There are parts of Mr. W.J. LOCKE'S latest novel, _The House of Baltazar_ (LANE), which will, I fear, make almost prohibitive demands upon the faith (considered as belief in the incredible) of his vast following. To begin with, he introduces us to that problematical personage, whose possibility used to be so much debated, the Man Who Didn't Know There Was A War On. _John Baltazar_ had preserved this unique ignorance, first by bolting from a Cambridge professorship through amorous complications, next by living many years in the Far East, and finally by settling upon a remote moorland farm (locality unspecified) with a taciturn Chinaman and an Airedale for his only companions. This and other contributory circumstances, for which I lack space, just enabled me to admit the situation as possible. Naturally, therefore, when a befogged Zeppelin laid a couple of bombs plonk into the homestead, the ex-professor experienced a mental as well as a bodily shake-up. I had no complaint either with the transformation that developed _John Baltazar_ from the only outsider to apparently the big boss of the War; while the scenes between him and the son of whose existence he had been unaware (a situation not precisely new to fiction) are presented with a sincere and moving simplicity. So far so good, even if hardly equal to the author's best. But the catastrophe and the melodramatics about War-Office secrets, preposterously put on paper, and still more preposterously preserved, simply knocked the wind of reality out of the whole affair. A pity, since Mr. LOCKE (though I prefer him in more fantastic vein) has clearly spent much care upon a tale that, till its final plunge, is at least lively and entertaining. * * * * *