16 SEPTEMBER 1916, Page 21

A Woman in the Balkans. By Mrs. Will Gordon, F.R.G.S.

(Hutchin- son and Co. 12s. 6d. net.)—The best chapters in this pleasant book of travel in days before the war are concerned with Rumania, our new Eastern Ally. The author, as a friend of M. Take Joneseu, saw Bucharest under the most favourable conditions, and has a good deal to say of the late Queen Dowager (Carmen Sylva) and of the Royal family. She liked the Rumanian people, and touches on the economic grievances of the peasantry. Her impressions of Belgrade and Sofia, Cettigne and Constantinople, are attractive too. None of those places will over be quite the same again as when Mrs. Gordon made her leisurely tour and took her photographs.