The Inside Story Inside Europe. By John Gunther. (Hamish Hamilton.
12s. 6d.) Sawdust Caesar. By George Seldes. (Arthur Barker. 12s. 6d. ) WHAT we read in the papers every day is interesting because it is news. But it is significant only if it fits into an under-
standing of what is interesting for its own sake. Journalists need not have such an understanding, and so it is not surprising if good at their own job, they are incompetent at another, that of writing books. It is natural to ask why the first two books on this list were written, and charitable to hope they were written for money. Mr. Slocombe's is the more intimate.
He writes his recollections of the events and men—politicians; writers, artists and eccentrics—who have filled his long and interesting career as a foreign correspondent. His most
interesting memories are of Gaudier-Brezka, whom he knew when they were both at school in Bristol. This was before he became a journalist : what he saw and heard afterwards gave him an interesting life but does not increase our know- ledge. Those who like somewhat disconnected recollections, occasionally worked up into political analysis, will find his
book neither better nor worse than many others of the same
kind. Sometimes they will be amused by Mr. Slocombe's belief that a spectator of the most important scenes in contemporary history was necessarily an important actor in them : also, perhaps, by the assumption of author and publisher that his memories form a part of the " secret history " of our time. They have long ceased to be secret ; they are no longer news ; they recall agreeably enough the
sensations which obscure the real history of the time.
Mr. Gunther has more pretensions. He painstakingly records what facts are known about the leading figures of today, Mussolini; Hitler, Baldwin, Ataturk and many others, and other facts, true, rumoured, and conjectured, about the politiCal events of the last few years. To this he adds a dash of psychology. " Hitler has a mother-fixation (the only
psycho-analysis I have seen of his symptoms advances a more disgusting and convincing hypothesis ; the symptoms are in Mein Kampf); Stekel's authority-complex is gravely advanced as an explanation for the rise of dictators, which is
also connected with the decline of the family. Dr. Stekel's hypotheses arc of dubious value in their own science ; used by a journalist to explain political movements they seem even more like a confession of ignorance. Thus Mr. Gunther is well informed ; lie knows how Carol returned
to Rumania, and why Mine. Stalin died, and what Stalin's salary is, and that Otto Bauer saw Greta Garbo in Grand Hotel the night before the February " revolution." He has the " inside story " and it seems even more silly and trivial
than the outside one. But lie has, say his publishers, written from a " thoroughly impartial and objective point of view " ; we may agree with this ; but it is difficult to see any meaning in the further sentence : " Every statement has been carefully verified." It is a pity Mr. Gunther should spoil his book with such pretensions : it will be readable enough until the novelty of his facts, already faded, has completely gone. Englishmen can judge the value of what he says about other countries
by_reading his chapters on England. He thinks, for instance, that the Tories are afraid of „Cripps,- and -that the Labjnur Party might. well leave ." theory and strategy " to Sawdust Caesar is of a different kind. It does not pretend-to be anything else than an attack on Mussolini, from his begin- ning to his approaching end. But it is a detailed accusation ; it will serve a valuable purpose if it will remind people that the Abyssinian war-is not the first of his follies or tins crimes. Mr. Seldes describes Mussolini's early Socialist career;` his shabby treachery, his gangiter methods ; he givei an excellent account of the murder of Matteotti, the classic achievement of Fascism. He reveals the political and economic bankruptcy of Fascism, the beggary of Italy, the suppression' of oppoSitiOn, the extinction of liberty, the corruption of culture; the degradation of the schools and universities. Mr. Seldes does not ask what benefits Mussolini has conferred in return for this destruction ; but with some skill he analyses the intel- lectual and moral sterility of the dictator, to whom violence is a panacea for every good. • Mr. Seldes does not pretend to be impartial ; but I have no doubt he comes nearer to the truth than if he had tried to be what journalists call " objective." It is to his credit that he shows the dictator to be not only criminal but ludicrous, and, despite his bogus claims to culture, merely the image of the superman in the soul of a violent and ignorant peasant.
GORONWY REES.
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