It Might Have Happened to You. By Coningsby Dawson. (Lane.
2s. 6d. net)—As Lord Weardale explains in his preface, this very impressionistic and gloomy account of conditions in Central Europe last winter is intended to raise subscriptions for the " Save the Children Fund." Mr. Dawson's description of poverty in Vienna and Warsaw, especially among the Russian refugees, is harrowing and doubtless true. Where he errs is in generalizing as to the whole of Central Europe, and in putting the blame on the Allies. Germany is not starving—far from it— nor are Czecho-Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, and Rumania in want of food. It is really unpardonable to speak of " the peoples whom our Peace has tortured," and to suggest that some other kind of peace would have prevented the economic stagnation and the collapse of the exchanges following a war of exhaustion and a revolution. The Allies did not break up the Hapsburg dominions, but recognized the new Slav states which declared themselves independent. Mr. Dawson means well, but ho injures a worthy cause by his misrepresentation of historic facts.
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