Varieties of Failure
ISIR. Imes book is composed of three quite separate essays—on Leon Blum, Walther Rathenau and Marinetti, the Italian Futurist leader; there is also an extremely brief introduc- tion in which comparisons are made and a few deductions drawn. The brevity and relative barrenness of the introduction is symptomatic of the book's only major weakness. The title is, in fact, something of a misnomer, for Mr. Joll does not have a great deal to tell us about the charac- teristics of intellectuals who go into politics, or why they do, or how they behave when they are in. He attempts to construct no general theory, and the individual essays have to be judged on their own merits rather than as illustrations of a theme.
As short biographical studies they are very good. The one on Blum is perhaps the least
informative, but this is mainly because, as by far the most important politician and the best- known to English readers of the three, it is less easy, at least within the compass of sixty pages, to say new things about him. But what Mr. loll does say is well worth reading. Blum was a man of meticulously clear thinking who was some- times forced into extremely unclear actions. He only became fully active in politics in his middle forties, and he then held himself and his party in reserve for nearly twenty years. His influence rose to a sudden peak of importance in 1936 and 1937. He presided for fifteen months over the most significant of the many French inter-war govern- ments, and he introduced some decisive changes into the pattern of French life. In part he was trying to catch up with what Lloyd George had done in England twenty-five years earlier; in part he was foreshadowing what Lord Attlee was to do there ten years later. Yet his leadership appeared to fade into weakness and failure. By 1938 his mood was 'one of understandable pessi- mism, almost of lassitude.' After 1940 personal dangers and constant persecution brought about a revival of his will and even of his spirits. His fortitude give him a general respect which he had never enjoyed in the days of power, and made him almost a national hero. But he was unable or unwilling to use this position to give effective post-war leadership to France. He spent the last years of his life, as he had spent so many earlier ones, dictating with speed and precision the editorials of Le Populaire.
The second essay—on Rathenau—is the best of the three. The element of tragedy in his life was still stronger than in Blum's, but it was blended with a faint but unmistakable touch of farce. Half financier, half philosopher, half Prussian, half Jew, half recluse, half burning for
the recognition which would come from public service, he added to these wild contradictions a sense of timing which was so bad as to be almost comic. He was in favour of the war in 1914, against it during the middle years, and in favour of it again when Ludendorff was applying for an armistice in 1918. He attended the Genoa Conference in 1922 (he was then German Minister); as a leading exponent of the fulfilment of German obligations towards the Allies he waited for five years for a sign of friendship from Lloyd George; and then, at the exact moment when the British Prime Minister was ready to talk, Rathenau was at Rapallo, signing without conviction a treaty with the Russians. Two months later he was assassinated in Berlin by a gang of nationalist youths. He had been branded not only as a Jew and a defeatist, but as a Soviet agent as well. Paradoxically, his death gave a certain temporary infusion of • strength to the Government on which he had previously been a notably weakening influence.
The third subject, Marinetti, is an odd choice. He was never really a politician of any impact or note, but merely a natural, but temporary and not very important, ally of Mussolini's. Mr. Joll uses him, however, as a peg on which to give us an interesting enough account of the develop- ment of the Futurist Movement.
The greatest value of the book is the impres- sion it gives us of the contrasts, thirty or forty years ago, between the political assumptions and outlooks of the three major European countries which are now moving so close together. Mr. Joll moves with great sureness in this comparative field and has an extremely sensitive awareness of the different European political traditions.
ROY JENKINS
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