In _To Ruhleben--and Back_ (CONSTABLE), Mr. GEOFFREY PYKE has such a fine yarn to spin of his foolhardy proceeding in walking right into the eagle's beak as correspondent for an English newspaper, at the end of September, 1914, and (after some months' solitary confinement in Berlin and his transfer to the civilian prisoners' miserable internment camp at Ruhleben) walking right out of it again, that one can forgive him for spreading his elbows for a piece of expansive writing when he was safe home. To tell the truth he writes extraordinarily well; one's only feeling is that the simplest idiom would be best for such an amazing narrative, and Mr. PYKE is too young and too clever (both charmingly venial faults) to write simply. When I tell you that this persistent youngster, hardly out of his teens, patiently worked out a plan of escape which depended for its efficacy on an optical illusion (the precise secret of which he does not give away), and with his friend, Mr. EDWARD FALK, a District Commissioner from Nigeria, part tramped, part _bummel-zugged_ the two hundred and fifty miles or so from Ruhleben to the Dutch frontier, disguised as tourists, with a kit openly bought at WERTHEIM's, living, when marketing became too dangerous, on potatoes and other roots burglariously digged from the fields at dark, you will gather that this is some adventure. But I am afraid the publication will not assist any other prisoners at Ruhleben to escape. It is pleasant to note that the Commandant of the Camp, VON TAUBB, was a sportsman and none too thickly tarred with the brush of Prussian efficiency; and that the Governor, GRAF SCHWERIN, threatened resignation if a no-smoking order, sent from headquarters, were insisted on. Indeed, the fact that our young friend was not shot out of hand must stand as a small entry on the credit side, not inconveniently crowded, of Prussia's account in the recording angel's ledger. * * * * *