Captains of the World. By Gvrendolen Overton. (Macmillan and Co.
6s.)—This book is so contrary to what English people consider the "spirit of America" that the reader is constantly obliged to remind himself that the events narrated take place on the other side of the Atlantic. The scene is laid in the town of Staunton, a manufacturing centre, where the trade is entirely in iron and steel. In the course of the book one of the characters says to another : "After all, my dear, I am a married woman, and so naturally I
can judge better than you of a good many things there is no escaping the fact that he is really about the same as a common working man, and you can't treat that kind of person as an equal." Could Mrs. Grundy, residing in an English country town, say anything more in character than that? The person alluded to is what over here we should call a Labour leader, who has climbed to the very top of his own particular tree. Taken as a whole, the story is well written, and worth reading as a work of fiction, though the author has not quite succeeded in making her heroine a convincing figure.
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