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
being so it is arguable that Mr. WARD MUIR was thinking far ahead in
compiling his hospital reminiscences, _Observations of an Orderly_
(SIMPKIN). One hastens to make it clear that the last thing intended
or desired is to disparage the usefulness or the stark self-sacrifice
of the men who are serving in menial capacities in our war hospitals,
but to tell the truth this account of sculleries and laundry-baskets,
polishing paste and nigger minstrels, bathrooms and pillow-slips, has
not much intrinsic interest about it, nor are the author's general
reflections very different from what one could supply oneself without
much effort. His notes on war slang are about the best thing in
the volume, and I liked the story of the blinded soldiers--feeling
anything in the world but mournful or pathetic--who played pranks on
the Tube escalator; but on the whole this is a book which will be of
considerable interest only to the writer's fellow-labourers.
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