* * * * A new Battle of the Book
Clubs has been joined, and a considerable political interest attaches to it. Mr. Victor Gollancz's Left Book Club, the pioneer in a hitherto un- tilled field, selling books (published by Mr. Gollancz) at a cheap rate to members of the dub, gathered in a member- ship put at so,000 and prompted the creation by other publishers of a crowd of rival organisations of which similar results were hoped (and hoped in vain). But now the Left Book Club has its appeal to the Labour Party disputed. Official Labour has never liked it ; it is much too far Left for them, as the names of its selection committee—Mr. Gollancz himself, Professor Harold Laski and Mr. John Strachey—indicate. So a Labour Book Service, sponsored by the Daily Herald, and with Sir Walter Citrine, Dr. Dalton, Professor Tawney and Mr. G. D. H. Cole on its selection committee, has taken birth this week. Sir Norman Angell is the author of its first volume, due on May 1st. Thus is the fissure between the Labour Party's Left and Right emphasised. But there is a good deal of no man's land between them, and in that territory I should expect the new organisation to gain at the expense of the old. The backing of a daily paper with a circulation of over two million is no negligible advantage.
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