21 SEPTEMBER 1918, Page 18

Prone Lines. By Boyd Cable. (John Murray. 6s. net.)---Mr. Boyd

Cable's sketches of war on the Western Front are excellent, and this new volume will be welcomed. In the Preface, dated from the front itself, he tells the workmen at home very plainly that every strike is paid for dearly by their mates in the fighting-line. The sketches illustrate vividly the terrible hardships of trench warfare, and also the arduous labours of the men behind who are sending up supplies—as. in " A Roaring Trade," describing the work at a shell dump just before an action. The popular idea of "The Gilded Staff" is justly ridiculed in another of these little studies of the real thing.