The Debt to • Chatham House
;THE two series of Chatham House volumes familiarly known as the " Survey " and the " Documents " were in the inter-war period the indispensable companion of all students of international affairs. It is perhaps only the lack of them over the last decade that has made it clear how indebted one was to the work which went into !them. It is good to know that not only is the gap being made up for the actual war years, but that a start has simultaneously been made on the post-war volumes. For the value of the old " Survey " was due at least in part to the speed with which the volumes followed upon the events they dealt with. It is in retrospect always the events of the year before last that one finds it hardest to bring into focus, and it was in doing this that Professor Toynbee and his 'Colleagues performed perhaps their most useful service. Something depended here upon the technical side of book-production being more speedy in the inter-war years than at present ; more upon Professor Toynbee's own unrivalled capacity for the rapid marshal- ling into a coherent scheme of the apparent chaos of contemporary events. Until the volumes for more recent years appear, it is hardly possible to say what effect the necessary delegation of some of the work may have had upon its quality and effectiveness. Professor Toynbee's own characteristic preface to Mr. Laffan's volume reminds us again that in many respects the ojd " Survey " was as much a personal product as the " Study of History " itself. But one thing can even at this stage be said with confidence, namely, that whatever other services Chatham House has rendered or may still render to the study of international relations, the " Survey " must always come first, and that everything else ought to be subordinated to the task of restoring pre-war tempo end quality.
Of the two volumes that have now appeared, the " Documents " •
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one belongs to the war series and deals primarily with the events falling between the final destruction bf the Czechoslovak State and the outbreak of war. It is obvious that at this distance of time, the kind of official documents—communiqués or speeches—that bulked so large in the old series will tend to be swamped by more intimate documents only revealed at a later stage, such as those reprinted here from the State Depaltinent's " Nazi-Soviet Relations." The editors have wisely decidd!, however, not to reproduce documents already available in the 4, Woodward & Butler " Foreign Office volumes, and by so doing have produced a manageable and work- manlike job.
The " Munich " volume of the Survey has presented an even more difficult job, since it was written originally on the basis of the kind of public and Press material normally available to the writers of the " Survey " and has had since then to be revised in -the Institute in accordance with the successive revelations from the archives and in memoirs. And this has in turn complicated the task of analysing the developments inside Czechoslovakia which seemed so important at the time and were later revealed to be so insignificant a part of the whole story, in proper relation to the diplomacy of the Great Powers within which they were set. As a result the volume is not one which will readily commend itself to the general reader, though it contains much of real interest and is of course indispensable to the serious student.
It is not possible as yet to see how far the " Survey " is going to _ - alter the general picture presented by the bitter opponents of appeasement who so far have had it all their own way in the writing of this history of this period. For the issue on which so much must turn, that of the relative armaments of the countries concerned at the time of Munich (and a year later), has been postponed to the next volume. And even then, the absence of documentation on the side of the Western Powers may permit only a provisional verdict.
But at least in some respects it looks as though the stereotypes which have been so sedulously implanted in the public mind will have to be subjected td revision. It is refreshing to see that the " Survey " after a new review- of the evidence agrees that there is nothing to indicate that the -Russians were in fact prepared to fight Germany in September, 1938, any more than in September, 1939. And it is worth while being reminded that as late as August, 1938, the French Communists were still doing their best, on the industrial front, to impede those measures of French rearmament without which all talk of resisting aggression was so much dangerous non- sense. Professor Toynbee's analysis (in his introduction) of Chamberlain's attitude to Europe and of the blindness with which he Threw overboard the traditional British adherence to the idea of a balance of power will almost certainly stand. But to explain, not only the policy, but the measure of support it received in England and France, demands an understanding of historical development that may well be outside the_range of any contemporary.
MAX RUOFF.
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