Since the film _Mädchen in Uniform_ had fairly wide circulation in this country, Christa Winsloe’s corresponding novel _The Child Manuela_ will need but a brief résumé. The motion picture was released in 1932 and reached this country in the latter part of the same year, but the novel did not appear even in Germany until 1933, and so must have been one of the last variant publications launched before Nazi ascendancy wiped out homosexual literature. Those fortunate enough to have seen this remarkably sympathetic picture or any of several good amateur productions of the play on the legitimate stage here are unlikely to have forgotten it. The motherless Manuela, at fourteen, enters a boarding school for the daughters of officers where the headmistress, herself descended from a military line, imposes barracks discipline upon her young charges. One mistress alone contrives to preserve some human warmth despite the severity she is obliged to maintain, and the girls worship her. Manuela, accustomed to maternal tenderness throughout childhood, is made almost ill by the harsh regime until her emotions fix themselves upon the general favorite, Fräulein von Bernberg. It is soon evident that her feelings are more profound and violent than the average. The mistress, moved by the pathetic and neglected girl, befriends her and becomes warmly attached to her, even confessing that she prefers her to the other students, but she warns Manuela that such emotions are not countenanced among soldiers’ daughters and admonishes her to learn self-control. The knowledge that she is loved raises Manuela to a dizzy ecstasy which she manages to conceal for a time. But the excitement of playing male lead in an amateur theatrical, plus a party afterward with heavily “spiked” punch and abandoned dancing, prove too much for her high-strung temperament, and, slightly hysterical as well as literally drunk, she proclaims her secret to the entire school. The relation between pupil and teacher, though passionate, has been wholly innocent, and Manuela is unaware of its further potentialities. The adamant headmistress puts the worst construction on her hysterical outburst, sentences her to solitary confinement for the remainder of the term—diplomacy prevents her expulsion—and forbids her to see Fräulein von Bernberg again. Now genuinely ill from shock and emotional frustration, the girl contrives to reach her idol’s room, but the older woman, aware of the danger to them both and afraid of her own emotions, maintains a frigid composure. Beside herself, Manuela climbs to the top floor of the tall school building and leaps to her death at the foot of an open stairwell.