Shorter Notices
3
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VERNON BARTIErr was warning us about the menace of coon nationalism and of the dictators long before it was fashionable mistrust them. His new warning takes the form of an imagina post-war diary—a cautionary tale which might have a verse of Lewis's for motto: " Shall it be so again—
The jungle code and the hypocrite gesture, A poppy-wreath for the slain, , A cut-throat world for the living, that stale imposture Played on us once again?"
On June 3oth (year unspecified) the Allied armies cross the K wanken Alps, Hitler is killed by Germans while trying to CSC to South America, Laval and Doriot swing from electric li standards, but even after the fall of Berlin no German corn forward to accept Allied peace-terms--except Ribbentrop, who refused. More serious, Congress attacks U.N.R.RA. and complai with some reason, that now after the black-out has been lifted some demobilisation carried through, the British have lost inter in thc Pacific War. The Allied Governments of the United Nati in London naturally want to distribute relief themselves ; Rus would prefer the leaders of the Resistance movements to share this. The Bolshevik bogey is dolled up afresh and Russia is par to blame for its potency. A.M.G.O.T. shows itself slow to release anti-Fascists from concentration camps, and there- is undencribable
confusion and meanness about the repatriation of German refugees.
The author himself realises how rash it is to write history in advance, and that this kindbof diary obviously precludes the discussion of many complexities. In spite of this, it was well worth while to make the problems ahead appear more concrete, since after the war we shall not " be able to put Europe into cold storage while we debate its future." Mr. Bartlett makes some sombre prophecies, but his realistic idealism leaves an effect which is the reverse of , depressing.
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