The Blood Tax. By Dorothea Gerard. (Hutchinson and Co. 6s.)—The
sub-title of this book is "A Military Romance," but we cannot see much romance about it ; what there is certainly does not attract. A young Englishman, very much in favour of conscrip- tion, goes to Germany in order to see the system at work, and is not a little disenchanted. He sees an overpowering militarism, something to which he is quite sure his countrymen would not submit. The culminating absurdity, as it seems to him, is this. Lieutenant Pletze, who had just distinguished himself by remark- able readiness and skill in the manecurres, is assaulted by a work- man, who mistakes him for some one else. The man flies ; the Lieutenant hotly pursues, but cannot overtake him before he runs Into the arms of a policeman and is safe. The Lieutenant has to resign his rank, and give up all his prospects for life—his promised wife among them—because he cannot avenge his mili- tary honour. Is this a caricature ? Anyhow, whatever the value of The Blood Tax as a political pamphlet, or the possibility of the substitute for conscription which one of its characters sug- gests, we do not call it a novel.
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