Current Literature
• THE CASE OF IVAR KREUGER
By Herr Manfred Georg
Herr Georg in The Case of Ivor Kreuger (Cape, 7s. 6d.) has seized every dramatic element available in Kreuger's life, and sometimes legend seems to usurp the place of history. He gives the story of the Morgan agent who, hunting Kreugi r down to his Paris flat, drove him to suicide (Herr Georg even quotes the conversation between the two men), a story described as " fantastic " by Mr. Soloveytchik, whose book on Kreuger was recently reviewed in The Spectator. Herr Georg analyses more fully than Mr. Soloveytchik the Kreuger frauds, Sand the general reader bemused by the newspaper reports of the innumerable subsidiary companies, the shiftings of shares, the mysterious contracts, will be grateful for the astonishing clarity of Herr Georg's account. But his book is less balanced than Mr. Soloveytchik's. Two chapters are devoted to, lireuger's not very unusual erotic career. It is hard to understand this interest in the financier's private life ; presumably the interest exists or Fru Ingeborg Eberth would not so quickly have flown into print with her memoir.. Herr Georg in an interesting chapter describes the struggle between Kreuger and the Soviet Union ; if Kreuger had lived and prospered, this war would have been to the death, for by its very nature the Soviet could have accepted no coni- promise with Kreuger's Economic State. The tyranny of that state had already become evident in Peru where travellers could be fined the equivalent of 240 for a single foreign match left accidentally in baggage or pocket. Half the fine went to the customs official who made the discovery.
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