_One after Another_ (HUTCHINSON), by Mr. STACY AUMONIER, is a tale of social progress: of the steps--I imagine this is where the name justifies itself--by which the son and daughter of a Camden Town publican rise to higher or at least more brilliant things. You might suppose this plan to promise comedy, but the fact is otherwise. Really it is an angry book, and though there is laughter in places it is mostly angry laughter, with a sting in it. Somehow, whether speaking in his own person or through the voice of his hero, Mr. AUMONIER gives me here (perhaps unjustly) the impression of having a grievance against life. Yet it cannot be said that _Tom_ and _Laura Purbeck_ found their climb from Camden Town unduly arduous, since in a comparatively short time one has made a position and pots of money as a fashionable house-decorator, and the other is a famous concert star and the wife of a marquis. I think my impression of unamiability must be derived from the fact that the entire cast contains not one really sympathetic character. Old _Purbeck_, who ruled his bar like an autocrat and believed in honest alcohol (and fortunately for himself died some years ago), comes nearest to it. _Laura_, of whom the author gives us spasmodic glimpses, is vividly interesting, but repellent. _Tom_, the protagonist, I found frankly dull. Perhaps I have dwelt overmuch on defects. Certainly the story held my attention throughout, even after my-disappointment at finding nobody to like in it. * * * * * A lot of diaries make very poor reading, because people who are conscientious enough to keep them at all keep them conscientiously and fill them with nothing but facts. Mr. MAURICE BARING of course has no empty scruples of this kind, and _R.F.C. H.Q. 1914-1918_ (BELL AND SONS), though it has plenty of statistics in it and technical details as well, is in the main a delightful jumble of stunts and talks and quotations from Mr. MAURICE BARING and other people, culinary details, troubles about chilblains and wasp-bites, and here and there an excellently written memoir of some friend who fell fighting. The main historical fact is, of course, that our airmen from small beginnings reached a complete ascendancy at the end of 1916, and then suffered a set-back, reaching their own again when the mastery of the Fokker was overcome. The author himself was _liaison_ officer and interpreter at H.Q., and stuck to General TRENCHARD throughout, although he was urgently requested to go to Russia. Scores of eminent people make brief appearances in his book, and the following is a fair sample of his method:--"_January 3rd, 1917._--An Army Commanders' Conference took place at Rollencourt. My indiarubber sponge was eaten by rats." Happily his diary escaped. * * * * *