11 JANUARY 1919, Page 22

WORICS or Externem:YE. —Debrete a Peerage, Baronetage, Knight- age, and

Companionage for .1919, edited by A. G. M. Heailrige (Dean, 63e, net), is now a massive volume of over three thousand pages, but it stands all the tests for accuracy which we have applied. The " Companionage," once a modest seotion, now fills a quarter of the book, but the editor reminds us in the Preface that the number of Companions created annually has grown from a few hundreds before the war to no less than 6,242 last year. At this rate our familiar Debrett will have, like the London Directory, to divide itself into three or more volumes before long. The editor says that some of the innumerable persons appointed to the Order of the British Empire last January " had not beard of their good fortune by the end of March and even early in April," and that he had to convince them by sending them extracts from the London Gazette. The Roll of Honour of those killed in the war contains nearly three thousand names. —The Anglo-American Year Book, 1918-19, edited by B. H. Gardner (International Development Company, Is. 6d. net), appears for the sixth year in succession. It contains mush useful information about American and British-American societies for which we should look in vain elsewhere, as well as an American residential directory, brief biographies of Americans living hero and of well-known British subjects with American wives, a commercial directory, and practical hints

about this country for the benefit of American visitors. The two peoples need to know each other better, and this book will help the good cause.