Personally speaking, I could find it in me to wish that Mr. MAURICE HEWLETT would consult a good man about the Saga habit, which appears to be growing upon him, to the loss (or so I think) of all those who were lovers of his more human and companionable fiction. But I repeat that this is no more than individual prejudice, based on the fact that these Norse chronicles (of unpronounceable people in prehistoric times) leave me singularly cold. This apart, however, _The Light Heart_ (CHAPMAN AND HALL) may be admitted an excellent sample of its kind. It is all about the friendship of _Thorgar_ and _Thormod_, with the former's untimely death, and the punctilious attempts of the latter to fulfil his social obligation in the matter of exterminating the slayers of his friend; also, as second theme, the love of _Thormod_ for _King Olaf_, and the ending of both of them--and of the tale also--in the heroic battle of Sticklestead. One way and another, indeed, you seldom saw a short book that contained more bloodshed, or in which love-making (oh, Mr. HEWLETT!) played a smaller part. There was a "slip of a girl" in the early chapter of whom I had hopes, but sterner business caused her to be too soon eliminated. Skill and learning _The Light Heart_ has in plenty, and an engaging suggestion of the early artistic temperament in the character of _Thormod_, fighter and song-maker. But I fall back on my old complaint of being left cold; and that I should suffer that way from the work of Mr. HEWLETT gives you the measure of our loss. * * * * * In his last grim and terrible work, _Realities of War_ (HEINEMANN), Sir PHILIP GIBBS has fairly flung aside the restraint, enforced or self-imposed, that marked his despatches from the fighting fronts, to present war, the horrible, senseless nightmare, as it really appeared to him. His work as a correspondent emphasised for him the accumulated miseries of thousands rather than any individual's share, and his point of view is as remorselessly gloomy as can be imagined. He is detailed in disgust; he is passionate in pessimism. He presents not only the soldier's distaste for trenches and machine guns, and his desire for the things of familiar life, but also, with surprising vehemence, his hatred of generals who give blundering orders from comfortable billets in the rear, or of munitioners in England who keep optimistic in spite of bad news from the Front. He does not pretend to be quite fair in his criticisms, for obviously the higher command had to keep out of the firing-line and somebody had to work--and hard too--to supply the torrent of munitions demanded. Sir PHILIP admits all that, but in a kind of agony calls on God and man to realise the meaningless horror of it all and forbid, at any price, the possibility of its recurrence. If sometimes unjust and nearly always tragical, the book none the less is free from anything like hysteria. * * * * *