A collection of short stories has been assembled from the year, 1910, when the author was 7(apple), until 1953. Of the twelve stories, nine are pre-World War II, and of those, a number are vintage Waugh, witty, macabre, and cynically devastating, and perhaps the best of these are On Guard. Bella Fleace Gave a Party, Winner Takes All, and An Englishman Home. Of the three later stories, Work Suspended (1941) is very long and a delicate obituary on the death of the ideals of more than one generation just before and after the war; Tactical Excercise is a turn-about thriller; and Love Among The Ruins (1953), a fantasy of the future, ran in its entirety in this country in Commonweal and was published in England as a separate book..... A savory, for an audience which is by now dedicated.