In the prefatory chapter of _Our Women_ (CASSELL) Mr. ARNOLD BENNETT coyly disclaims any intention of tackling his theme on strictly scientific principles. The warning is perhaps hardly necessary, since, apart from the duty which the author owes to his public as a novelist rather than a philosopher, the title alone should be a sufficient guide. One would hardly expect a serious zoologist, for instance, in attempting to deal with the domesticated fauna, to entitle his work _Our Dumb Friends_. The book is divided in the main between adjuration and prophecy. As a result of their emancipation from economic slavery, Mr. BENNETT expects women--women, that is to say, of the "top class," as he calls it--to adopt more and more the _rôle_ of professional wage-earners; but at the same time he insists that they do not as yet take themselves seriously enough as professional housekeepers. How the two functions are to be combined it is a little difficult to see, but apparently women are to retain a profession as a stand-by in case they fail to marry or to remain married. At the same time Mr. BENNETT takes it for granted that woman will never relinquish her position as a charmer of man, or even the use of cosmetics and expensive lingerie. Speaking neither as a novelist nor as a philosopher, I cannot help feeling that Mr. BENNETT is too apt to consider the things he particularly likes about women to be eternal, and those that he does not like so much to be susceptible of alteration and improvement. Anyhow, it looks as if Our Men were going to have rather a thin time. * * * * *