HEROINES OF THE WAR.* Miss MAY SINCLAIR, who is well
known as a novelist, gives us a book more interesting than most fiction in her Journal of Impressions in Belgium. It bears out its title in being largely subjective, and dealing with the effect of a close approach to the Great War upon a mind singularly sensitive to external influences. At the same time it gives us a striking and picturesque account of the way in which women can really make themselves of service at the front. Miss Sinclair only had seventeen days in Belgium—from September 25th to Ootober 13th, 1914—but in that short time she accumulated enough material to make a most readable volume. She went out with that Motor Field Ambulance Corps which covered itself with so much glory by its heroism in the blazing streets of Dixmude and many another post of extreme danger. Its work has been more fully described by other writers ; Miss Sinclair gives us a fascinating picture of its original members; —especially of the four women who played so great a part in its devoted labours. It is almost a pity that she has thought it necessary to veil their identity under fictitious names, though no doubt she could not otherwise have sketched their personalities with so free a hand. Her book helps us to understand how Mr. Philip Gibbs, who at first sight thought these pretty girls in khaki coats and breeches quite "out of the picture" of modern warfare, came a little later to marvel "at the spiritual courage of these young women, who seemed not only careless of shell-fire but almost unconscious of its menace, and who, with more nervous strength than that of many men, gave first-aid to the wounded without shuddering at sights of agony which might turn a strong man sick." Miss Sinclair's portraits are triumphs of characterization, and we cannot help burning with pride at the thought that they are only typical of thousands of British women who have risked life, and more than life, for the sake of succouring some of the human wrecks thrown up by the red tide of war in Flanders.
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