Shorter Notices
MISS COWLES looked for trouble in Spain during the Civil War, in Czecho-Slovakia during the months that preceded Munich, in Russia, in Germany just before the outbreak of war, in Rumania just after it when the frontier towns were being flooded with Polish refugees, in Finland during the war with Russia, in Paris just before the Germans entered the city, and finally in London during the raids of last autumn. She is a good journalist, with a nose for news, a very personal talent for putting` newsover freshly, and an ability rare among members of her profession to indicate the relation pf the small episode to the larger issue. This book is a triumphant monument to her prescience in being con- sistently in the right place at the right time over a number of years. As a book it is marred chiefly by two things-an apparent passion for the cliché, which is odd in so efficient a writer, and an equally curious persistence in recording the ()biter dicta of the nobly born ; nor do her occasional incursions into political theory possess the interest of her descriptions of events. But when she sticks to facts, which fortunately for nine-tenths of the time she does, she cannot be faulted. And though there are books which go deeper into almost every one of the subjects on which she touches, there is probably none with the scope of hers that can compete for vividness and spirit.
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