(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)
In _No Man's Land_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) is revealed a breadth of
vision which may astonish some of us who have been inclined to regard
SAPPER as merely a talented story-teller. Among the writers on the War I
place him first, for the simple reason that I like him best; and I am
not at all sure that I should like him any better if he cured himself of
his cardinal fault. With his tongue in his cheek he dashes away from his
story to give us either a long or short digression; no more confirmed
digressionist ever put pen to paper, and the wonderful thing is that
these wanton excursions are worth following. True he often apologises
for them, but I do not think that we need take these apologies
seriously. This book is divided into four parts, "The Way to the Land,"
"The Land," "Seed Time," and "Harvest," and in "Seed Time," at any rate,
we have a series of chapters which require not only to be read but to be
thought over. But whether he is out for fun, as in "Bendigo Jones--His
Tree," or for pathos, as in "Morphia," he obtains his effects without
the smallest appearance of effort. And I reserve a special word of
praise for "My Lady of the Jasmine," and commend it to the notice of
those pessimists who hold that only the French and the Americans can
write a good short story.
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