_Inter-Arma_ (HEINEMANN) is the title that Mr. EDMUND GOSSE has given to his latest volume of essays, reprinted from _The Edinburgh Review_. No one who loves clarity of style will need assurance about the quality of these studies, which, with one exception, are concerned with some or other aspect of the world-struggle. In "War and Literature," a paper dated during the black days of October, 1914, the author attempts to realise what will be the probable literary effect of the catastrophe by recounting the various ways in which French writers suffered from that of 1870. An interesting prediction, too, as recalling what many of us believed at the beginning of the war, is this about the future of English letters: "What we must really face is the fact that this harvest of volumes [the autumn publishings of 1914] will mark the end of what is called 'current literature' for the remaining duration of the war. There can be no aftermath, we can aspire to no revival. The book which does not deal directly and crudely with the complexities of warfare and the various branches of strategy will, from Christmas onwards, not be published at all." As they stand, these words might well serve as a mild tonic for "current pessimism"; not even the paper famine has brought them to fulfilment. Elsewhere in the volume is an instructive paper on "The Neutrality of Sweden" (valuable but vexatious, as are all the indictments of our insular apathy in the matter of influencing foreign opinion), and two or three interesting studies of French life and letters under the conditions of war. In fine, a book full of scholarly grace, such as may well achieve the writer's hope, expressed in his preface, of renewing the friendship he has already made with those readers "whose minds have become attuned to his," though they are now "separated from him by leagues of sea and occupied in noble and unprecedented service." * * * * *