German spy. While his adventure differed but little from that of many others -he was not so seriously threatened as Richard Harding Davis-still it held the threat of death. More unusual is his chapter "On Foot with the German Army"; for the author tramped out into Belgium, thirty-seven miles in one day, along with the hordes of occupation; and his picture, both of invaded and invaders, is full of spirit and sympathy. Study at a German university has taught him to respect the Teuton, to realize his homely goodness, and the German is no monster in these pages. Indeed

Mr. Williams is notably fair for so ardent an admirer of the Belgians. The book is written with verve and imagination. Excellent photographs illustrate the text. E. P. Dutton and Co.

It is impossible in a few lines to express the spirit of so revolutionary a volume as Randolph Bourne's "Education and Living." It has two aspects; one of scorn for the old type of education that "keeps up the tradition of a leisured and cultured wealth;" the other of intense admiration for John Dewey and his theory that "All education can do is to provide the experience, and stimulate, guide, organize interests." Education is an awakening of "interests"

-the word is a fetish with this authorin things to be studied, not a cramming up on predigested ideals of literature, the technical manipulation of dead languages. Mr. Bourne is the preacher of a propaganda, the disciple of a prophet crying aloud in the streets, and is to be accepted as such. His fulmination will help to awaken a new interest in teaching, and change both theory and practice for modern education; but the whole of his sermonizing will scarcely be accepted. The new, as ever, will grow slowly out of the old; meantime the reading public is indebted to the prophet for a vivid, thought-compelling book. The Century Co.

Pierre Loti's "War," which Marjorie Laurie has translated into excellent English, is a series of sketches and impressions of the world-war, charged with passion against the ruthless perpetrators of atrocities in France, and full of pity for the sufferers from them. The sketches range in date from August, 1914, to April, 1916. They are all the fruit of personal experience and observation. Some of them relate to the fighting at the front, others to the havoc wrought by the Germans in occupied towns, and others still to the sufferings of Belgian fugitives, men, women and little children, fleeing anywhere before the German armies. There is no sequence to them, except as all are incidents in the one great tragedy. Each is of independent interest and carries its own story. There are no illustrations and no need of any, for Pierre Loti is a master of the art of word-painting. J. B. Lippincott Co.

Holmes W. Merton's "How to Choose the Right Vocation" (Funk & Wagnalls Co.) is a practical and comprehensive manual, well adapted to meet the modern demand for efficiency. To an analysis and description of vocational mental abilities and characteristics it adds numerous mental tests intended to help the reader to self-chart his vocational aptitude, and to these again specific directions as to the ability requirements in more than fourteen hundred professions, businesses, trades and skilled vocations, supplemented by hundreds of self-testing questions. There could hardly be a more helpful handbook for anyone considering the requirements of any particular occupation with a view to determining his own fitness or unfitness for entering it.

Under the title "The World at War" are grouped twenty or more essays by Georg Brandes discussing

various aspects of the present war and the causes which led up to it. Most of the essays were written since the war began, but the first five were anticipatory and in a sense prophetic, the first, written in 1881, being a "Foreboding," and presenting a vision of the future which is now, unhappily, in process of fulfilment. Brandes is not a partisan of any of the Powers, or of either group of them; he is a keen and caustic critic of all of them by turns, and of the short-sighted diplomacy and crass ambitions which led up to the great world struggle. There will be few readers who will follow Brandes in all of his conclusions, but even those who disagree with him will find his views suggestive and illuminating. This is especially true of the essays on The Fundamental Causes of the World War and Different Points of View on the Warboth of them written in 1914. Macmillan Co.

The

Three books for young readers come together from the press of The Page Co. "The Barbarians" by Brewer Corcoran, author of "The Road to Le Reve," is a lively story of schoolboy life, which introduces its characters without any preludes on the first page, as if they were all old friends, and follows their sports and adventures-baseball, football, snowballing and all the rest-with keen zest, through three hundred pages. half dozen illustrations are contributed by Walter S. Rogers. "The House on the Hill" by Margaret R. Piper, is a story for girls, full of incident, with diverting things happening in every chapter, and a slender thread of romance running through it a romance which reaches a pleasant consummation in the last chapter.

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Six illustrations by Elizabeth Withington interpret it agreeably. "The Sandman: His Songs and Rhymes," by Jenny Wallis, supplements pleasantly the Sandman Stories of William J. Hopkins and Harry W. Frees with a collection of verses of varying mood and by many authors, which are well calculated to beguile and entertain children when sleepy-time comes. The compiler herself contributes a dozen or more pieces to the volume, and both her own verse and the range of her selections show an understanding of childhood and an affectionate solicitude to minister to its needs. There are seventeen illustrations,-the frontispiece in full colors.

An earnest straightforward book, full of arresting facts skilfully arranged, is that written by Grace Abbott and named "The Immigrant and the Community." The community is primarily Chicago and, in the larger outlook, America. The author, as a resident of Hull House and director of The Immigrants' Protective League, is well qualified to urge upon the people of the United States the claims of the foreigner who seeks a home on our shores. Her chapters deal with the journey; the first job; the problems of the immigrant girl; protection against exploitation; the immigrant and the courts, the public health, poverty, industrial democracy, education. The style of the book is lucid, the thinking sane and profound, the cases cited illuminating. The reader feels that justice is being given to victim and victimizer, that the case of the foreigner needs far more careful attention for the very sake of the native-born American. Miss Abbott expects an influx of unmarried women from all over Europe when the war shall cease. The Century Co.