" DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE "
Sta,—I have no wish to defend my book on Democracy in France against reasonable criticism, but I must ask leave to defend it against exaggerated charges of inaccuracy. Your reviewer is, I fear, quite wrong when she says that " it was Moscow which broke with Vichy, not vice versa," and I was perfectly accurate in stating the opposite. About a week after the German attack on Russia in 1941, Vichy broke off diplomatic relations with Moscow on the ground that Soviet representatives in France were " carrying on activities against public order and the security of the State."
r .!tr ■ • By abstracting judgements from their context and incorrectly abridging the judgement, it is easy to misrepresent what I wrote. Thus Lyautey does not " figure as a typical fonctionnaire," but is described as " the greatest of all colonial servants" and it is his family background which is described as " characteristic of the environment in which so many fonctionnaires of ability and importance were brought up "—which is all rather different! Nor, I think, would anyone familiar with the cult of Peguy in modern France seriously challenge my remarks about him. And so on. This kind of reviewing scarcely seems up to the normal
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