Polish Profile. By Virgilia Sapieha. (Heinemann. WS. 6d.)
Polish Profile is the story of a young woman from Manhattan who married a Polish nobleman, lived for some six years in Poland, and escaped from that country last year one jump ahead of the German bombs. It is an honest and well-written book, which gives an admirable picture of the society which the bombs destroyed. Princess Paul Sapieha was dismayed by the wildness of her husband's country, disgusted by the , ignorance and roguery of the peasantry and appalled by their poverty, entertained by the inflexible social discipline of the aristocracy, baffled by the narrow piety of her husband's family, and dumb- founded by the lackadaisical inefficiency of -Polish business methods. She makes it clear that she realised that the structure of Polish society was both economically and socially unsound; yet the country, which housed an individual and potentially , fertile life, obviously attracted her more than it dismayed her. The Polish mind has always been something of a problem to Western Europe; this attractive and well-constructed book satisfactorily explains many of its characteristics.
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