The Man of Iron. By Richard Deban. (William Heine- mann.
6s.)--" Richard Dehan " in the preface to her latest book makes apology for her choice of subject. "The Germany of 1870," she says, "was not the Germany of 1915. . . . The plan of the tactician, the art of the strategist, were not minefed
with the obscene malice of the ape, and the destructive frenzy of the maniac. Kings and nobles made war like noblemen and kings." Any account of the Franco-Prussian War written from the German point of view would certainly be ill-timed; but "Richard Dalian." regards history with the eyes of an observer rather than of a partisan, and need make no excuse for her capital story of the events preceding the bombardment of Paris. There is, indeed, about the whole book a spaciousness which 1. amazingly pleasant. It leaves the impression of a serious and careful piece of work, an addition to classical rather than to modern fiction ; of a book so versatile and facile that we are equally at our ease in the streets of London, in the Paris of Napoleon M., or on the battlefield of Flavigny. We were, we confess, like to become uncritical in our approval, when we were unpleasantly arrested by two limes of unintentional blank verse, which forced themselves on our attention, and recalled us to an attitude more seemly for a reviewer of novels.
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