Grapes of wrath

The readers of Boyd Cables Between the Lines Action Front and Doing Their Bit have very naturally had their curiosity excited as to an author who previously unheard of has suddenly become the foremost word-painter of active fighting at the present day and the greatest literary discovery of the War. Boyd Cable is primarily a man of action; and for half of his not very long life he has been doing things instead of writing them. At the age of twenty he joined a corps of Scouts in the Boer War and saw plenty of fighting in South Africa. After the close of that war his life consisted largely of traveling in Great Britain and the principal countries of Europe and the Mediterranean his choice always leading him from the beaten track. He also spent some time in Australia and in New Zealand not only in the cities but in the outposts of civilization on the edge of the wilderness both there and in the Philippines Java and other islands of the Pacific. When he travels Mr. Cable does not merely take a steamer-berth or a railway-ticket and write up his notes from an observation car or a saloon deck. He looks out after a job and puts plenty of energy into it while he is at it; in fact so many different things has he done that he says himself that it is easier to mention the things he has not done than the ones he has. He has been an ordinary seaman typewriter agent a steamer-fireman office-manager hobo farmhand gold prospector coach-driver navvy engine-driver and many other things. And strangely enough though he knows so much from practical experience he has until recently never thought of writing down what he has seen. Before this present War he was on the staff of a London advertising agency. At the outbreak of hostilities he offered his services and was accepted in 1914 being one of the first men not in the regular army to get a commission and be sent to the front.