THE APPEASERS

Report repeated from page 89 of the January 15th bulletin, when scheduled for earlier publication, as follows: ""The Appeasers, is a sleek, smartly underplayed took at British foreign policy vis a vis Hitler during the thirties; it is focused- in by two historians, both in their mid-twenties and both more or less in diapers at the time of the events described. But there's nothing wet-behind-the-ears in the assessment offered; based on recently released records of the British and German Foreign Office (some recent documents which 'incriminated' the Duke of Windsor), the book presents a tale of de-nothingness under the successive Coalition and Conservative governments of MacDonald, Baldwin and Chamberlain. Especially the latter, which in retrospect seems a sad, appallingly short-sighted affair- doubly so, if one accepts what seems implicit in every revelation; that had the pacifist 'drift' been allayed, so too might WWII never have occurred. Whether this be true or not, the modus vivendi followed by No. 10 Downing Street was dreadful, one that spanned the guilt complexes of the Versailles Treaty, colonial and economic upsets, a complete misunderstanding of France's potpourri politics, Cabinet crises, a rather schoolboyish dread of Communist machinations, and of course, both a fascination with and fear of Hitler's amazing strongarm success, culminating in the infamous Munich meeting, exploding finally in the Polish fall. The book's epigraph is from Lewis Carroll: Alice laughed- 'There's no use trying', she said, 'one can't believe impossible things'. Said the Queen: 'I daresay you haven't had much practise'..... It sums up a headline- stopper of sorts.