Perhaps of all our War correspondents Mr. PHILIP GIBBS contrives to give in his despatches the liveliest sense of the movement, the pageantry and the abominable horror of war. Pageantry there is, for all the evil boredom and weariness of this pit-and-ditch business, and Mr. GIBBS sees finely and has an honest pen that avoids the easy _cliche_. You might truthfully describe his book, _The Battles of the Somme_ (HEINEMANN), as an epic of the New Armies. He never seems to lose his wonder at their courage and their spirit, and always with an undercurrent of sincerely modest apology for his own presence there with his notebook, a mere chronicler of others' gallantry. This chronicle begins at the glorious 1st of July and ends just before Beaumont-Hamel, which the author miserably missed, being sent home on sick leave. It is a book that may well be one of those preserved and read a generation hence by men who want to know what the great War was really like. God knows it ought to help them to do something to prevent another. Yet there is nothing morbid in it. As the sergeant thigh-deep in a flooded trench said, "You know, Sir, it doesn't do to take this war seriously." The armies of a nation that takes its pleasures sadly take their bitter pains with a grin; and that grin is what has made them such an unexpectedly tough proposition to the All-Seriousest. * * * * * An old adage warns us never to buy a "pig in a poke." Equally good advice for the heroines of fiction or drama would be never under any circumstances to marry a bridegroom in a mask. In more cases than I can recall, neglect of this simple precaution has led to a peck of trouble. I am thinking now of _Yvonne_, leading lady in _The Mark of Vraye_ (HUTCHINSON). I admit that poor _Yvonne_ had more excuse than most. Hers was what you might call a hard case. On the one hand there was the villain _Philippe_, a most naughty man, swearing that she was in his power, and calling for instant marriage at the hands of _Father Simon_, who happened to be present. On the other hand, the gentleman in the mask revealed a pair of eyes that poor _Yvonne_ rashly supposed to belong to someone for whom she had more than a partiality. So when he suggested that the proposed ceremony should take place during _Philippe's_ temporary absence from the stage, with himself as substitute, _Yvonne_ (astonished perhaps at her own luck so early in the plot) simply jumped at the idea. Then, of course, the deed being done, off comes the mask, and behold the triumphant countenance of her bitterest foe, _Charles de Montbrison_, whom she herself had disfigured as the (supposed) murderer of her brother. Act drop and ten minutes' interval. Need I detail for you the subsequent course of this marriage of inconvenience? The courage and magnanimity of one side, the feminine cruelty melting at last to love, and finally the inevitable duologue of reconciliation, through which I can never help