If any reasonable man still possesses a grain of sympathy with Bolshevism I invite him to purge himself by reading _With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia_ (CASSELL). In August, 1918, Colonel JOHN WARD, M.P., reached Vladivostok in command of the 25th Battalion Middlesex Regiment, and from the time of his arrival until his departure nearly a year later his position was almost grotesquely difficult. Of our Allies in Siberia and of their policy he writes with justifiable frankness. Our own is not excused, but he lets us clearly see that however ineffectual it may have been there was honesty of purpose underlying it. In the medley of confusion which prevailed we were lucky to have in Colonel WARD as senior British officer a man who was not afraid to shoulder his responsibility. Under conditions so exasperating that anyone might have been excused if he had been overwhelmed with anger and bewilderment he was resolved to uphold our prestige. Upon the Bolshevist horrors in Siberia he does not dwell, but he says enough in passing to make one shudder. Colonel WARD is a true friend of Russia. "This great people are bound to recover, and become all the stronger for their present trials," are the concluding words of his preface. That this prophecy may come true must be the prayer of all of us who remember what we owed to Russia during the earlier part of the War. * * * * * It was perhaps my misfortune that, not having read the book in which Mr. EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS recorded the earlier adventures of his hero, _John Carter_, in the red planet Mars, when that gentleman precipitated himself thither (from the banks of the Hudson, of all places), I found myself in more senses than one out of my element. Not that it really matters; since the Martian existence of _Mr. Carter_ was apparently of that wild and whirling character, familiar to patrons of the Continuous Programme, in which one thrill follows upon another so fast that their precise order becomes of small moment. When I tell you that the opening chapters of this remarkable nightmare--_The Gods of Mars_ (METHUEN)--contain monsters with one white eye and mouths in their hands, flying pirates, an air-ship that sinks down a volcano, an ageless witch who--but why continue? The publishers call these happenings "bold;" but this is a pitiful understatement. Really they are of a character to make the wildest imaginings of JULES VERNE, friend of my youth, or Mr. WELLS, companion of my riper years, read like the peaceful annals of a country rectory. To quote again from the publishers, "only the man who created _Tarzan_ could write such stories." If _Tarzan_ were in any way comparable with the present volume, it would perhaps not be unfair to add the corollary that only those readers who appreciated the one could swallow the other. Mercifully, Mr. BURROUGHS writes so continually at the top of his voice that after a time the clatter comes to have an effect merely soporific.