A book such as Tyrol Under the Ave of Fascism,
by Dr. Eduard Reut-Nicolussi (Allen and Unwin, 12s. lid.) makes one reflect sadly on the sluggishness of the international public conscience where political matters are at stake. Here is the fullest account available of the tragic post-War story of South Tyrol, of deliberate trampling on the elementary human rights of a minority people in the supposed interests of the Totalitarian State," of petty tyranny such as is scarcely credible in the year 1930. The author's bona fides— he was well-known and respected as one of the leading bar- risters of Tyrol and in happier days (i.e., in the early post-War regime) an elected member of the Italian Parliament—is un- questionable, even if his emotions get the better of him at times here and to that extent, perhaps, the cautious reader mistrustful of propaganda is alienated. Conditions are ad- mittedly somewhat improved since 1928, the date of original publication, owing to Fascist Italy's need of political friends, but it remains true, as was well said by H.W.H. in Headway, that " the most flagrantly maltreated of the minorities in Europe is the minority with no treaty to protect it." If the League Assembly could only become the sounding-board of world opinion which it should be, transcending ephemeral polities, there would surely soon be a revision of the arrange- ments for the cultural protection of minority peoples, and it would embrace the land of Andreas Hofer now under Italy's rule no less than other territories transferred at the Peace Conference,
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