We should be willing to believe almost anything Mr. Hube
Griffith orders us to believe, if only he did not order. Th war is always an evil, and in Eastern and Central Europe menacing evil, that international tariff-walls and passpo are as foolish as they are irritating, and that a United Stat of Europe is a splendid ideal, that money spent on armamen would be better spent on art and housing—all this we stem fastly believe. We would gently hint, though, to Mr. Gri that others besides himself and us hold the same faith. St the lesson needs to be perpetually rubbed in, and Mr. Griffi does the rubbing with a vigorous hand. But his book, Europ Encounters (Lane, 8s. 6d.), has a very real value. It is a great d more than mere travel-notes : it tries in broad strokes delineate the mind of Eastern and Central Europe. Th mind it reaches through chats and over meals, and by chan, meetings with odds and ends of people—with, for example, Tory landowner in Cracow who hated the Jews, with a Magy in the train to Belgrade descanting on the wrongs of country and how he proposed to right them, with a Vienn cocotte who explained her profession simply and tmanswerab by pointing out that in Vienna there were thousands of in who had been out of work for years and " What sort of vm could I be expected to get ? " How courageously povert stricken Vienna is facing her problems of housing and une ployment some of Mr. Griffith's best chapters inform us. summing up has a mournful interest " almost everything Eastern Europe is a little tragic compared with the eivilizat of the Western half." To find out on what he. bases th dictum his book must be read, and despite a slight tone super-confidence it is good reading and gives to think.
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