Books: Grim Records

A DIARY WITHOUT DATES—Enid Bagnold—Morrow ($1.50). THE DIARY OF OUR OWN SAMUEL PEPYS—Franklin P. Adams—Simon & Schuster ($6). During the War Enid Bagnold ("National Velvet") worked in a hospital in a London suburb, kept a diary, fragments of which were published in 1919. An oblique, suggestive little volume, a mosaic of impressions, it created a small literary sensation, led to the dismissal of its 19-year-old author for "a breach of military discipline." While it is not a record of the horrors of War in a conventional sense, A Diary Without Dates is charged...