Cheap editions of good books are a boon. When an
important work comes out at a high price most of us cannot buy it because it is dear, nor get it from a library because so many other people want to. This apropos, in particular, Mr. F. A. Voigt's Unto Caesar, now republished (by Constable) at 5s., with a new, brief, but singularly valuable preface. The book, whose thesis is the similarity, as opposed to the imagined antithesis, between Communism and Fascism, first appeared in March, 1938, just as Germany was invading Austria. A second edition, with a new preface, came out in October, 1938, just after Germany had secured Sudeten- deutschland. This third edition, with two prefaces, the second and a third, breaks on a world in which all Mr. Voigt's apprehensions have been fulfilled. There is a ring of the Old Testament about it. The writer affirms definitely and dogmatically that the War is " a judgement that has come upon us because of our disobedience to the First Commandment "; he (quite rightly) characterises the alleged injustice of the Treaty of Versailles as " a legend "; and he declares the one essential condition of peace to be the permanent armed ascendancy of the Western Powers. This from one of the ablest writers on foreign affairs, who is commonly thought of as a man of the Left, at least provokes curiosity. The book is fairly stiff reading.
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