A quiet style, keen powers of observation, and a delightful assumption of his own unimportance combine to make Mr. FREDERICK PALMER'S _With the New Army on the Somme_ (MURRAY) a book that will be read long after the Hun has returned to the place from which he came. "Those whose business it was to observe, the six correspondents ... went and came always with a sense of incapacity and sometimes with a feeling that writing was a worthless business when others were fighting." There we have his apology for doing what obviously seemed to him a second-best thing; but much as I like his modesty I can assure him that no finer tribute has yet been paid to our new army. Mr. PALMER was the accredited American correspondent at the British Front, and though the days are happily passed when he was a neutral in name his position as an impartial spectator gives him an advantage denied to the most veracious of our own correspondents. Our French Allies too may be congratulated, by themselves as well as by us, on being observed by eyes so shrewd and friendly. "No two French soldiers seem quite alike on the march or when moving about a village on leave. Each seems three beings--one a Frenchman, one a soldier, a third himself." Anyone who has been in the war-zone and seen a French regiment resting cannot fail to be struck by the acuteness of this remark; indeed it provides the key to what, for an ordinary British mind, is a puzzle. It is one of Mr. PALMER'S many virtues that, although his main business was to watch the soldiers and the fighting, he never forgets the man inside the uniform. This gives to his historical record the added interest of a study in psychology. * * * * *