The reasons for their precipitancy are not easy to see, nor what they hope to gain by forcing Portugal to enter the war, but they need not concern us. As a correspondent of the Manchester Guardian points out, the declaration of war by Germany on Portugal-which has been followed by a similar one from Austria-compels England to provide ships and troops to protect Portugal and her colonies if attacked. Portugal must also render assistance, and a Court of Judicature must, under the terms of our long-standing agreement, decide in future on any territory conquered by our joint armies. tugal will now have to co-operate with General Smuts in East Africa, where Germany will find a considerable body of Portuguese troops already on the frontiers of German East Africa, and the Portuguese ports, such as Madeira and the Azores, will no longer be available The Economist.

Por

as a refuge for German raiders.

"Portugal," said Sir Edward Grey, "may rest assured that Great Britain and the Allies will afford her all the assistance that she may require, and that, having been compelled to range herself on the side of the Allies, she will be welcomed as a gallant coadjutor in the defense of the great cause for which the present war is being waged." His message to this effect, read by the new War Government before the Parliament at Lisbon on Thursday, was received with enthusiasm. There have lately been food riots and other demonstrations of popular discontent in Portugal, due to bad trade and high prices. It may, we hope, turn out that the requisitioning of German ships will relieve the pressure by enabling Portugal to exchange its surplus products for the supplies which it needs from overseas.

Although "The Shepherd of the North," by Richard Aumerle Maher, tells of a noble-hearted bishop's work among the Adirondack people where he watches over the love affairs of two interesting young charges, and saves a whole district from an evil-purposed railroad, the theme of the book is an abstract one; the triumph of Roman Catholicism. The main interest is not whether Jeffrey Whiting shall marry Ruth Lansing, nor even whether he shall make a gallant fight against the railroad interests, but whether he shall give his soul to God and become a Roman Catholic. The author has succeeded admirably in making the bishop -the shepherd of the north-a figure of rare dignity and force of character. He is a symbol of the protecting power of righteousness. The book has several dramatic moments and some fine

descriptive passages. Not often is a distinctly religious theme given such a rugged and vigorous setting as in this story. The Macmillan Co.

"Mary Allen" by Eleanor Marvin is a story for girls. Its young heroine is a seventeen year old girl who displays such talent for drawing while she attends a country high school that her teacher encourages her to enter an Art School in New York. Mary Allen's efforts to make her home in the country attractive so that some one will wish to rent it and enable her mother and herself to live in New York make, perhaps, the most entertaining portion of the book. Her subsequent triumphs in New York seem almost too easily won to be true, although she does indeed make one enemy who threatens to spoil her career. Young readers who

will not cavil at the extraordinary progress of the artist, will thoroughly enjoy the account of her life in New York and the wonderful things which happened to her there. The author writes with a sure sense of the details which always please girl readers. Doubleday Page & Company.

It is not everyone who, moving about "From Pillar to Post," as John Kendricks Bangs describes himself as doing, in the book to which he has given that title (The Century Co.) would meet so many cheerful people, or have so many diverting experiences; but then, it is not everyone who would carry about with him so sunny and sympathetic a spirit. That is the real key to the book and explains its charm. For ten years the author, who is perhaps the best-known of contemporary American humorists-the Artemus Ward of our time-has been one of the most conspicuous figures on the lyceum platform, bearing about with him to and fro across the country a store of wholesome humor which has entertained all sorts and conditions of men, in city and town and remote hamlet, wherever the "movies" have not wholly displaced the traveling lecturer. Either from a retentive memory or a rich notebook he has selected the material for the present volume, which presents no continuous narrative and follows no definite route geographically, but groups together scraps of amusing experience on the road or on the platform, sketches of different types of chairman, or of friends met on the way, and of embarrassing moments and unlooked-for emergencies. There is not a touch of cynicism anywhere, nor is there a dull page. The book is a beguiling one, and its charm is heightened by thirty or more humorous illustrations by John R. Neill, which are scattered through the text.

Such a volume as Mrs. Waldo Richards' "High Tide," a collection, as

she describes it, of "songs of joy and vision from the present-day poets of America and Great Britain" should reassure those who have been apprehensive that true poetry was declining and that contemporary verse-makers were a feeble and freakish group. Feeble and freakish verse, to be sure, is abundant enough, but among the poets of the day there are, happily, not a few whose verse is full of promise and seems destined to endure. Mrs. Richards has been fortunate in securing the friendly co-operation of more than a hundred authors and their publishers, and in presenting in this volume nearly two hundred poems, varied in theme but of more than ordinary grace and beauty. Masefield, Noyes, Francis Thompson, Robert Bridges, Rupert Brooke, and John Galsworthy among English poets, and Robert Frost, Josephine Preston Peabody, Grace Fallow Norton, Louise Imogen Guiney, Edwin Markham, Clinton Scollard, Denis A. McCarthy, Nathan Haskell Dole and Fannie Stearns Davis among Americans are included in the group; and all lovers of verse will find it a pleasure to browse through the book. Houghton Mifflin Co.

The romance of a boy of seventeen is, to the boy himself, no subject for jesting; but to observers from without it certainly has its humorous aspects, and Booth Tarkington, in "Seventeen" (Harper & Bros.) makes the most of them. He describes the story, in the sub-title, as "a tale of youth and summertime and the Baxter family-especially William." William it is who fills the center of the stage throughout: his infatuation with a young beauty, visiting near by; her beguiling ways and entrancing baby talk; the cold indifference of older people; the harassing interruptions of a persistent and imperturbable younger sister; the advances of deadly rivals; such casualties

as the rift of William's apparel by the untimely deposit of his body upon a prostrate picture frame; the tragedy of the loss of the only collar-button in the house at a critical moment in his dressing; his furious remonstrances with Fate and his futile attempts to curb or eliminate young Jane; the sacred box in which he deposited various souvenirs, floral and other, of the charmer-these and other incidents of that eventful summertime are described by the author with a rollicking humor which boys of seventeen may think heartless, but will enjoy notwithstanding, and which readers who recall their own boyhood will read with amusement, and-possiblyawakening memories. A dozen clever illustrations by Arthur William Brown decorate the book.

William Roscoe Thayer's volume on "Germany vs. Civilization" (Houghton Mifflin Co.) indicates clearly enough in its title, and in its sub-title "Notes on the Atrocious War," the author's point of view. No more keen and vigorous indictment of the Prussianized Germany of today has been published, and no more merciless exhibit of the egomania of the Kaiser, of whom it is said, in the caption of one of the chapters, that “He created Gott in his own image." Mr. Thayer grounds his views upon a thorough knowledge of history and upon personal acquaintance with Germany and the Germans of a generation ago as well of today; and, in chapter after chapter of keen analysis and forceful statement, he traces the course of the influences which have made Germany a menace to humanity and civilization. He finds the traits of bloodthirstiness and vassalage a recrudescence of the qualities of the Goths, Vandals and Huns who peopled Germany early in the Christian era; and he describes selfesteem, which reaches a climax in the utterances of the Kaiser, as so salient a characteristic of the Teutons, and es

pecially of the Prussians, since the earliest times, that we may assume it to be innate in them. He writes with impassioned earnestness, yet with poise and a well-balanced judgment.

The "jacket" of Mr. Pelham Grenville Wodehouse's "Uneasy Money" gives one the key to the nature of the story. There one sees a hatless and slightly disheveled young woman and a young man in correct traveling costume occupying a double seat in a railway car, with an amused and attentive audience of three wide-eyed urchins listening to a conversation, evidently amazing and amusing. Mr. Wodehouse writes in a pleasantly bluff fashion, from the dedication, "To My Wife Bless Her," to the last page, whereon is printed the ejaculation "Ow!" extracted from the hero by a scientifically applied pin in the fingers of the heroine. The number of things which happen between these points is extraordinary. The characters, being more or less connected with the stage, rather enjoy the assumption of pseudonyms, and other harmless deceptions, and Eustace, the monkey, revels in mischief until Atropos quiets him, using the pistol which is the modern substitute for her shears, and leaves the human survivors to repair resultant confusion as best they may. Their success is facilitated and their happiness is augmented by unexpected avalanches of money, until all are opulent and well content. The comic theatrical advertising agent is worthy of Dickens, and the story will give the reader a pleasant hour or two and supply him with the by-words and jokes needed by the summer lounger. D. Appleton & Company.

Among the latest additions to Everyman's Library (E. P. Dutton & Co.) are "The Life of the First Duke of Newcastle and Other Writings" by Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, a quaint and intimate disclosure of life and

thought and social usage in seventeenth century England; "The Peace of Europe: The Fruits of Solitude, and Other Writings" by William Penn, with an interesting biographical Introduction by Joseph Besse; Honore de Balzac's "Ursule Mirouet," for which George Saintsbury furnishes a brief but discriminating Introduction; and Henrik Ibsen's plays, "Lady Inger of Ostraat" "Love's Comedy" and "The League of Youth," all in one volume, translated by R. Farquharson Sharp, with a brief introductory appreciation.

"Adam's Garden," by Nina Wilcox Putnam, is a many-sided story, beginning by placing incongruously mated persons in intimate relations, in a garden, proceeding joyously to make the wicked outsiders unhappy, and ending pleasantly for all but the serpent, to whom justice is meted in ample measure. He is a handsome, plausible serpent, concealing many varieties of meanness under his glossy coat, and as undiscouraged by failure as the most virtuous school-boy who ever sang “Try, try again” in earpiercing staccato. Adam, who is innocent of anything worse than profuse employment of the ejaculation "Suffering cats!" is once his victim through Evelyn, the lovely and rich flying-girl, but she rescues him from deadly peril in her aeroplane. The mainspring of the story is a whimsical will leaving a huge fortune to a wayward youth at a certain date, provided that before that time he shall have sufficiently improved one half of it to show that he may safely be trusted with thewhole. The consequent entanglement of interests is so clearly set forth as to be easily understood by the most careless reader. A touch of melancholy is given to the tale by the introduction of an unfortunate girl redeemed by the chivalrous behavior of a group of eccentric men, and thus the perfecting touch is given to a romance of New York in her latest stage of development. J. B. Lippincott Company.

The horse dear to the romancer and poet, the noble steed who is the household pet, and supports his beloved master's family by winning races, or saves their lives, is not related to the animal that is the mainspring of Edfrid A. Bingham's "The Heart of Thunder Mountain." Sunnysides is an untamed yellow brute with the disposition of a panther, and the obstinacy of a mule, but in the region honored by his presence he is regarded as very desirable because of his odd beauty. His color is almost golden, his mane and tail yellow, deepening to gold, and that he uses both hoofs and teeth upon anyone attempting to approach him, does not greatly discourage cowboys and horse-breeders who know his value. Consequently, one after another they attempt his capture and to all but one he brings bad luck. To the exception he brought long suffering and torturing pain, but in the end happiness unspeakable, and then he went to his own place. The hero and heroine are not the first fictitious pair whom fate has isolated from their kind, but Mr. Bingham shows originality, and does not hesitate to present them in the squalor inevitable when two human beings are immured for weeks in a cave, and compelled to endure all the suffering caused by insufficient clothing, food and fire. Maid and lover are worthy of one another and the assurance of their worldly prosperity and the probability of the man's success as an artist are the least of the good things finally showered upon them by the author. Marriage can bring them few prosaic revelations and its poetry is all before them. The similar situation, developed in Charles Reade's "Foul Play" is made comparatively easy for his castaways by a tropical climate and an abundance of food. Mr. Bingham from first to last is unsparing in his dealings with his characters. He has a good style and his first book presages others of at least equal merit. Little, Brown & Co.