war

learn all the new methods of which this campaign has produced. The case of the American colonel who refused to be a mere spectator at one of our bombing schools, and went through the whole course in the guise of a private under a British sergeantinstructor is, to my mind, typical of the manner in which American officers approach their task. The troops are a fine, virile, upstanding body of men, nearest perhaps to the Australians in type, but with a very distinct individuality of their own. The discipline is excellent, so far as can be judged by externals, and I shall be almost sorry for the Boches when these lithe, active Americans run up against them.

The American Expeditionary Force is completely self-supporting, and draws nothing from France except air, water, fresh vegetables and eggs. The soldiers eat the best white bread that I have tasted for many months, and all the flour comes from America, as does the frozen meat and everything else in the way of supplies, including the iron ration of bacon and biscuit, and even milk. The Americans do not therefore impose any very severe strain upon the food supplies of the nation whose guests they are, and, moreover, they are bringing over locomotives, carriages, trucks and railway plant to increase the possibilities of railway traffic on the French lines.

The relations between the Americans and their French hosts are excellent. There have been difficulties to be overcome, naturally, and things move more slowly than is pleasing to every one, but by the exercise of tact and discretion on both sides, the ways are being smoothed, and the troops and staff are settling down to the long preliminary work necessary to fit units for the specialized warfare of today. In a thousand ways the French prove excellent guides and invaluable helpers. They are employed by the hundred thousand in erecting huts for the troops, so that the Americans may be comfortably housed during their first winter in France. They are busy manufacturing an important part of the American ar

tillery, and in training the new arrivals to use these guns. They help in training specialists, especially in the infantry, and, in short, they place themselves completely at American. disposal while their guests are in what the latter themselves describe as a "formative" stage.

Our role in helping the Americans to perfect their organization and training is much more restricted, but still it is important. Our practice is to place everything that we have unreservedly at American disposal, and to throw all doors widely open to them. FieldMarshal Douglas Haig is excellently represented at General Pershing's headquarters by a good, sound, practical officer. The wonderful organization, spirit and efficiency of our armies come as a complete revelation to most American soldiers. Americans of all grades have visited our armies, have studied and have adopted much of our organization, have been present at our operations, large and small, and have, many of them, undergone the training in our schools for specialists. Some of our specialists, by request, help to found the American schools on sure bases. We have not forced ourselves in any way upon the Americans. We wait for them to come to us. They have just come to us at their good will and pleasure, without any false pride, and the unbreakable link of a common language, common ideals and a common outlook upon life has enabled them to understand us rapidly. What they find good in our system they accept and adopt, and what they find bad they reject.

In France we have suddenly discovered America, and America has discovered us. How different we both are from our preconceived notions of each other! We did not know what a highly educated, professional and modest gentleman the American Regular officer was, nor did we quite realize what a splendid body of active fighting men he was going to bring over with him. We are a great deal more enthusiastic about the Americans and, if I may say so, more proud of

them, than we show on the surface. How can we not regard as men of our own flesh and blood the relays of American soldiers of all grades who come to us, who speak our own language and bear our own names, who understand us in a flash of time, and whose point of view on almost every conceivable subject under heaven is our own?

These sentiments are, I hope, mutual. The Americans did not know what our armies were, nor what they had done or are doing. Many of them know now. They witness under fire our grand attacks and our raids. They observe with astonishment the terrific

powers of our modern artillery and the glorious activities of our splendid airmen. They see the spirit, the discipline, and the emulation of our infantry, and they are profoundly impressed by them. I hope that the pride which we feel, without venturing to express it, in the Americans is a little reciprocated by them. I can only say that every American soldier who has told me of his experiences on the British front has spoken with enthusiastic admiration of our men, and that an entirely new feeling, the consequences of which may be immense, is growing up between the two kindred nations.

"The Hill Trails, A Book of Verse," by Arthur Wallace Peach.

The human, sympathetically understanding and simply understandable. verse of Arthur Wallace Peach has pleased magazine readers the country over for many years. His poetry gets away from the feverish tenseness of dramatic climaxes and leads to quiet hill trails. It succeeds exceptionally well in articulating wisely and with. distinction and grace the ordinary moments, light-hearted or leaden, that make up life for most of the world. Every phase of living is found in the volume-love songs, poems of religious significance, songs of youth and springtime and old age, of troubles passed and conquered, songs of courage for the battle against dragons in the way, verses inspired by the sheer beauty and wonder of the

common

world. There is a wealth of imagery in the nature poems; the personifications of nature are particularly pleasing. In short, by virtue of wisdom of perception and easy harmony, the collection enriches both literature and life.

$1.00 net. Sherman, French & Co., Boston.

"Reed Voices," by James B. Kenyon.

Mr. James T. White, head of a big publishing corporation, himself a writer of verse and of wide circulation, and a member of the Poetry Society of America, and also for years editor in chief of the National Cyclopedia, is interested in the advancement of poetry, both in its production and dissemination. It is therefore the purpose of the publishers to issue a series of the best poetry of the present day, in compact and uniform size, in attractive. style and binding, and they believe that such a series will find a welcome place in the libraries of all poetry lovers, and be the means of elevating the art to a permanent and higher plane in the thought of the day, as well as doing justice to the humbler poets, whose grains of gold might otherwise be lost, for want of such a collector. It is the aim to have the quality of the Verse such as will give a sounder estimate of the place and dignity of poetic thought in the life of the day, and bring the poet himself into higher esteem and consideration.

The first volume of the series. "Poems and Lyrics," by Alfred Abernethy Cowles, is a collection of poems

7

of such beauty that Edmund Clarence Stedman insisted that they should be given to the world.

The most recent volume, "Reed Voices," by James B. Kenyon, has just been issued from the press. Included with numbers of this excellent collection of verses are a number by the author, taken from Atlantic Monthly, Scribner's, Harper's, Munsey's, Smart Set and other high-class publications. $1.25 net. James T. White & Co., New York.

"English B," by Agnes Porter.

Being brief records in verse of a student's intellectual and emotional adventures the first years out of the classroom. Leaving the friendly steps of the classroom, "English B," he blunders abruptly into life, only to withdraw a minute later into the old conceits of childhood. He thinks that by lighting The Blue Flame around the Christmas Pudding he can banish the apparitions of life. But he has forgotten how to play.

Turning To the Young, he warns them what queer things happen when the old nursery door closes "forever, with a slam that mocks." Now the door is shut, the adventurer must settle down before the coal fire of the world to try and get used to his Tenantry. He comes upon many mysteries and upsetting things, but finds surprising charms here and there, and Blue Lilies. And he finds life to a great

extent.

$1 net. Sherman, French & Co., Boston.

"Fun with the Fairies," by E. Geral

dine Berkeley.

The crowning glory of these fairy adventures is a trip to see-hushSanta Claus! And Emily and Johnnie are invited as special guests of the fairy queen. What more could be desired? The visit with dear Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus is as full of surprises and delights as a proper currant cake. There are little Wow Wow and Fluffy, the fairy puppy and kitten, for

instance. And among other things, Johnnie climbs into the engine cab (every one is tiny in Fairyland) and takes Emily and the fairies to ride in a toy train.

A book that ten-year-olds, both boys and girls, will enjoy.

$1 net. Sherman, French & Co., Boston.

"The Children's Lark," by Leila France.

To those children and grown-ups who love music and birds, especially larks, this little book will bring perennial delight. Song themes of larks, taken from the meadow larks of California. These largs sing all the year, from daylight to dark, and contribute a great variety of themes. Words accompany these themes and are written to suit young children's taste. Thirtyfour themes with appropriate titles, are given.

Published by Elite Music Co., Los Altos, Cal.

"The Land Where the Sunsets Go," by Orville H. Leonard.

"The Land Where the Sunsets Go" is not fiction, but a true description of the American Desert. Those who know this desert will shake hands with it again, and those who do not know it will see it for the first time truly. Readers who care for the terse and the laconic will not be disappointed in these sketches and bits of philosophy, in these stark tales and gripping poems.

The West is changing every day, but it has its backwaters as the East has. Into one of these the author drifted, and lived long enough to love the rugged country and its widely scattered people. There he met and fraternized with the desert rat, the keen prospector and the hobo miner, and later, when his duties took him across the mighty mountain wall that separates the desert from the semi-arid country, he met the hunter and the placer miner and the cattleman, and he has presented them in true and vivid colors. They

told him weird and stirring tales as they rode the trails with him. These he treasured and set down. The stars that seemed to bend so near the sands out there whispered to him, and the tales they told he set down also. In his poems and stories the coyote gives his eery howl, the mountains speak, the pines stand strong and quiet, and bring their own soothing messages.

$1.35 net. Sherman, French & Co., Boston.

and second, to give to all who may desire it a volume of poems that sing and celebrate the traditions, the life, and the great beauty of one of the greatest commonwealths in the Union. All of these things have inspired California poets and visiting poets, as readers of the book will find. Many songs of many singers bear witness to this beauty. A large anthology could be made of the poems that have been written about one flower-the eschscholtzia, California poppy. It is the

Percy Mackaye transmutes all earthly things and actions into the spiritual and ethical. In this instance he has grasped the theme of the great world's war, and through the magic help of the evergreen tree he endeavors by use of antic mirth, naive awe of paganism, the joy and passion of Christianity as marks both happy and tragic, which the folk spirit of Childhood has worn for ages, and shall wear for ages to come, in ritual of a tree that never dies. In the present dramatic conflict, for us as participants, he finds his theme, not of the drama, but of communal life, the action of which is a battle and a prayer. Accordingly his masque, he believes, fits in with the time. The masque is given in twelve actions. There are twenty persons in the cast, from Elf. Gnome, Tree, to Sorrow, Death, Poverty and four groups of people. The action is punctuated with choruses and carols.

Through the twenty characters he gradually develops his Christian purpose, touched with pagan themes. Illustrations in black and white and in colors illuminate the book.

D. Appleton & Co., New York.

"Golden Songs of the Golden State," Selected by Marguerite Wilkinson. The author frankly states that she had two purposes in publishing this unusually attractive collection of verses for those who love California and for those who weave her themes into poetry; first to make an interesting book,

coins of best metal, best minted in this treasury of verbal expression, and that is what the author has endeavored with fine selection to do.

Some rare old translations of famous early Spanish California are included in the volume; they contribute the original native color and imagination of the padre period. Some of these poems were taken from the early volumes of Overland Monthly. The author has made a notably good selection, something worth while to put in the California corner of your library.

$1.50 net. A. C. McClurg, Chicago.

"Green Fruit," by John Peale Bishop.

The beauty of these poems is classic and stately, with the unhurried, colorful, perfumed exquisiteness of greenclipt, cloistered gardens and of lovely women in rich brocades, with the courtly gallantry of powdered wigs and plated ruffs, with the art of a tapestry where ugliness is left out and beauty emphasized. The greatest appeal of the volume is rather to the senses than to the emotions—and, it might be said in passing, not infrequently as much to the eye as to the ear; the author has an instinct for words that paint as well as for rhythm. 80 cents net. Sherman, French & Co., Boston.

"The Supremacy of Life." by W. S. Harrison.

A poem in Miltonian vein, contemplating the wonders of life, of God, creation, the earth and all its number

less counterparts, sin, salvation, heaven and hell. In Book One the author would grasp something of the magnitude of life, and of infinity of time and boundlessness of space as giving some conception of the greatness of God, who is Life to all things. In the second book he beholds in a vision the glories of space, and philosophizes upon the overwhelming vastness of nature and the necessity for redemption to precede the creation of any life. capable of sin. In the third book, worlds in the making are viewed, from an unused void to a newly completed world.

$1.25 net. Sherman, French & Co., Boston.

"The Cruise of the Corwin, Journal of the Arctic Expedition of 1881 in Search of De Long and the Jeannette," by John Muir. Edited by William Frederic Bade.

John Muir, who joined the first search expedition from San Francisco, had achieved distinction by his glacial studies in the Sierra Nevada and in Alaska. The Corwin expedition afforded him a coveted opportunity to cruise among the islands of the Bering Sea and the Arctic Ocean, and to visit the frost-bitten shores of northeastern Alaska. The events that led up to the memorable cruise of the Corwin in 1881 and the hunt for the lost Arctic explorer, De Long, and his ship, the Jeanette. How keenly Muir appreciated the possibilities of the unknown Arctic land which they reached may be seen in the fourteenth chapter of the volume. To this time, nothing was known about Wrangell Land except its existence.

During the cruise Muir kept a daily record of his experiences and observations in this strange land. His note books contain a large amount of interesting literary and scientific material which has not been published. published. Muir's primary object in joining the Corwin expedition was to look for evidence of glaciation in the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions, and this volume

gathers up the results of his glacial studies and discoveries. Beside the illustrative drawings on glaciation in the Far North his note books contain numerous interesting sketches of geological and topographical features of Arctic landscapes. Freely illustrated with photographs and sketches.

$2.75 net. Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

"Songs of the Heart and Soul," by Jos. Roland Piatt.

Songs of auld lang syne are many of these, with something of the quality of Eugene Wood's prose in the reminiscences of boyhood and sweethearting days the quality that brings a laugh and a lump together to the throat as old scenes and characters, dear still but laughable as well, viewed through the vista of years, are sketched.

$1.25 net. Sherman, French & Co.,

"Flashlights," by Margaret Babcock.

These verses sing the faith and hope of Christian Science. They are the apostles of glad tidings; the Good in everything is their inspiration; the triumph and reality of that Good is their message. Theirs is the gospel of kindness and helpfulness one to another. They would banish wrong, proclaim peace; replace fear with courage, despair with hope, hate with love, sickness with health, ignorance with knowledge. Believing that the world is too full of tears, they would pass on a smile to brighten the years and help others to see a better day.

$1.25 net. Sherman, French & Co.,

"Poems," by Carroll Aikins.

There is much out-of-doors in the book, the generous, open spaces of the West, rather than the thickly wooded and more elaborate nature of the East. Particularly noticeable is the restraint and spirituality of its love songs. a quality rather unusual in modern poetry, where passion of sex is frequently the dominant note and the one reason for being.

75 cents net. Sherman, French & Co., Boston.