10 JUNE 1949, Page 30

Shorter Notice

THERE will be a steady flow of travellers from this country to Switzerland in the next few months. Very few of them will include in their limited and varied luggage anything more relevant or more valuable than this admirable little volume. It is emphatically not a guide-book. It does not tell where to go or where to put up. It does tell exactly what every intelligent person ought to want to know about a country where he is going to stay long enough to acquire some interest in its history, in its government, its industries, its culture. All this Mr. Cranston deals with succinctly, accurately, attractively, adding, to give his book a more immediate practical turn, some forty pages on towns and lakes and Alps and sports. It may be doubted whether there is any book on Switzerland in print that serves its particular purpose better. One curious feature of the volume is that Mr. Cranston seems to reserve his inaccuracies for his own country's concerns. The date of the Education Act was 5944, not 5946; Sir. Norman Angell never influenced British journalism ; the Great West Road does not run from Willesden to Slough. Inci- dentally the Palais des Nations at Geneva is not called the Palais Wilson. But these are trivial blemishes on a most excellent book. A simple map would have added considerably to its value.