_The Story of the Fourth Army in the Battles of the Hundred Days_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) is printed on pages the size of a copy of _Punch_, and with its accompanying case of maps it costs eighteen-pence to go through the post. It boasts a hundred full-page photographs, also sketches, charts, maps, panoramas and diagrams _ad lib._, a foreword by General Lord RAWLINSON and ten appendices; so really it seems that the much-abused word "sumptuous" may for once be fairly applied. The author, Major-General Sir A. MONTGOMERY, who himself helped to "stage" the battles he writes about, has built up a record which is in some sense unique, for I think it is possible from this book to trace precisely where any unit of the Fourth Army was placed, and what doing, at any given hour during the whole of the victory march from Amiens to the Belgian frontier. Apart from anything else it is pleasant to have a book that deals only with the days of victory; but it must be admitted that, to gain a completeness of detail so entirely satisfactory to those most nearly concerned, the writer has had to sacrifice something of human interest, for many of his pages are little more than a bare chronicle of names and places. Undoubtedly his book should be read with great deliberation, constant reference to the maps and a lively recollection of personal experiences on the spot; but the civilian reader may still be content to skim the text and save himself for the photographs. These, mostly taken from the air and of exquisite technical quality, form an amazing series, in themselves worth the heavy price. And who minds heavy prices when the proceeds are pledged to the service of wounded officers? * * * * * "Rather an anti-climax," I thought when I opened _The Happy Foreigner_ (HEINEMANN) and found that it purported to tell the experiences of an English _chauffeuse_ in France after the Armistice; but I know now that, in any place where ENID BAGNOLD happened to be, there would not be any anti-climax about. In a style so daring and vivid that it could only have been born, I suppose, of fast driving, the authoress describes a romantic affair with a young French officer; but her real theme is the suffering of France bowed down under the intolerable burden of so many strangers, both enemies and friends. The rich and well-fed Americans who will not trouble to understand, the grotesque Chinamen and Annamites, the starving Russians liberated from the Germans, flash by, with the ruins of villages, the tangle of wire and litter of derelict guns; and even the romance, intensely felt though it is, must be fleeting, like the rest of the nightmare, because the Frenchman's eyes are set on the future and the rebuilding of his fortunes. This book is not "about the War," but all the same it is one of the best books about the War that I have read. * * * * *