... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. NOW that the Aid to Britain Bill is through, and America is all geared to help Britain in her war-effort, I can't help wishing that our good friends across the Atlantic would slip in just one spiritual comfort amongst the planes and guns and food and ammunition-- a copy of Walt Disney's film FANTASIA. I want to see Fantasia as I have seldom wanted to see and hear any ...

... . i By L. P. HARTLEY. THE European spring of Miss Clare Boothe's title is the fateful spring of 1940, and her subject the international situation before and during the onslaught of the German armies on their Western neighbours. Before me as I write is a detail of Paul Veronese's picture The Rape of Europa a lovely thing, sumptuous, luxurious, grand the heroine of the episode looks slightly ...

... STORIES OF: A SINGER, A SURGEON AND A SOLDIER Count John McCormack's Success Story; Another Doctor Autobiography Miss Helen Ash ton's Tadpole Hall -By Vernon Fane IN the foreword to his bio graphy, JOHN McCOR MACK (Methuen. 15s.), Mr. L. A. G. Strong says: I pro vide the recitative, he sings the aria. Both of them are fortunate. Here, indeed, is a rich sub ject for a biographer. The ...

... ESCAPISM AND REALISM The Passing of Elizabeth Kate O'Brien's Study of a Tfun Alec Waugh on a Tropic Isle; London Re-Blitzed -By Vernon Fane THE death at Charleston, South Carolina, of Mary, Countess Russell, better known as the author of Elizabeth and Her German Garden, has provoked some strange obituaries. Elizabeth was a writer who always puzzled the critics. The German Garden book, ...

... All Clare on the Western Front A. G. Street Goes Back to the Farm; The Subtleties of Kathleen Coyle -By Vernon Fane AS I was reading Miss Clare Boothe's EUROPEAN SPRING (Hamish Hamilton. 10s. 6d.), the news came through that President Roosevelt had signed the Lease and Lend Bill. On page 32 of that book I found this passage: Isolation is the unwelcome compliment America pays the British Navy. ...

... -Hut Thdw-j By James Agate IT makes it easier to get through this war if one declines-- but that is too weak a word-- if one refuses to believe that the good things of this world arc in anything but abeyance, and a short-lived abeyance, too. I believe with all my heart and soul, and, what is even more important, with my full mind that the good little things of this world will return in their ...

... (oi -His. Thdwuf By James Agate To Like, or To Dislike MY excellent and fair-minded colleague, Miss Lejeune, has been telling us that either you like or dislike Miss Katharine Hepburn just as you like or dislike Mr. Crosby, Mr. Cagney and the Marx Brothers. I feel that here is a half-truth to which I must devote half a page. Let us begin with Mr. Crosby. Obviously you cannot like an artist who ...

... NOVELS OF MODERN TIMES Hemingway and the Preacher -Poet The Lady in the Fur Coat Bernard T^ewmans Papa Pontivy -By Vernon Fane THE title of the first full-length novel which Ernest Heming way has published for ten years, FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS (Cape. 9s.), is a quotation from John Donne. The book has caused a sensation in America, where, according to the bookselling jour nals, it has busted ...