A Russian war-novel is discussed. The writer of the article “does not care much for Russian books,” he finds that “the Englishman begins where the Russian leaves off.” The Russian book seems to deal with the inner conflict of a Russian grocer on the outbreak of War. The Russian grocer is confused and annoyed. He asks what all this bloody trouble has to do with _him_—the small grocer. He cogitates on the causes of such upheavals, and is not convinced that there is anything in them calling for his participation. But eventually he realizes that there is a great and moving abstraction called Russia=the _old_ abstraction in fact, the old Pied Piper whistling his mournful airs, and waving towards a snow-bound horizon. And—_le voilà_ in khaki=or the Russian equivalent. At this point he becomes “noble,” and of interest to the writer of the article—But there, alas, the book ends.= Now, (of course the writer of the article continues) _we_ in England do not do things in that way. We do not portray the boring and hardly respectable conflict. No Englishman (all Englishmen having the instincts of gentlemen) admits the possibility of such a conflict. _We_ are _accomplished_ beings, _des hommes, ou plutôt des gentlemen faits_! We should begin with the English grocer already in khaki, quite calm, (he would probably be described as a little “grim” withal) in the midst of his military training on Salisbury Plain. A Kiplingesque picture of that: Revetting would come in, and bomb-throwing at night. He next would be in the trenches. The writer would show, without the cunning, hardly respectable, disguise of any art, how the Balham grocer of to-day was the same soldier, really, that won at Waterloo= You would not get a person or a fact, but a piece of patriotic propaganda (the writer of course being meanwhile a shrewd fellow, highly approved and well-paid).