19 MARCH 1921, Page 22

The Challenge of the Dead. By Stephen Graham. (Cassell. 78.

6d. net.)—Mr. Graham describes his new book as " a vision of the war and the life of the common soldier in France, seen two years afterwards between August and November, 1920." He made a pilgrimage along the old battle-line, observing the war-cemeteries and the once familiar ruins of villages, some of which were being rebuilt. He weaves into his account of the pilgrimage a vague narrative of the war, with some personal reminiscences such as he has used to better purpose in A Private of the Guards. The " challenge of the dead," as he interprets it, is a challenge to us to be unselfish and to sacrifice ourselves for the common cause as they did. Mr. Graham's political views are his own affair, but he ought not to say that " France and England broke the spirit of America's great President and ruined him as the Kaiser was ruined." Mr. Wilson's spirit was broken not in Paris but in Washington, not by Allied statesmen but by his own countrymen.