2 OCTOBER 1915, Page 9

A WOMAN'S DIARY OF THE WAR.

A Woman's Diary of the War. By S. Macnangliten. (T. Nelson via Sons, is. net.)—As a member of the Red Cross, Miss Macnaughtan went Out to Belgium in September of last year, and in this little book she gives an account of hospital work in Antwerp, Fumes, and La Panne. We have already heard much about the bombardment of Antwerp, but Miss Macnaughtan's vivid description is none the less very welcome. She rightly does not spare us some of the horrors 4:1 that time, but her keen observation supplies many humorous incidents and stories of brave deeds to lighten them. Just before the bombardment, she tells us, every one at the hospital 'took great comfort from the arrival of some London omni- buses, for "it was quits impossible to associate a respectable London omnibus with defeat." She sorrowfully admits that

in this instance at any rate the omnibuses in question did not justify the faith placed in them. Later, when Antwerp was

under fire and the hospital had to be removed to cellars, she described bow she saw "one little red-haired nurse carry three men in succession on her back down the little coal-shoot which formed the cellar's entrance." The book contains many pen.

pictures of men and places Miss Macnaughtan also has something to say as to the preparedness of the Germans :— "In Belgium itself pretty, innocent-I3oking villas, inhabited by some stout German bourgeois, were found to be well provided with concrete floors for mounting guns, and even the carriage drives had been carefully prepared for the traffic of heavy ammunition vans. Artillery that had perhaps been sent to some local exhibition had been unaccountably left there, and was conveniently d scovered when wanted."