THE line of treatment employed by Walter Millis in "The Martial Spirit" was the first definite attempt to relegate the Spanish-American War to the status of a slap-stick melodrama, and this attempt has proved quite successful. Likewise, Mr. Gregory Mason's account of the War has many more characteristics in common with the Gilbert and Sullivan type of opera than with an armed conflict. He has seconded Millis' motion on the subject by treating the 1898 embroilment as a schoolboy's scuffle. But, like many second-the-motions, "Remember the Maine" is at best only a weak reiteration of something that has been gone over before in more positive fashion.

Mr. Mason apparently has two goals in his book, the first of which is to give the atmospheric background of the War, both in the United States, and in the field of military operations; and the second to give an interesting account of the actual operations and personalities of the War. The first six chapters give the reader a fairly compelling description of the temper of the period preceding the conflict, employing the well-worn system of correlating diverse events throughout the country to show the styles, manners, opinions, interests of the American people. But after Mr. Mason gets his reader into the actual conflict with the Spaniard, he entirely forgets to write of the folks back home and embarks on an inconsequential play-by-play account of Shafter's insular campaign and Dewey's tugboat race to Manila.

"Remember the Maine" is distinctly inferior to Walter Millis's classic exposition, but such a statement does not imply complete condemnation of Mr. Mason's book. Mr. Mason has written in a pleasing, colorful style, and on one point he is even superior to Millis as a creator of atmospheric background for the United States' imperialistic adventure. He avoids the harsh, extreme one-sidedness of the earlier author, who in general seems to have felt that our participation in the Cuban question was due entirely to Messrs. Hearst, Pulitzer, and Remington. Mr. Mason is more concerned with the legendary Americana that fills the period, and with the war as a colorful, populous picture, aside from its deep political significance. He grinds not an axe, but a camera.