14 AUGUST 1897, Page 26

The Dragon - Slayer. By Roger Pocock. (Chapman and Hall.) —"Nowhere in

the English-speaking world does the war between good and evil rage more furiously than in the United States." So writes the author in his preface ; accordingly he has con- structed a tale which serves as a parable of this struggle. Brand Haraldson personifies Good; Marshall Gault, who is a capitalist of the worst kind, a maker of " trusts " and "corners," waterer of stocks, wrecker of railway companies and the like, stands for Evil ; and Hilda is the heroine, the prize, typifying the Common- wealth, for which they contend. The story is full of lurid effects and of incidents which are on the stupendous scale that suits the bigness of things on the other side of the Atlantic.