Coal. (History of the Second World War— United Kingdom Civil
Series.) By W. H.
THE United Kingdom Civil Series in the History of the Second World War has already produced two distinguished volumes —the introductory British War Economy by W. K. Hancock and M. M. Gowing and Mr. R. M. Titmuss's vivid work Problems of Social Policy. Professor Court's assignment, fuel and power, appears at first sight to be less promising. Moreover, the author's decision that he could not at present publish the second part of what was intended to be a two-volume study has confined him to the single rather forbidding topic of coal. But the truth of the pronouncement of a Northern bishop, whom Professor Court quotes as saying that the coal industry is " the least picturesque and the most interest- ing" of all industries, is borne out in the present volume. A combination of vital subject matter and cool and clear writing has turned this into an interesting and read- able book. The slapdash early surveys of the wartime task for the coal-mining industry ; the question of supplies to France which fell from a position of first priority to nowhere in 1940 ; the repercussions of trans- port difficulties, particularly on the Durham field ; the difficulties of the new system of control set up, with the Ministry of Fuel and Power, in the summer of 1942 ; and the technical problems of production summed up in the historic Reid Report of 1945 are all covered fully and fairly. Detail never swamps the story, and the central thesis that it was the war which finally brought the many intractable problems of the industry to a head is developed clearly and inevitably.
W. T.
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