_Country Life._--"More exciting than any novel.... The book is a record or almost incredible courage and inventiveness."
_Bystander_.--"It is one of the most unexpected and engaging books for which the War has been responsible."
_Pall Mall Gazette_.--"A really entertaining account of a wonderfully successful and useful rag on an unusually big scale."
_Westminster Gazette_.--"Lieuts. Jones and Hill displayed an inventiveness, an ingenuity, and a patience worthy of the greatest admiration."
_Outlook_.--"The book deserves to become a cla.s.sic."
_Ill.u.s.trated London News_.--"It is an amazing story, humorously told, of a subtle and successful conspiracy to escape. But it is also a most telling indictment of the spiritualistic craze."
_New Age_.--"As a mere story of adventure and suffering the book is one of the most remarkable known to me; it is an epic of human ingenuity and human endurance."
_Queen_.--"Sensational and amazing ... absorbingly interesting."
_Daily Mail_.--"A really striking and diverting story."
_Evening News_.--"The tale of the two lieutenants is perhaps the n.o.blest example of the game and fine art of spoof that the world has ever seen, or ever will see ... their wonderful and almost monstrous elaboration ... an amazing story."
_Everyman_.--"One of the most amazing tales that we have ever read. The gradual augmentation of the spook"s power is one of the most preposterous, the most laughable histories in the whole literature of spoofing. Lieut. Jones has given us a wonderful book--even a great book."
THE SILENCE OF COLONEL BRAMBLE
By ANDRe MAUROIS.
_Translated from the French._
Second Edition. With Portrait.
_Westminster Gazette_.--"_The Silence of Colonel Bramble_ is the best composite character sketch I have seen to show France what the English gentleman at war is like ... much delightful humour.... It is full of good stories.... The translator appears to have done his work wonderfully well."
_Daily Telegraph_.--"This book has enjoyed a great success in France, and it will be an extraordinary thing if it is not equally successful here.... Those who do not already know the book in French, will lose nothing of its charm in English form. The humours of the mess-room are inimitable.... The whole thing is real, alive, sympathetic, there is not a false touch in all its delicate, glancing wit.... One need not be a Frenchman to appreciate its wisdom and its penetrating truth."
_Star_.--"An excellent translation ... a gay and daring translation....
I laughed over its audacious humour."
_Times_.--"This admirable French picture of English officers."
_Daily Graphic_.--"A triumph of sympathetic observation ... delightful book ... many moving pa.s.sages."
_Daily Mail_.--"So good as to be no less amusing than the original....
This is one of the finest feats of modern translations that I know. The book gives one a better idea of the war than any other book I can recall.... Among many comical disputes the funniest is that about superst.i.tions. That really is, in mess language, "A scream"."
_New Statesman_.--"The whole is of a piece charmingly harmonious in tone and closely woven together.... The book has a perfect ending.... Few living writers achieve so great a range of sentiment, with so uniformly light and una.s.suming a manner."
_Observer_.--"The flavour of M. Maurois" humour loses little in this translation.... The admirable verisimilitude of the dialogue.... M.
Maurois" humorous gift is unusually varied.... He tells a good story with great vivacity."
Holbrook Jackson in the _National News_.--"The Colonel is an eternal delight.... I put the volume under my arm, started reading it on the way home, and continued reading until I had finished the same evening....
That ought to be sufficient recommendation for any book...."
_Times Lit. Supplement_.--(Review of French Edition.)--"M. Maurois ...
is indeed so good an artist and so excellent an observer that we would not for worlds spoil his hand, or do more than merely introduce to English readers by far the most interesting and amusing group of British officers that we have met in books since the war began."
_Gentlewoman_.--"The translation of this book is so splendidly done that it seems impossible that it can be a translation.... One of the very few war books which survive Peace.... This is one of the few war books that will not collect dust on the bookshelf."
James Milne in the _Graphic_.--"It is all very wise and very charming."
_Morning Post_.--"This gently-humorous little book.... Half an hour with Colonel Bramble and his entertaining friends will stop you worrying for a whole day."
_Sat.u.r.day Review_.--"The wittiest book of comment on warfare and our national prejudices that we have yet seen."
A KUT PRISONER
By Lieut. H. C. W. BISHOP. Ill.u.s.trated.
This book is the remarkable story of the first three British officers to escape from a Turkish prison camp. It contains a description of the siege and the march of 1,700 miles to Kastamuni; of their capture, escape and dramatic rescue, and finally the voyage in an open boat to Alupka, in the Crimea.
SONNETS FROM A PRISON CAMP
By ARCHIBALD ALLEN BOWMAN
This book falls naturally in two parts; the first is a sonnet sequence describing the author"s capture with his battalion in the great March Offensive, his weary tramp as a prisoner, and internment in a German camp; the second consists of a series of meditative sonnets on these inevitably suggested by close confinement. The poems show great promise, their intense sincerity being foremost among their merits.
_Morning Post_.--"Mr. Bowman"s rich and dignified sonnets."
_Scotsman_.--"There is only one possible verdict on this volume--well done."
SAPPER
DOROTHY LAWRENCE
THE ONLY ENGLISH WOMAN SOLDIER
_Late Royal Engineers, 51st Division, 179th Tunnelling Coy. B.E.F._ With Portraits.
_Daily Mail_.--"Her very astonishing tale ... an extraordinary performance."