Books: In Wartime

SIEGE — Julian Bryan — Doubleday, Doran ($2.75).

THE PROVINCIAL LADY IN WARTIME—E. M. Delafield—Harper ($2.50).

A traveloguer caught in Warsaw, a clever novelist at home in England, might be expected to present divergent records of Europe's most hopeless September.They do.

Julien Bryan's film of the "siege" of Warsaw was released some weeks ago. His book contains 48 photographs, some of them of scenes omitted from the film. The only cameraman in Warsaw at the time, Bryan tells in words part of what he saw and how he got along during two weeks of it. Even the Poles had to laugh when, after many days of methodical murder with bombs, incendiaries and constant shelling, Nazi planes dropped leaflets threatening to bomb and shell the city unless it surrendered. Bryan's photographs are pitiful, dreadful, conclusive. His writing is considerably less vivid.

E. M. Delafield (Mrs. Arthur Paul Dashwood) has entertained many readers with her cheerful, skittering diaries (The Provincial Lady in London, etc.). As pert as ever, this one shows what an elaborate game war was in England while the English were standing by the Poles.

"Mending pools" (sewing circles), dithers, evacuees and officiousness in a country village; officiousness, confusion, darkness and bad ventilation in London: the provincial lady notes it all with a sharp but cheery eye. Sporting new name for tin hats: "battle-bowlers."