28 JULY 1923, Page 19

December the 14th. By Dmitri Merezhkovsky. Translated by Nathalie Duddington.

(Jonathan Cape. 7s. 6d.) It makes the realistic description of the death of the five conspirators all the more poignant when we remember that five Greek gentlemen were executed in Greece last November, also for political offences, in a fashion but little less distressing. But added poignancy is unnecessary ; this worthy successor to the Death of the Gods is strangely moving, rendered more so by the very Russian simplicity of the telling. The translation seems to us, in our ignorance of the original, good. A most remarkable book.