Its publishers call _The Pot Boils_ (CONSTABLE) a "provocative" book, and certainly the title at least deserves this epithet. But I decline to be drawn into the obvious retort. Besides, with all its faults, the story exhibits an almost flaunting disregard of those qualities that make the best seller. About the author I am prepared to wager, first, that "STORM JAMESON" is a disguise; secondly, that the personality behind it is feminine. I have hinted that the tale is hardly likely to gain universal popularity; let me add that certain persons, notably very young Socialists and experts in Labour journalism, may find it of absorbing interest. It is a young book, almost exclusively about young people, written (or I mistake) by a youthful hand. These striplings and maidens are all poor, mostly vain, and without exception fulfilled of a devastating verbosity. We meet them first at a "Northern University," talking, reforming the earth, kissing, and again talking--about the kisses. Thence they and the tale move to London, and the same process is repeated. It is all rather depressingly narrow in outlook; though within these limits there are interesting and even amusing scenes. Also the author displays now and again a happy dexterity of phrase (I remember one instance--about "web-footed Socialists ... dividing and sub-dividing into committees, like worms cut by a spade"), which encourages me to hope that she will do better things with a scheme of wider appeal. But to the general, especially the middle-aged general, the contents of her present _Pot_ will, I fear, be only caviare.
Little _Sara Lee Kennedy_, betrothed to one of those alert grim-jawed young Americans one sees in the advertising pages of _The Ladies' Home Journal_, learns of the suffering in Belgium at the beginning of the great War and finds she must do something about it. She can cook, so she will go and make soup for KING ALBERT's men. She takes her young man's photograph and his surly disapproval; also a few dollars hastily collected from her obscure township in Pa.; and becomes the good angel of a shattered sector of the Belgian line. And she finds in _The Amazing Interlude_ (MURRAY) her prince--a real prince--in the Secret Service, and, after the usual reluctances and brave play (made for the sake of deferring the inevitable) with the photograph of the old love, is at last gloriously on with the new. It is a very charming love-story, and MARY ROBERTS RINEHART makes a much better thing of the alarms and excursions of war than you would think. It was no good, I found, being superior about it and muttering "Sentiment" when you had to blink away the unbidden tear lest your fireside partner should find you out. So let me commend to you this idealised vision of a corner of the great War seen through the eyes of an American woman of vivid sympathies.