while giving it to your boy to find out why.

* * * * *

Since the practice of writing first novels is becoming increasingly
popular with young authors it was inevitable that a "First Novel
Library" should find its way on to the market. Whether the
classification is to be construed as an appeal for forbearance for
the shortcomings of the neophyte, or as a warning which a considerate
publisher feels is due to the public, is not for me to say. But the
policy of charging six shillings for these maiden efforts--all that
is required of us for the mature masterpieces of our MAURICE HEWLETTS
and ARNOLD BENNETTS--is open to question. _The Puppet_, by JANE
HARDING (UNWIN), is not without merit, but the faults of the beginner
are present in manifold. The heroine tells her story in the first
person--a difficult method of handling fiction at the best--and in the
result we find a young lady of no particular education or apparent
attainments holding forth in the stilted diction of a rather prosy
early-Victorian Archbishop. The effect of unreality produced goes far
to spoil a plot which is wound and unwound with considerable skill.
Miss HARDING will write a good novel yet, but she must learn to make
her characters act the parts she assigns to them.

* * * * *

We all must be writing books about the War. It is natural enough to
suppose one's own share of war-work is worthy of record, and indeed,
when we come to think of it, the historian of the future will get his
complete picture of the time only when he realises how every scrap
of the national energy was absorbed in the one master purpose. That