Allies. By John England. Edited by J. E. Patterson. (Simpkin,
Marshall, and Co. es.)—We admit that we are puzzled by Allies ; and we are very little helped in our un- certainty by the Latin tag on the title-page—Mutato nomine de to fabule. Is the story true, or is it not ? Is it, in any case, true only in substance, or in detail ? And for how much of it is Mr. J. E. Patterson responsible ? Certainly there are parts of the book which can only have been written from first-hand information ; but the artificiality of the English-Russian. French-Belgian quartet is self-evident. All this discussion in however, out of proportion to the importance of the novel, If it is true, it is a journalistic account of bow four boys lived, and fought as individuals unattached, in Belgium in the autumn of 1914 ; if it is not true, it is a story of desperate adventure— in either case it is exciting. The writer's most obvious fault is a persistent and wearisome use of broken English and of the airs of a translation.
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