6 FEBRUARY 1942, Page 20

Shorter Notices

The World Crisis, 1911-1918. By the Rt. Hon. Winston Churchill. (Macmillan. 'Ss.) As an admirably, if accidentally, timed answer to Hitler's recent rhetorical question, " What has this gabbier, this drunkard, Churchill done all his life? " Messrs. Macmillan, who have acquired the copyright from another publisher, have 'issued nee editions of the two books which tell the fullest story ever Rkety to be told of the Prime Minister's numerous and varied activities from his youth to the end of the Great War. Both are too Well known to justify any fresh word of commendation. The shorts of the two has its inevitable autobiographical interest. The other, The World Crisis, is the classic account of the momentous events with which it deals, and it is never likely to be super- seded, for it has all the interest and importance with which narration by one of the chief actors in the great drama gives it'

and no other actor has written anything comparable. The single volume into which the original four volumes have been carefully reduced, with one or two necessary revisions of state- ment or opinion and an important addition, strives, says Mr. Churchill, " to follow throughout the methods and balance of Defoe's Memoirs of a Cavalier"; it would be a fair assumption that about ten times as many people have already read The World Crisis as ever heard of its exemplar.