If spacious hobbies make for happiness then is Sir MARTIN CONWAY the happiest of men. He has been before us at various times of his crowded life, now as an undaunted peak-compeller in Alps and Himalayas, or skiing over Arctic glaciers, or pushing forward into hazardous depths of Tierra del Fuego; now sitting authoritative in the SLADE Chair at Cambridge, or contesting an election, or restoring an old castle, or picking up priceless primitives for paltry pence in Paduan pawnshops; and always as a resourceful author setting it all down (in a couple of dozen books or so) with an easy-flowing pen incapable of boring. In _The Crowd in Peace and War_ (LONGMANS) he makes his bow as the political philosopher. It is a lively essay packed with observation, reflection, modern instances; it intrigues us with audacious and disputable generalisations, acute criticism, and a liberal temper. Solemnity and dulness are banished from it, and it might well serve as a light pendant to the admirable _Human Nature in Politics_ of Mr. GRAHAM WALLAS. Let no student (and no mandarin either) neglect it. And we others, however scornful we may profess to be, are all at heart desperately interested in the confounded thing called politics, and can all appreciate this shrewd analysis of the vices and virtues of the crowd "which lacks reason but possesses faith," whose despotism is now on trial as once was that of our kings--"unlimited crowddom being as wretched a state as unlimited monarchy." As a dose of politics without tears I unreservedly commend this book.