30 JANUARY 1915, Page 9

CURRENT LITERAT URE.

Ainslie Gore. By Major Gambier-Parry. (Smith, Elder, and Co. 6s. net.)—There could have been no moment more opportune for the appearance of Major Gambier-Parry's latest book than just now, when that class of straight young Englishmen to which Ainslie Gore belonged, who sometimes. in days of peace, seemed idle, foolish boys, are proving amid the harshest horrors of war the temper of their spirit. We have all met Ainslie ; come of no have known him well. "He is the boy," so we might paraphrase his story, "who lived in that jolly country house, and took such an interest in the tenants and labourers of his estate: his people never had much money, but they contrived to send him to Eton and Sandhurst; so be passed into the Army— indeed, his family were all Army folk—and was sent to Gibraltar and then to India. Poor fellow, lie was killed in frontier fighting when he was only twenty-five—such a hand- some chap he was." The writer of the little biography clothes these hare facts with the idealism of an intimate friendship and makes of Ainelie's short life a very poem of spiritual cleanliness and kindness. His only fault ie his too great love, which cannot yield one single point of virtue, and puts forward

for its Lero claims of intellectual ability which nre, perhaps, not justified.