A BOOK OF THE MOMENT.

A BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAIT OF M. POINCARg.

Poincard : a Biographical Portrait. By Sisley Huddleston. (Fisher Unwin. 7s. 6d.) A CONVINCING account of M. Poincare, an acceptable explana- tion of his deeds, an exposition of his aims, would be one of the most valuable pieces of work which any political writer could do. In this country we are apt to look on M. Poineard, and " Poineareisra," as an isolated, disastrous and inexplicable phenomenon. He, and it, are, in a sense, but the result,

the summing up, of the whole tendency of the European history of the last twenty years—that long, unfinished story in which the Great War is Lut an incident and which is itself conditioned by the history of the Continent since the French Revolution. Thus we are tempted to feel that any book on M. Poincare is better than none. Anything which

reminds us of his accession to power in 1911 and of his whole pre-War policy, of his part in the War as President of the Republic, of, in short, what he stands for in France, is to be welcomed. And This Mr. Sisley Huddleston's book does for us. But it does nothing more. Indeed, the reader, when he lays down this volume, will find it difficult to resist the

conclusion that it is ill-written, ill-constructed and ill- conceived.

Mr. Huddleston would probably not claim to be a stylist, nor should we require style of him, but we feel that any book on a serious subject might be written a little more simply and sensibly than this one. Here, for instance, is a paragraph on the Balkan War :—

" The diplomatists asked themselves once more if this was the match in the powder magazine which would blow up Europe. It was to the Near East that they had become accustomed to look for the beginning of the European War. It -was, in fact, in the Near East, that is to say, in the Balkans, that the great conflagra- tion began. But on this occasion diplomacy was able to circum- scribe the conflict."

Mr. Huddleston has never paused for a moment to spare the poor old work-broken phrases, still less to

try to convey his meaning with any approximation to accuracy. In the first sentence we find " matches in powder magazines." In the second we get the impression of the diplomats of Europe somewhat nonchalantly but expectantly looking for a war, which, if perhaps a tenable point of view, is from the context certainly not Mr. Huddleston's. In the third we come across our old friend of the 1914 leading article, " the great conflagration," and in the last we leave " diplomacy circumscribing the conflict." The only " notable absentee " that we can think of is " the cloud no larger than a man's hand." But a paragraph of this sort of writing does not much matter—it is a whole book of it that exasperates.

A more important defect, however, is the book's faulty construction. Now, Mr. Huddleston was qualified to write either a biography of M. Poincare, or an estimate of

M. Poincare's position in France to-day, or, again, an essay on " Poincareism." But, unfortunately, he never made up his mind as to which or what he was writing. When we come

to read the book we find that the first chapter, with the preface, is practically an article on M. Poineare's Ruhr Policy and the state of French opinion, and that the second consists of a few facts about his daily life and methods of work. Then in the third chapter there begins a roughly chronological biography from his birth and early education onwards, 'which runs on till Chapter XI. (the Prime Minister), by which time we have worked back to 1922. Then we get six last chapters covering the same ground as the preface and first chapter. This is an essentially vicious arrangement. It is based, of course, on the practice of American journalism, which insists that the most striking facts at the writer's disposal shall be put first in order to tempt the reader on to 'the rest. But whatever may be said for this in a newspaper article, it is a wholly reprehensible practice in a book. Its use in this case amounts to Mr. Huddleston admitting that he cannot hope to interest his -readers enough to _make them acquire the essential facts about M. Poincare's past, by which they may understand his present, before he has given them a few of his tit-bits of information about the Ruhr crisis. But the consequence to his book is utter confusion. Instead of any thread of cumulative facts and explanation, we get a good deal of miscellaneous and sometimes sinteresting, but almost always trivial, information thrown at us higgledy-piggledy and interspersed with the comments of Mr. Huddleston.

But both these faults—of style and construction—though grave, would not in themselves be necessarily fatal to the book. It is a much more profound failure, a fundamental falling short, that spoils the book and prevents it from being of any real use to students of foreign affairs.

We do not seek to probe Mr. Huddleston's motives in 'writing his book. We do not even pretend to know what is the kind of consideration that weighs most with him. But it is

very difficult to resist the conclusion that it was not the desire -to state any particular point a view—to clarify a

great problem by the application of the truth as •he saw it— that has provoked him to write. He may-claim, does indeed claim, the virtue of impartiality. But his is the impartiality of Laodicea, not of the just judge. For Mr. Huddleston is only intrigued 'by great events, he is never stirred by them.

France and Germany writhe in their -death struggle, but to him they provide material only where their fortunes turn on the habits of the individual----when M. Briand plays golf, when the sickness or health of the chief actors deter- mines events. Then, but only then, do they become really interesting to Mr. Huddleston. For then they have acquired " human interest."

When that supreme deity of journalism "human interest " has been invoked, the author may write away to his heart's content with the assurance that all his -innumerable readers who are too trivially minded to take any interest in great events in themselves will ecstatically absorb any quantity of personal details. But as Mr. Huddleston is writing of the crucial happenings of the last twenty years, he is sometimes unable to avoid taking up some definite attitude towards them.

Here is /what he has to 'tell us about the occupation of the Ruhr :—

" The dominating fact about the French -occupation of the Ruhr is tho British condemnation of it as illegal. Whatever happens, whatever arrangements may be ultimately made by the French alone, will be vitiated at the root by this British contention. If the French were wrong to go into the Ruhr, and if a considerable part of the world opinion recognizes their occupancy of the Ruhr as wrong, then everything which springs out of that occupancy will be unstable. Indeed, it does not much matter -whether the British argument is right or wrong ; the making of the British argument remains, influencing men's minds, silently working and sapping the attempts at constructive work. Just as the Germane were beaten in the Great War because they were believed to be the authors of tho war, so will-the French sooner-or later be-beaten in the Ruhr struggle, whatever immediate settlement may come out of it, because their action is considered by England, by Germany, by a considerable part of American opinion, and by a considerable part of world opinion, as illegal."

What are we to make of such a passage as this ? We are left doubtful whether Mr. Huddleston objects to the British declaration of illegality. Elsewhere in the book he states quite definitely that he considers that, in fact, the occupation of the Ruhr was illegal, that no stretching of the phraseology of the Versailles Treaty can be made to cover such action.

Here he tells us that the British argument (the argument that the occupation was illegal) '" remains influencing men's minds, silently working and sapping the attempts at con- structive work." The words surely suggest that he deprecates the British declaration.

Does Mr. Huddleston believe that although the occupation was illegal the British Government should have -connived at its illegality in order not to render " everything which springs out of the occupation unstable," or " silently to sap the attempts at constructive work " ? But as we are all agreed that, in fact, the occupation was illegal, is it so repre- hensible to render unstable everything which springs out of it ? What is, in fact, this constructive work which the British Government's action is silently sapping ? May not Mr. Baldwin and Lord Curzon be excused for believing that the illegal invasion of Germany by France, the expropriation and banishment of 50000 German citizens, the organization of gangs of criminals under the title of Separatists, with -which to coerce the inhabitants into submission, is hardly the best basis for constructive work ? And the curious thing is that there are many other passages in Mr. Huddleston's book

that would make .us suppose that he would heartily agree with us on these points. One hesitates to suggest it, but it really looks as if Mr.. Huddleston had no coherent view at all of the whole situa- tion. This, in itself, though odd in a man who had under- taken to write a whole book about it, might be excusable. Heaven knows the situation is tangled and difficult enough : but the strange thing is that Mr. Huddleston seems to have no desire to find a viewpoint from which he may get a coherent idea of the whole affair, whence he may point out to his readers the golden thread of his truth, " of the truth as he sees it," running through the maze of Europe.

It is obvious that Mr. Huddleston has never had time to pause and take stock. He has been too busy writing articles and books. More hurried even than a more famous observer of great events, he has not even had time to put the question- " what is truth ? " still less to stay for an answer.