MR. JOHN GALSWORTHY is a most deceptive writer. He lures a reader on by a display of gentleness and smoothness and moderation, and then turns on him and makes it plain that he is really a most provocative fellow and is engaged in matching his mind against yours. He tries to commit you to some such statement as this: "The allegiance of the workman in time of peace is not rendered to the State, but to himself and his own class." Or this: "I think editors, journalists, old gentlemen and women will be brutalised [by the War] in larger numbers than our soldiers." Or this: "This is at once a spiritual link with America and yet one of the great barriers to friendship between the two peoples. We are not sure whether we are better men than Americans." Or this: "My mind is open, and when one says that, one generally means that it is shut." Disconcerting, very, and all to be found in _Another Sheaf_ (HEINEMANN). Mr. GALSWORTHY'S chief object in his little book is to arouse us to the disgrace and destruction of our State and race if we continue to allow ourselves to be fed, not by our own resources, but by alien corn and meat, which may so easily become hostile corn and meat. Incidentally Mr. GALSWORTHY finds that we are in the mass far too ugly. For instance, how few of us have chiselled nostrils! We ought not to eat so much pure white flour. * * * * * On the second page of _The Secret City_ (MACMILLAN) Mr. HUGH WALPOLE (or, to be meticulously correct, _Durward_, into whose mouth the story is put) says that "there is no Russian alive for whom this book can have any kind of value except as a happy example of the mistakes that the Englishman can make about the Russian." Well, after finishing the book, which is in some ways a sequel to _The Dark Forest_, I felt so very disinclined to believe this statement that I consulted a Russian, who is very much alive, and received the opinion that, if Mr. WALPOLE has not succeeded in drawing the real average Russian, he has given us a type whose faults and virtues sound the keynote of the situation as it is to-day. Such an opinion is worth a thousand times more than any judgment of mine, and I am glad of the opportunity to record it. From a literary point of view it seems to me that Mr. WALPOLE, in allowing _Durward_ to tell the tale, has created innumerable difficulties for himself--difficulties which to a great extent have been cleverly overcome, but which nevertheless make the story wobble dangerously and once or twice threaten it with devastation. To me, however, the interest never really flagged, for granted that one has a sympathy with Russia one feels acutely what Mr. WALPOLE is aiming at and how wonderfully he succeeds. It is not difficult to find faults: to complain, for instance, that a strong man like _Semyonov_ would not have taken such elaborate measures to get himself killed; but these points are trivial in a book which is not to be read so much for its