"Miss BERTA RUCK" is among the few writers from whom I can really enjoy stories about the War. She has an engaging way with her that can turn even that (at least the more endurable aspects of it) to favour and prettiness. And in _The Land Girl's Love Story_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON), a theme after her own heart, she has given us what is, I think, her best achievement so far. It is an excellent slight tale of two heroines who took their patriotic turn at the work of the land army on a Welsh farm, and the adventures, agricultural and (of course) amorous, that befell them there. It is all the best-humoured affair imaginable, refreshingly full of country airs and brisked up with a fine flavour of romance. "Miss RUCK" has the neatest hand for this kind of thing; she permits no loose ends to the series of love-knots that she ties so amusingly. So the finish of the comedy deserves the epithet "engaging" in more senses than one: with a Jack to every Jill, and the harvest moon (as promised in the cover picture) beaming upon all, the couples paired off to everyone's entire satisfaction. A tale that will be safe for a _succès fou_ with all who have worn the smock and the green armlet; while I can well imagine that ladies less fortunate may find their enjoyment of it tempered with a certain wistfulness. * * * * * _German Days_ (MURRAY) is a plain tale of everyday life in Germany before the War, with just those gaps in it which would naturally occur in the narrative of any one observer who also hadn't been aware at the time that she was observing. "A POLISH GIRL (C.B.)" has written this account with an engaging frankness and an apparent lack of exaggeration which distinguish it among books of its kind. It is largely a record of school days, and "C.B.," as the child of a Polish Jew of good standing living in Posen, suffered slights and insults and met with injustices which a "true German" would not have had to endure; but she does not seem embittered. Her picture of the German at home has not made me yearn to renew my acquaintance with him, but it seems to explain the origin of some of his most unpleasant qualities. Since, as "C.B." and other writers would have us know, the German soldier was cowed by physical suffering in peace-time it is small matter for wonder that he became a brute in war, or that the citizen, to whom everything used to be _verboten_, has, since the bureaucracy which regulated his smallest actions went to pieces, shown very little ability to regulate them for himself. The terrible pact, by which in the ten years preceding the War thousands of German women bound themselves to combat the predominance of the landed classes, which was making life for ordinary people a slow starvation, is one of the things which I am induced to believe, because "C.B." has dealt so faithfully with others of which I knew already. Of books on Germany from within there have been very many, but there is still room for