Mr. H. COLLINSON OWEN, formerly Editor of the soldiers' paper, _The Balkan News_, would just love to trap you into an argument on the value of our Macedonian campaign as compared with certain other war efforts. His book, _Salonika and After_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON), shows him thirsting to accept battle for the cause he champions; and in the sub-title, _The Side-Show that Ended the War_, he fairly throws down the gauntlet. But take my advice and don't be drawn. He has a foreword from General MILNE to support him, and an extract from LUDENDORFF'S _Memoirs_, and a quotation from _The Times_. He has a very lively and convincing way of putting things too, and once he gets his enthusiasm fairly in hand becomes an uncommonly powerful advocate. Not that this volume is by any means just a piece of special pleading; only the author is honourably concerned to show both the importance and the severity of the war against the Bulgars, which he thinks people at home were a little inclined to disparage. I certainly cannot remember doing so, but, putting controversy aside, this book remains an adequate first-hand account of an adventure so great as to demand an heroic literature all its own, where it can be seen in true perspective. Mr. OWEN deals delightfully with nights in Salonika clubland or the vagaries of King "TINO", or with the more warlike matters culminating in the terrific actions that held the enemy's left wing tight while our allies smashed his centre. An excellent book, with illustrations above the average and a good map handily placed. * * * * * Mrs. HENRY DUDENEY'S _Spade Work_ (HURST AND BLACKETT) is a queer story queerly told. A musician and an art-and-crafty girl, both poor and both dull, are engaged. The musician, visiting his _fiancee_, now well off and installed in a comfortable village farm-house, lets the strong air of the place get into his head and falls deep in love with a yeoman's daughter, who in turn, stimulated by this experience, straightway succumbs (at her first dance in real society, into which the great lady of the village, her patron, has introduced her) to the suggestion that she shall spend an unchaperoned night on a young blood's yacht, with results usual in distressful fiction. However, after many tribulations she and her musician, now duller than ever, are united, while the jilted craftswoman is left "full of ideas, sumptious (_sic_), a little feverish" for village industries which from my impression of her mentality I should judge would be of a devastating order. Lovers of that charming little West-country village in which the author sets her scene will not easily forgive her for naming it and baldly cataloguing its houses and sundry points of its environment, leaving out most that is the essential of its charm. It's simply not done by authentic writers of fiction--barring house-agents. * * * * *