Between Two Wars
An Introduction to World Economic History. By J. P. Day. .(Macmillan. 3s. 6d.) An Introduction to World Economic History. By J. P. Day. .(Macmillan. 3s. 6d.)
MR. FRANCIS' book has an excellent title, and is produced with that pleasant dignity for which Jonathan Cape are noted. It is, in fact, a compendious account of British economic development over the last twenty years. It deals with the economic demobilisation, with its boom, slump and depres- sion, which followed the Armistice ; with the long struggle to return to a prosperity conceived in pre-war terms ; with the handicap of the 1925 return to the Gold Standard ; with the crisis of 1931, and the nationalist reversal of policy which fol- lowed ; with the manoeuvres and vicissitudes of combines and pools at home, in Europe, and in the raw material producing areas of the Empire ; with what Mr. Ernest Davies has called National Capitalism ; with the technique of Axis economic aggression ; and with the present balance of economic power. It is reasonably comprehensive, well arranged, and consider- ing the ground covered remarkably brief. That is, unfortu- nately, about all that can be said for it. Its mental back- ground is confused. The author appears to think in terms of large obvious labels, whose precise relation to reality worries him very little ; Rationalisation—a good thing ; Monopoly— a bad thing ; Free Trade—a good thing ; Cut-Throat Com- petition—a bad thing ; and so on. (He never seems to decide whether the Gold Standard was good or bad.) He relies almost entirely on secondary sources—such books as Mr. G. D. H. Cole's Short History of the Working-Class Move- ment, Mr. G. C. Allen's British Industries and their Organi- sation, and the P.E.P. Reports. This is all very well when the finished product, incorporating information thus gained, either casts a new light on the questions concerned, or makes them comprehensible to a wider audience. Mr. Francis' book does neither. It contains no illuminating leading ideas, and it is considerably less readable than most of its sources ; the style, indeed, is at once pedestrian and pompous, and the text is sprinkled with malapropisms which are just not far enough out to be amusing rather than irritating.
It does, however, enjoy the transitory merit of being com- pletely up to date. The story is carried past the outbreak of war to include the September Budget ; the development of industry, of labour relations, of finance, and of commercial policy, are all studied in their most recent state; and there is undoubted interest in the picture of British commerce, so long involved in a "white war" where resistance was never supplemented by counter-attack, now mobilised for effective retaliation. On this front (as, indeed, on some others) the war did not begin on September 3rd, 1939 ; it has been going on for years. What is new is that Great Britain is now fighting back. Mr. Francis, to do him justice, does make quite plain this transition from virtual passivity to active participation in offence. The highly misleading blurb on his dust-cover attributes to him views of which the text contains no evidence. He does not, as there stated, " show the steps taken over twenty years to mobilise our financial and industrial resources against the day when they would be required " for the good reason that no such steps were taken—at least, not in the form of a continuous twenty-year policy such as these words imply. The blurb as it stands is a godsend to Goebbels, as it gives the reader to understand that Britain began preparing for this War from the moment when she had finished with the last, and has been doing so ever since ; but Mr. Francis pursues no such fantastic theme. Carefully, stolidly, ungrace- fully, he plods from point to point and from year to year to reach his goal: His work has its uses ; but it is the sort of book which makes one look forward, with actual impatience, to the next thrilling instalment of Dr. Einzig.
Mr. Day's World Economic History Since the Great War covers much the same chronological field and embodies a certain amount of the same material, but its aims and its manner are completely different. It is a straightforward text- book, without frills of any kind, lucid, concise, and unpre- tentious ; not even an outline, but an introduction. The story is told in terms of three post-War phenomena ; dislocation, debt and distrust—dislocation of supply and demand through the vast shifts in both brought about between 1914 and 1918 ; doubts arising from the War or frozen through those dis- locations ; and distrust of all existing economic and political institutions. It does not attempt to come completely up to date. Indeed, the narrative as narrative ends with the " second devaluation " of 1937. Events since then are used only as further illustrations of the general principles dealt with in the previous chapters. Whether Mr. Day should have scrapped his last chapter on the outbreak of war and hastily written another is a question which he presumably had adequate reason for answering in the negative ; certainly he cannot be blamed for not having conceived his story entirely in terms of 1939. Within its self-imposed limitations he has produced a book which should precisely meet the needs of the readers to whom it is addressed—the generation of students who " find themselves living in a world whose economic conditions are represented to them by their elders as upset and abnormal, but have had no personal experience either of what was upset or of the upsetting."
HONOR CROOME.
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