The Ypres Times.
193
Talking of novels, there is not much that is
very noteworthy. There is a good deal of clever
fiction by clever people, like Mr. Sadleir, and the
usual mass of sex-stuff and slobbery sentiment
that makes, or ought to make, one sick. But
there are also some really good yarns that one
can settle into an armchair or into bed and pro
ceed to enjoy. Novels where people do something
and don't simply talk about themselves and their
emotions.
I do not find Mr. Zane Gray's style particu
larly exhilarating, but at least he doesn't write
like the captions of a cinema film. His characters
talk at reasonable length, and in the Wild West he
finds material for yet another fine story, Wanderer
of the Wasteland (7s. 6d. Hodder Stoughton).
It is the real thing, with its cowboys and its waste
land, and its fighting, its tried heroine, and its
human hero, who win out of all snakes to triumph.
Best of all, it is full of colour, and has in it
the very wind of open spaces, coming like the
whip of cold rain into our humdrum existence.
Not quite so good, and different, is another Wild
West novel, from the same publishers, Copper
Streak Trail, by Eugene Rhodes (7s. 6d.), in
which a real cowboy, quick on the draw, and
untameable as the steers on the ranch, drops into
a sleepy, very prim town, miles away from Ari
zona. How he upsets that primness makes as
laughable a farce as one could wish. More like
the cinema is a novel of the thrills of running
whisky into dry America. Mr. George Cham
berlain's Backhouse (7s. 6d. Tills Boon). If
one wants to be kept awake, one cannot do better
than get hold of this yarn and read how, under
the guidance of a dignified old professor, really
the chief of the bootleggers, the hero rides two
hundred miles at breakneck speed, in a 12-ton
lorry loaded with whisky, through a running
fight with countless gunmen bent on stealing his
cargo. It is really a fine thriller."
The novel of crime and mystery is becoming a
little commonplace, but there are still some fair
specimens in the bookshop to-day. Two really
good novelists have lately gone in for crime work,
and this season have given us excellent tales. Mr.
Eden Philpotts, in The Red Redmaynes (7s. 6d.
Hutchinson), gets three successive murders success
fully accomplished, the suspicion of all of them
falling on one man. Two detectives set to work,
and, though one must not reveal how, track down
the mystery. This is as satisfying a mystery tale
as has appeared of late, and it is good writing
as well. So is Mr. J. S. Fletcher's The Copper
Box (7s. 6d. Hodder Stoughton), one of those
super-stories which keep one guessing, till, before
you realise it, you are at the end. One may re
commend it safely as an antidote to any boredom,
mental or physical. A woman crook," in high
society, is the central character of Miss Law
rence's Miss Brandt Adventuress (7s. 6d.
Hutchinson), who pits her wits and beauty against
a famous detective. How the duel ends and how
the lady and her lover, an unconscious accom
plice in daring thefts, must be left to the reader
to find out at the end of a successful shocker,"
as successful as the same publishers' The Red
Vulture, by Frederick Sleath, or The Blue-Eyed
Manchu, by Achmed Abdullah (both 7s. 6d.), in
which the mystery of the East casts a weird
glamour over two tales of crime. Both are of the
breathless type of narrative, that leaves one won
dering where time has flown. .There must be
others on other shelves, but space will not per
mit one to prolong the ramble, but these are not
a bad capture for the first one.
The Bookworm.
NAVY'S GIFT TO THE ARMY.
It was announced some weeks ago, in an Army
Order, that the Lords Commissioners of the
Admiralty, on behalf of the officers and men of
the Royal Navy and Royal Marines, have pre
sented to the Army Council a trophy for team
competition, with the service rifle for teams from
the Regular Army. The trophy consists of a
silver replica of the Nelson Column, 3 feet 6
inches in height, on oak base. It has been desig
nated The Britannia Trophy." The Army Rifle
Association is charged with the custody of the
trophy, the drawing up of the conditions of the
competition, and the conduct of the competition.
The first competition will be held during the Bisley
meeting of the Army Rifle Association, in 1923.
THE OSWALD FITZGERALD
SCHOLARSHIPS.
The friends of the late Lieut.-Colonel Oswald
Fitzgerald, C.M.G., Personal Military Secretary
to Earl Kitchener, who was drowned with his
chief, in the loss of H.M.S. Hampshire, have sub
scribed a sum of ^2,150 towards a memorial to
bear his name. It has been decided to found at
Wellington College, where Colonel FitzGerald
was educated, two scholarships of ^50 a year for
sons of officers in the Army, preference being
given to sons of officers of his old regiment, 18th
(King George's Own) Lancers, now 19th (King
George's Own) Lancers. One FitzGerald scholar
is already in residence at Wellington, and it is
hoped to appoint a second in the course of this
year.
H. P. Barbour, D.C.M., ex-Sgt.-Major of the
48th Highlanders, Canada, writes to us, as we go
to press, from Ward B3, Brook Street Hospital,
Lambeth, S.E. He has only lately arrived in this
country and has met with a severe accident, and
says how much he would like some of the boys to
visit him at Easter.