13 NOVEMBER 1926, Page 29

SPANISH .BAYONET. By Stephen . Vincent Benet. (Heinemann. 7i. 6d.

net.)—Mr. Stephen Vincent Benet is one of the most promising novelists of the younger American school. His new story gives an interesting account of the early foundations of Florida during the short time, before the War of Independence, when it belonged to Great Britain. The book is well written and is exciting, though there is a tendency towards melodrama. Mr. Benet is, however, clever in:keeping an eighteenth-century atmosphere without resorting; to what Stevenson used to call " tushery." The sideline of the book—that is, the treatment of the indentured labour of the Mahonese from Minorca—is also well given, and, with the one defect hinted at above, Mr. Stephen Vincent Benet (who' shOuld not be confused with his brother) may be congratulated on a very successful achievenient. .