IS THE WAR GOING AGAINST US?

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 1470, 9 November 1915, Page 4

IS THE WAR GOING AGAINST US?

At the present moment there is a tendency, to which all of us are prone, to take a gloomy, not to say fearful, view of the progress of the war. The experts warned us that the Allies must win first by negative results, then by positive victories, but negative results never satisfy, even when they are being successfully accomplished, and so in the German successes in the Balkans and in the refusal of of the Dardanelles to open up to our knocking, the man in the street is inclined to read defeat for the Allies.

But when a writer of clear vision takes the whole facts—as Dr. Fitchett does in the November issue of Life—and shows us that the Allies’ position is growing stronger, whilst that of the Germans and their forced friends is not nearly as strong as it looks on paper, our confidence is renewed. Dr. Fitchett’s account of the mouth is, as usual, vivid and picturesque, whilst his summing up of the moral factors in which he terms “a spiritual balance sheet of the war,” is at once a mental and moral tonic.

These special war articles of Dr. Fitcbett’s are, as usual, the backbone of the issue, but the magazine is rounded out with a number of special articles, stories and departments in which subjects of quite other kinds are dealt with. There is, for example, a clever detective story with a woman in

the chief role, a lengthy review of thie South African prize novel, and another “Morrissey” snake sketch, in which humour and instruction are interwoven. Morrissey’s adventures with an Indian princess and her rattlesnakes being described with pen and camera. It is quite safe to recommend this as the best magazine that will figure on the bookstalls this month. If unobtainable locally for sixpence, a 3s postal note sent to T. Shaw Fitchett, 376 Swanston St.. Melbourne, will secure Life, post free, tor six months.