EASTWARD BOUND FROM , PARIS
By Edouard Herriot
M. Herriot's visit to Soviet Russia ine the summer of 1933 may fairly be called historic ; for it certainly played an important part in that reorientation of French and of Soviet policy which led up to the-entry of the Soviet Union into the League of Nations last September. The record of the visit contained in Bastward Round from Paris (Gollancz, 10s. 6d.) does not, however, deal with political issues, and the French statesman is content to present himself in the idle of an enquiring traveller. He proceeded by way of Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey. He spent some ten days in the last-named country, and apparently left it with the firm conviction that it was a democratic State—a fact which does not imply a very acute judgement of foreign institutions. His impressions of Soviet -Russia are frankly superficial. There is little' in them which cannot be found in. the well-known handbooks on the subject, and M. Herriot constantly surprises by a naive inability to distinguish between fact and propaganda. " Stalin has already announced the decisive triumph of the Kollthozes and sovichozes,7 he calmly writes—as if that settled the matter. Fos anyone who can skip judiciously, the book offers many pleasant descriptions of men and things. But taken as a whole, it is not merely one-sided, but sometimes inaccurate.
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