Historians at war
Sir: It is true, as Mr Cosgrave pointed out (3 April) that Mr Hazlehurst's Politicians at War Is, based on an inadequate range or primary material if offered as an account of high policy in the first ten months of the first world War. On the other hand, it is far frolo clear that Mr Hazlehurst offers it
as anything more than an account of the party and personal situa- tions at the top of politics in this period.
This is a perfectly reasonable subject which can be studied with- out total immersion in the major public archives. How adequately Mr Hazlehurst has dealt with it is not a matter about which 1 have yet made up my mind; I record only the tentative impression that he neither asks nor answers, what ought to be major questions with- in his terms of reference—whether any difference was made, and if so what, to politicians' understand- ings of the future development of the party system as a result of involvement in the greatest war Britain had ever known.
Whatever one's feeling about this, it is fair to say that anyone who has tried to write this sort of book will know how defeating the sheer bulk of the public archives is and, while recognising the theoreti- cal weight of this one of Mr Cos- grave's points, will have sympathy for this aspect of Mr Hazlehttrst's difficulty notwithstanding.
Maurice Cowling Peterhouse, Cambridge
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