BOOKS OF THE DAY

Advice to Statesmen (Richard Freund) .. • The Religion of Japan (Francis Gower) • British Unemployment Policy (R. C. K. Ensor) ..

Imperial Law (W. T. Wells) .. .. Feminists and Others (Honor Croome) .. After Ottawa (Professor W. K. Hancock) • .

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PAGE 590 591 591 592 594 594 Mightier Than the Sword (Desmond Hawkins) ..

The Letters of John Dove .. .. ..

Russia in Chains (Igor Vinogradoff) .. .. Horace Walpole's Great-Nieces (John Hayward)'; .

Fiction (Forrest Reid) .. .. ..

Current Literature .. ..

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ADVICE TO STATESMEN

By RICHARD FRECND MODERN newspapers make increasing demands upon the knowledge and judgement, of their experts on international affairs, and ask at the same time that they should, at best, subordinate their own views or, at worst, adjust them to the political or commercial interests of the proprietor. That is too much to ask of sensitive men who have unique opportunities of studying affairs of State at the source and who must, on pain of losing their jobs, probe deeply into the background of current events. Journalists have now discovered a way of taking revenge on their owners. The knowledge stored away in years of enforced restraint can be poured out in books which publishers are most anxious to commission. Some- of these books have reflected the unsteady life, the rootlessness, and the habit of haste that are the foreign correspondent's . lot ; but others have given both to statesmen and to the public at large information that is not available elsewhere and, one suspects, often superior in wealth and interpretation to the diplomatic dispatches on which much of the govern- ment's foreign policy is based. Two such books are published this week by journalists whose understanding of the working of international relations puts to shame nine out of ten speakers in any foreign affairs debate in Parliament.

Mr. Voigt has attempted not merely to analyse the present international relationships but to outline a valid political philosophy for our times. He rightly stresses that European peace is menaced as much by the utter contrast in philosophies as by the ambitions of dictators ; but he deprecates the mechanistic view that explosion is inevitable. Inevitability is a concept that has haunted Europe ever since Marx pro- claimed it from the housetops. Actually there is no automatic sequence of cause and effect in the progress of history, and the Marxists as well as the National Socialists, their heirs, believe in automatism—of class or race—as one believes in a- myth, with " apocalyptic unreason," as Mr. Voigt puts it. Marxism, he says, has led to Fascism and National Socialism because, in all essentials, it is Fascism and National Socialism. The socialist vision has never been, as Marx and Lenin pretended, a theory, but a secular religion. It arose from the optimism of the nineteenth century which assumed that the plain man was free of sin, corrupted only by a wicked " system." Plato knew that• the assumption was false, and the Russian revolution has proved it false in our lifetime. The State, which Marx and Lenin thought would " wither away " as soon as classes were abolished, is nowhere more powerful and more terrible than in Soviet Russia ; and Stalin's rule proclaims the failure of Marxism.

It has now risen in a different form in Germany (Spengler, whom Mr. Voigt forgets, said twenty years ago that Prussianism and Socialism were the same), as a secular religion obliterating individual personality and threatening other nations with fanatic visions of a new kingdom of heaven on earth reigned over by the German race. Clearly there can be no stable peace between people who give unto Caesar the things that are God's and those who leave the individual to strike his account with heaven in his own fashion.

With that Mr. Voigt comes down to practical politics, and the later chapters of his rather unwieldy book are packed with political wisdom. Germany's defeat in the War was no more than an incident. Germany is back in 1914 and looks once more forward to a pan-German hegemony over the Unto Caesar. By F. A. Voigt. (Constable. ios.) Insanity Fair. By Douglas Reed. (Cape. los. 6d.) continent, and beyond that to world power. That goal may yet be achieved without a direct German-Russian conflict. Though the Germans do not shrink from war as such, they do not want to risk defeat. But what can we do to avert the outbreak ? An anti-German alliance, by any name, would cause Germany to strike at once. Concessions by the Western Powers would be interpreted by the German as signs of weak- ness and would tempt them to strike West first. Either course would tend to bring on rather than to avert a general European war. England, the most vulnerable among the great Powers, derives her strength from her ability to preserve a' precarious balance of international forces. Though she will have to go to war if her vital interests can no longer be protected by policy, she may yet escape the necessity of fighting if she can prevent any crystallisation of international relationships. England, of all Powers, must not tie herself, even to a coercive League of Nations. The idea of coercing Japan in 1931 was, in Mr. Voigt's view, rightly rejected because it might have spelt a Japanese victory. In 1935 England attempted what she had not dared in 193r, and the enterprise failed because British statesmen awoke in the nick of time from the dangerous fascination of world peace. " No government has the right to declare war for a principle." There is, then, nothing left but patient plodding, watchful diplomacy, and heavy arming. It is not pleasant counsel, but I believe it is true. And this brilliant analysis will help to shape the new outlook which is now rapidly emerging in this country.

But not all men can have such almost terrifying detachment. Mr. Douglas Reed has seen at close range events that stimulate his human sympathies as much as his thought, and his is a close-up picture, swiftly moving and colourful, of men and affairs under the stress of war and warlike peace in many countries. Rising from office boy to special correspondent, he has retained a fresh outlook and a determination never to be humbugged. His sparse sketches of England before the War, of an airman's life in Flanders, and of Northcliffe, whose secretary he was for a time, are invariably interesting and to the point. He went to Germany with a suspicious liking for the Germans ; he still likes them, but his suspicions have been proved right. The type of German that has ruled the Reich for five years is all, short of mutilated babies, that the British soldier believed him to be during the War. A shifty, lying, domineering brute. I am afraid Mr. Reed judges too harshly, or generalises too freely, but then he has lived through the terror of 1933, has watched the effect, or lack of effect, of the Roehm massacre in 1934, and sat through the unbelievable drama of the Reichstag fire trial, of which he gives a fierce outline.

Travelling to Moscow with Mr. Eden, he found again the signs of the terrorist State, and disliked it as much as the Nazi Reich, though he feels certain that the British Empire will have to be saved by the Russians in the end. What is left ? England, the last refuge of humanity ; but safe only if she stands up to Hitler. Mr. Reed believes that Hitler can still be checked by threats, and his opinion is not to be taken lightly, for there are few Englishmen who know Germany better. He has been really " inside " Europe and has under- stood what he saw and heard, in Paris, Berlin, Stresa, Geneva, Vienna and the capitals of the south-east. His grand panorama is accurate in every detail, and anybody who disagrees With his opinions can still derive a vast amount of information from his book, quite apart from enjoying it as a first-class story.