The Birmingham age-herald., 1920-09-12

uatlon, now the war affects their char acters, their reflex and conscious actions under the strain, their ultimate fate, is here told in way that makes this book unique and perhaps of the biggest human dramas of the war.
 POEMS BY A LITTLE GIRL.' By linda Conkling. Frontispiece by
 James Chapin. Frederick A. Stokes
 Company Publishers, New York City.
 In Preface" to Poems by a Little Girl" Amy Lowell, the well-known writer of verse, says:
 Here is an amazing thng-this slim volume contains one hundred and seven separate poems, and that is counting as one all the very short pieces written be- tween the ages of five and six Certain ly that is a remarkable output for d little girl. the only possible explanation being that the poems are perfectly in- stinctive. There is no working over as with an adult poet. She rarely hesi- tates for word. When the feeling is strong. it speaks for itself. But it is not only the pulse of feeling in certain passages which makes them sur prising; it is the perfectly original ex- pression of it. When one reads a thing and voluntarily =exclaims How beauti- full! How natural! How truer then one knows that one has stumbled upon the flash of personality which we call genius. | These poems are full of such flashes.
 
 | cd of it is this: They come out in the course of conversation and Mrs Conk- | ling is so often engaged in writing that | there is nothing to be remarked if she | scribbles absently while talking to the little girl. But this scribbling Is really tho complete draught of the poem No 1 line, no cadence is altered from Hilda' s version; the titles alone have been added for convenience, but they are obvious | handles derived from the text 1 What this book chiefly shows is high l promise: but 1t also has it's pages of real achievement, and that of so high an order it may well set us pondering" :" AS for the emotions expressed in these 1 little lyrics, they are chiefly love for l mother, for the dear out of doors, fol animals. stars. fairies, pictures. books, 1 as we might expect. Each mood runs clear as a rillet from a spring. Says Hilda, four years old:
 I will sing you a song. l Sweets-of-my-heart. With love in 1t,
 How love you
 1 Will you love me tomorrow after next AS If had a birds way of singing?
 Such poems are little silver shallops l blown by May breeze across a sunny sea to a fred world almost ready to be led by little children. Hilda is voice l Tor many children who have kept silence 1 and for many whose speech has not beer 1 heard. And she says:
 l am willowy boughs for cooiness: l l am gold-finch wings for darkness;
 am little grape thinking of Septem- Der
 FLYING THE ATLANTIC IN SIX TEEN HOURS'' 1 By Sir Arthur Whitten Brown. Fred erick A. Stokes Company, publishers
 New York city:
 Lower, alarmingly lower! I mad ready for the worst, loosening m.
 safety belt. The dice wer heavily loaded against us The SC; surface did not appear below. bu seemed to stand up sideways. When the machine swung back to thu level our height was fifty feet. w could actually hear the voice of tn, 1 cheated ocean,
 Arthur Whitten Brown and John Al cock jumped the Atlantic ocean in 2 single leap in the most remarkable airplane journey ever made. How the, Tell 5000 feet from the clouds to tho sea. how they bored through hail ant sleet and dense masses of vapor b, night. guided by dead reckoning alone now they crashed at last in an Irisf bog and the rescuers refused to be lieve they had come from America is told in a tale with a thrill like Jules Verne-and it is all true
 This is the only book about the firs' direct~flight from America to Europe that can ever be written. It is ar epoch making book. book of vile dreams transformed into science and told with breathless interest.
 'WOMEN'S WILD OATS"
 By c. Gasquoine Hartley. Frederick A
 Stokes Company. Publishers. New York
 City.
 Tt is women, and they alone. who can save marriage. They hold all life in l their hands. Never before in the worlc has the opportunity been so vast. Tt me what seems the first necessity is te face things as they are, and not go or eternally pretending that our world what it is not"