Points of Friction
The "War Letters" dictated by the "Living Dead Man" in the spring and summer of 1915 are more animated and highly coloured. Some long-past episodes, notably the entrance of the German soldiers into Brussels, are well described, though not so vividly as by the living Richard Harding Davis. We are told in the preface that on the fourth of February, 1915, the spirit wrote: "When I come back" (he was touring to a distant star), "and tell you the story of this war, as seen from the other side, you will know more than all the Chancelleries of the nations." This promises well; but in the three hundred pages that follow there is not one word to indicate that the "Living Dead Man" had any acquaintance with real happenings which were not published in our newspapers; or that he was aware of these happenings before the newspapers published them. He is always on the safe side of prophecy. In a letter dic-
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