionment; next comes the war-time episode with Nita Fleming, whose affections are, to say the least, all too comprehensive. Grace Brewster is selected for him in the interests of the family and the succession to the peerage he is to inherit; sense of duty and a certain tenderness on both sides are defeated in an admirable scene in which Grace, who has learnt the difference between liking and love, ends the situation. An accidental meeting with Claire Morton brings Foster the worst of his ordeals and a final triumph. Claire, her sister Hettie, and her father are sheltering from the notoriety brought upon them by the father's trial for the murder of his wife and his doubtful acquittal. Foster's struggle with Claire's scruples and his family's opposition lasts

until Hettie's confession that it was she who made away with her insufferable mother, and her own death under a fallen tree. Generous love has worsted the selfish love incarnate in Mrs. Innes, and she is left defeated and unforgiving. Mr. Beresford has done work of much greater significance, but within the limits of the present novel his undeniable powers are impressively displayed.

Broken Bridges, by Madeline Linford (Leonard Parsons), depicts the emotional development of Rachel Silver from the evening on which, to her overwhelming grief, her schooldays at St. Faith's, Sussex, come to an end. Her passionate idealism, and the fervent religious aspirations she brings away from her school, are for a while disturbing to the pleasant, placid scheme of things in her home in a Manchester suburb. Gradually, however, she expands to the ordered routine and the small excitements of life in Milham Park, but not sufficiently to respond to the eager wooing of young Hugh Senior. Her sister marries, and she takes up a course in a commercial college. This part of the book ends with the first real shock to her poise, caused by a kiss from Philip Frew, the husband in a raptureless ménage in which she is staying on holiday. The war breaks out; Mrs. Silver goes north to await a grandchild; Rachel takes a room in a hostel for working-women and a position as typist with an advertising company. The manager is Maurice Rideal, upon whom matrimony weighs but lightly, and Rachel cannot resist his fascination even when she learns his position. Only a fortuitous glimpse of Mrs. Rideal shows her the true supremacy of the wife, and halts her at the last moment. Rachel falls ill. On her recovery she takes up war work among refugees in France, in a hospital for the care of orphan children, part of a great maternity hospital. Work among the children, and experience during emergencies in the main building where the mothers lie, complete her womanhood. It is there that Hugh Senior, himself on sick leave, comes to provide a happy ending. Miss Linford's writing, though at times overloaded, has unusual charm and felicity, and the concluding part of her novel proves that she holds considerable strength in reserve.

The Pitiful Wife, by Storm Jameson (Constable). Miss Jameson's work is peopled with beings of thews and passions beyond the measure of common men. The Trudes have a fitting home on a lonely crest of the Yorkshire moors. Its present master is John Trude, a lame demonic giant of Gargantuan appetites and monstrous violence of speech and conduct. His wife Anne is the mother of a daughter, Jael, whom she uses cruelly in order to harden her against the cruelties of life. After the birth of a son, Anne escapes from her heaped humiliations by seeking her own death of a chill. Jael grows up a very faery's child, the sweetheart of Richmond Drew, who has inherited the genius of his sculptor grandfather. Book II. brings Richmond back from his studies abroad, continues the love idyll of the pair, and ends with their marriage. After four years of happiness the war takes Richmond away for five years. He returns to his wife and son a changed man. The war has warped his being; he has betrayed Jael with Buddy Marsh, the daughter of a Kentish farmer. Life at Trudesthorp henceforth has only passionate intervals in a growing estrangement, more and more bitter and perplex