Again, Wren

SOLDIERS OF MISFORTUNE--Percival Christopher Wren--Stokes ($2).

Heavyweight champion of England and Mary's onetime sweetheart, Sailor Joe Mummery conceived a fondness for her boy, Otho, when Mary's husband died. He sent him "up to Oxford" to learn boxing and other sciences. There Otho, weak-kneed through love of his own sweetheart, one Margaret, failed to conquer Margaret's brother at fisticuffs, thus losing Joe's esteem and help.

To get Joe back, Otho turns professional, fights for charity. Thereby he loses Margaret. She marries another. Sad, Otho forsakes England, Margaret and boxing, seeks forgetfulness with Joe in the Foreign Legion.

In Africa the current champion of Europe, a Negro, challenges all white men. Into the ring springs Otho, feeling himself a new "white hope." In the tenth round Otho remembers his family motto "Up, Belleme! ... I Saye and I Doe," gets up from the floor, knocks the Negro out, thus proving the naive hypothesis that "though an English gentleman's strength and insensibility might be inferior to those of a Negro, his spirit might be superior. . . . Mind triumphant over matter." Be--ing champion of Europe makes Otho friends again with Margaret.

Still a master of "impossible" plots, Author Wren will not, even with this story, lose many of the multitudinous readers he had for Beau Geste, Beau Sabreur.