_Miser's Money_ (HEINEMANN) brings Mr. EDEN PHILLPOTTS back to Devonshire, and I wave my little flag to welcome him. Of late he has sometimes been a shade too didactic for my liking, but here he gives us yet another plain tale of his beloved moor, and he is instructive only in showing the danger of too much money--a danger at which most of us can in these days afford to smile. The _Mortimers_ were, one would have supposed, a clan unlikely to be moved from their native soil by anything less convulsive than an earthquake. But money did it. One of them was a miser, and when he died--after a terrific gorge at his brother's expense--he left trouble behind him. Some of his relations wanted more of his money than was good for their souls, and one of them (actually) fought shy of receiving her proper share. Altogether a pretty tangle, which was not unravelled until the _Mortimers_ had resolved to try new pastures. True, they did not go very far, but the disturbing influence of money is sufficiently illustrated by the fact that it induced such deeply-rooted folk to move at all. If the theme of this story is a little sordid it is relieved by its treatment from any reproach, and faithful followers of the PHILLPOTTS' trail will enjoy every word of it.
All that we ever hoped--some day, when the War was over--to hear about those most fascinating mysteries, the Tanks, has been put together by Major C. and Mr. A. WILLIAMS-ELLIS, under the title _The Tank Corps_ (_Country Life_ Offices). Here are genuine uncamouflaged pictures of all kinds of tanks, with detailed maps and descriptions showing their operations, as well as stories not only of those that walked in orthodox fashion through enemy villages "with the British army cheering behind," but of others that disappeared entire in mud, or drove themselves unaided back to our lines when too full of gas to be occupied, or scrunched up batteries of field-guns, or cruised alone for hours, like the famous one called Musical Box, among the enemy's communications, or crossed vast trenches over bundles of faggots carried upon their backs. Every boy of the right kind who inherits the proper zeal for mechanisms will certainly find in this book the most absorbing of yarns. Not that the subject is treated in the least lightly or frivolously, but, since the barest truth is here incredible romance, the authors, soberly collecting materials from despatches, diaries and so on, as well as drawing on their own obvious first-hand knowledge, have achieved a fairy-tale of mechanics. That the crews were no less wonderful than their machines we knew before, but the writers' modest yet illuminating account of the difficulties under which they worked is none the less welcome.