Observations of an Orderly. By Ward Muir. (Simpkin, Marshall, and
Co. 28. 6d. net.)—Lance-Corporal Ward Muir has been serving as an orderly in the 3rd London General Hospital since the outbreak of war, and these humorous and pathetic sketches of hospital life are the outcome of his experience. Some of them have appeared in the Spectator ; all are well worth reading. Mr. Ward Muir was a novelist before the war, but he has no patience with the well- meaning people who want to sentimentalize about "Tommy Atkins." The new Amoy represents the whole nation, not one class but all classes, not one type but all types, and " Tommy Atkins is never twice alike." Every soldier, he says, agrees with his comrades on two points ; "he dislikes humbug : ho tries to be polite." Mr. Ward Muir has never met the man who, having tasted the joys of roughing it, is determined not to return to a humdrum desk in an office," nor the man who, having been wounded, is eager to return to the front.
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