The author of _Westward Ho!_, considering the Spanish and English navies
of ELIZABETH'S time, found precisely the same contrasted elements of
autocracy and brotherliness producing just those results that we find
respectively in the German and French forces of to-day--on the one hand
a mechanical perfection of command, on the other an informed equality
which, somehow, does not make against efficiency whilst fostering
individuality. Mr. IRWIN hardly refers to our own Army; but one is
thankful to remember that discipline by consent, one of the virtues of
true democracy, is not the exclusive tradition of our French allies.
* * * * *
_A London Posy_ (MILLS AND BOON) is a story with at least an original
setting. So far as I know, Miss SOPHIE COLE is the first novelist to
group her characters about an actual London house preserved as a memorial
to former inhabitants. The house in question is that in Gough Square,
where Dr. JOHNSON lived, and two of the chief characters are _George
Constant_, the curator, and his sister, to whom the shrine is the most
precious object in life ("housemaid to a ghost," one of the other
personages rather prettily calls her).
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