THE ROAD TO INDIA By Paul Morand
The French book, of which this is a translation (Hodder and Stoughton, I2S. 6d.), appeared a little more than a year ago, and was reviewed in these columns. Like all M. Morand's work it is very readable, holding attention with an expert facility. The theme is the maritime, overland, and air routes to India, treated from contemporary political, historical, and—how could M. Morand resist the temptation ?- sentimental points of view. The chapter on De Lesseps is perhaps one of the most distinguished pieces of work which M. Morand has ever done. But elsewhere this intelligent and amusing book is marred by those faults which seem ineradicable in a certain kind of French writing : an extravagantly epigramatic style which draws in its wake a particu- larly horrifying vulgarity. M. Morand is still, unfortunately, capable of his famous London blunder : his assertion that when fire engines are seen in the streets of London the inhabitants look on the machines in a fearful silence, half consciously recalling the destruction of the city in the reign of Charles II. A delightful idea, unfortunately not true. And so we see in this book of his maturity magnificent observation and sensibility side by side with the old gross _predilection for melodramatic generalisa- tions. The East is always as " inscru- table " as Mi Mack's picturei-=.7emery Egyptian a Sphinx at large.
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