FOR WHAT LAND ? By Ardern Beaman. (Constable. 7s. 6d.)—Mr.
Beainan's mental shelves are as well stocked as if bought at a single swoop from Selfridge's. The first plunge of the hand brought out the Hero with Ideals, Victor Harlsdene, who has just been left an estate in England!. He retires from the Indian army and returns to band-Jerusalem at Harlsdene. Lest the story should flag through his finding this too easy, we haye Bolshevism liberally doled out, a sprinkling of the contrariness of human nature and much friction between the matrimonial-minded countryside and the hero, vowed to celibacy for the sake of his Ideals. Then, with considerable gusto, Mr. Beaman tosses the Pure Vamp and the Ingenuous Girl into the plot, also a hunting accident which ends with a night of forced unconventionality in a lonely hut. No harm is done, however, and a good excuse made for the never-failing circus turn of the irate parent with the horsewhip. The vamp chooses a hunt ball for announcing to the hero that he will shortly become a father, and the husband of the vamp appears, complete with revolver. The vamp poisons herself, writing an anguished letter as
she does so : " My dar " (Dies). For all these incidents, the story flags.
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