Lord Dunsany in his Unhappy, Far-Off Things (Elkin Mathews, 5s.
net) has given us a series of studies of devastated country which are remarkable for the curious felicity of phrase which they often display. For example, he is describing the shell of a ruined house in Bethune, the dust and plaster lying thiok over the common, cheap little ornaments and the linoleum on the floors : "That layer of plaster and brick-dust lies on the age that has gone, as final, as fatal, as the layer of flints that covers the top of the chalk and marks the end of an epoch and some unknown geologic catastrophe." Of a town which the tide of battle had left he says "Albert, robbed of peace, Is deserted even by war." "The mere word ` desolation ' could never convey to you the melancholy surroundings that mourned about this man on his lonely walk." The general tone of the collection of studies is set by the little "Dirge of Victory" which prefaces it, and the book is intended to show "some of the extent of the wrongs that the people of France have suffered."
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