ASIATIC NEWS-REEL
Inside Asia. By John Gunther. (Hamish Hamilton. US. 6d.) THE appetite of the modem reader requires that the book of the moment shall give a bright, moving picture of ,modern events. The reading of it must not make heavy demands on knowledge or concentration, and the book itself must be " in the news." Thus the publishers offer us no longer a Bodley on France, a Bryce on the American Commonwealth, or a Harbutt Dawson on Germany, but something lighter. If there is something gained in the new technique, there is also a loss to all concerned in this modern substitute for the standard works of a former age. Much of the background is missing, the frame of history is too lightly made, and the quick judgement of a sprightly observer takes the place of the his- torian's caution in pronouncing a verdict. The reader replies that time is too short for the scholarly process, that he must be up-to-date, and that the only possible guide to the labyrinth of foreign problems is the swiftly moving observer taking his bird's-eye view from an aeroplane.
No doubt there is a great deal to be said for this view. And the rapidly changing scene makes many of those earlier authorities seem out-of-date. None the less, they are not, and it is not possible to understand, for instance, the Japan of today unless, before reading the brilliant journalistic account which appears in the first seven chapters of Mr. Gunther's volume, one has previously made the background of the pic- ture by reading, say, Sir George Sansom's indispensable japan, a Cultural History.
Mr. Gunther won his reputation with Inside Europe, which gave him a claim to be at least primus inter pares among the American reporters of the international scene. And, whatever may have been said of the earlier book, the essential difference between it and Inside Asia is to be found in Mr. Gunther's acknowledgment (on page 626) that there is no unity in Asia such as even yet exists in Europe. " One can speak," he says, " even now, of Europe as a whole, but not Asia. One can speak of such a concept—at least till recently, as a European mind. I do not think one would readily use such a phrase as the Asiatic mind! " In a very real sense this disunity of Asia complicated his task, and made it more difficult of successful accomplishment than his survey of Europe. Mr. Gunther calls his book " a reporter's job and a kind of political guide " ; and he will not quarrel with the reviewer who says that the " job " is a great deal better than the " guide." In describing what he has seen, heard and read, he provides a book without a dull page. In interpreting the meaning of the rapidly surveyed scene, he is a not always reliable guide.
He has moved from Europe to Asia, undertaking now the more ambitious task of compressing the peoples and problems of the East within the boards of a single volume. Taking first his account of modern Japan, we recognise that he has made marvellous use of all his opportunities of observation as well as of the authorities whom he has been able to consult. The result is that the picture he gives of contemporary Japan is drawn with a real appreciation even of those baffling factors in Japanese life which present so much difficulty to the Western observer. Mr. Gunther himself would be the first to admit that his own knowledge is not essentially first-hand, and that his purpose is not so much a permanent interpretation of Japanese life and problems as a flash on the screen, reveal- ing the living Japan today. And this is true, in spite of his manifest hostility to Japanese policy. Moreover, it is all the more remarkable because his equally manifest sympathy with China has not enabled him to give as good an account of what has really been happening in China. There is far, too little in his eight chapters on China which will enlighten the reader on the purpose, the effect, the changing course of the whole Chinese Revolution. But, here and there, as in his chapter on " The Chinese Reds," he shows a clearer under- standing of the thing called Chinese Communism than observers who have lived much longer in the country than Mr. Gunther. I like particularly his answer to the question, " How red are the Reds? " And his pen-portraits of Mao Tsetung, Chu Teh, and Chou En-lai could not be bettered.
This knack of vivid portraiture is, perhaps, Mr. Gunther's strongest point ; and the reader, who may not retain a very clear picture of " Asia," or of any of its parts, after laying down Mr. Gunther's book, will not forget the snapshots of Gandhi, Chiang Kai-shek, or Jawaharlal Nehru. As near as
any passing observer, he has found the key of Gandhi's pex- plexing personality; and, if he had treated all he heard and saw in India with the same sympathetic objectivity, not even the Indian Civil Service itself would find much to criticise in his pages. But, clearly, Mr. Gunther felt that British Imperialism in India, as elsewhere, required no sympathy from him: and consequently parts of the Indian picture are seriously out of focus. But the general picture is not : and as Mr. Gunther's instrument is a movie camera, not the pen of a historian, the critic must judge the result, not for what it might have been, or for what it ought to have been, but for what Mr. Gunther set out to achieve. Mr. Gunther is an American correspondent serving a public that demands the very thing he has given them, a vivid story which will give them the sense of flying over Asia and seeing, with his keen eye, the vast landscape unroll beneath them in a brightly coloured scene, full of movement, seething with problems, and all of it vitally concerning even his remotest readers in the Middle West of the United States.
This is a breathless book, ambitious in scope, varying in merit no doubt, but never varying in its power of holding
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