A WAYFARER IN POLAND
By Moray McLaren.
On his first arrival at Gdynia Mr. McLaren was greeted 1,`, by three or four amiable young Poles who chattered, some in French, some in German, some in English and some in American," so that it is little wonder he was impressed with . the polyglot qualities of his hosts. There is a good deal of careless writing which Mr. McLaren, who knows how to write well, could have eliminated if he had gone over the grammar and punctuation a little more carefully. (Surely On page 198 " sixty or seventy " should read sixteen or
seventeen " ?) This is, however, a minor criticism to set
against the fact that in this book (Methuen, 7s. 6d.) Mr. McLaren has given us a very vivid impression of the country he has visited so frequently. He has had the acumen to sea that the peculiar characteristic of Poland is that it is a country without a nineteenth century, and that not only in the political sense. It presents the spectacle of a twentieth- century civilization superimposed directly on to an eighteenth-century one. Hence the contrast between a brand new port like Gdynia and the old feudal country- house life, with its candles and its flunkeys, its hand-kissing and its hoar-hunting. - That is the only angle from which to understand Catholic, traditionalist Poland sandwiched incongruously between Nazi Germany and Bolshevik Russia. The author seems to have been almost everywhere iii Poland except to the vast and dreary Eastern Marches, and devotes chapters alike to Wilno and Gdynia and to the picturesque Gorals (not. GooraLs, by the way) of the Tatra. Other chapters deal with such questions as Jews and minorities, among whom lie carefully chronicles even the Armenians and the Taifirs and curiously Omits the several million White Russians of the north-east. Mr. McLaren himself would be the last to claim that this book is a very profound contribution to the literature of Poland, but within its limits it is bright, pretty impartial for all its sympathy, and thoroughly deserving of the attention of anyone who wishes to know more of '.one' of the 'most: fascinating and at the same time least known and most misjudged countries in Europe.
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