Atha Paige. By Robert W. Chambers. (Appleton. 6s.)—There are two
points of view from which Mr. Chambers's new novel, deal- ing with the American Civil War, is of intense interest. The first is that psychological problem which makes every civil war so interesting and so heartrending. The second, which is much of the moment, is the account of the doings of the heroine and her friends as amateur nurses when war actually breaks out Half the
women of England are at this moment busying themselves in Red Cross matters, and all members of Voluntary Aid Detachments may be recommended to read this story so as to have some faint idea of what will be expected of them if their Detachments are ever mobilised in time of war. From a literary point of view much the best part of the book is the opening description of what Walt Whitman in his "Drum Taps," called "Manhattan arming." There is a picture, which will bring a lump into every throat, of the heroine looking out of her window in Brooklyn on the morning after the bombardment of Port Sumpter and finding as far as her eye could see, east and west, the street one rustling mass of flags. The whole account of how New York and her sister cities seethed and boiled with patriotic ardour is extraordinarily moving. Very vivid also are the hospital pictures and the horrible and almost hourly recurrence of death-bed scenes to which the heroine is summoned. There is a description of the shelling of a hospital which it is im- possible to read unmoved. Much the least successful part of the book is the love interest. It is almost impossible to believe in the sudden magnetic attraction exercised by the apparently worthless hero on the heroine. If, however, we leave out the love-making, the book may be praised very highly. It is an extraordinarily close study of a psychological situation in the history of a nation and a vivid realisation of the horrors of war.
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