If you want really to get a picture of war as she is waged by an obscure unit in the thick of the dirtiest, dampest and most depressing part, read PATRICK MACGILL'S _The Red Horizon_ (JENKINS). Here we meet the author of _The Children of the Dead End_ and _The Rat Pit_ as Rifleman 3008 of the London Irish, involved in the grim routine of the firing line--reliefs, diggings and repairs, sentry-go's, stand-to's, reserves, working and covering parties, billets; and so _da capo_. With a rare artistic intuition, instead of diffusing his effects in a riot of general impressions, he has confined himself to a record of the doings of his section, and I have read nothing that gives anything near so convincing an impression of the truth, at once splendid and bitter. It is a privilege to be shown, through the medium of an imaginative temperament, the fine comradeship of the trenches, the heroism that shines through the haunting fear of death, mostly conquered with a laugh, but sometimes frankly expressed in the pathetic desire for a "blighty" wound--a wound just serious enough to send the envied hero home. You won't get much of the Romance of War out of this strong piece of work, except the jolly sort of romance of the little Cockney, _Bill_, who, when the regiment in reserve was crouching in the trench under heavy shelling, cheered it by delivering himself characteristically as follows: "If I kick the bucket don't put a cross with ''E died for 'is King and Country' over me. A bully beef tin at my 'ead will do, and--''E died doin' fatigues on an empty stomach.'" * * * * *