CURRENT LITERATURE
THIS little book should appeal to everybody who values reticence, and that gentleness which we rarely find nowadays in our nerve-strained world. The author was with her husband in Belgium during his post-armistice army duties. She saw the clouds of war conditions roll away with the departure of the last of the British troops After that, the Belgians, wistful and inscrutable, crept out to take up the threads of their old life. Their ancient domestic treasures were brought out again, and rehabilitated as symbols of the interrupted past. The tragedy, the pathos, the sense of loss, and the deep-seated hatred are all conveyed by the author with an unusual intimacy. That is the word for this book it is intimate almost to the point of mysticism. A pure and religious mind shares all the unspoken joys and agonies of these people as they breathe again the normal air—to find it; still the same, and yet changed. The machinery of the book is similar to that of Elizabeth and her German Garden. There is the husband, a pillar of strength, somewhat enthroned: in the background. But the sub-acid quality which pervades. " Elizabeth " is here concentrated into a fiercer and less charitable note of hatred, directed towards the late enemy. It is a little out of keeping with the tenor of the author's mind ; but perhaps it can be forgiven, when we see, with her eyes, the devastation and the gaping wounds that will not be healed in our lifetime.
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