THE PHONEY WAR

The first tense months of Britain's war against Hitler, ending with the fall of France and the beginning of the hot aerial Battle of Britain, were referred to as the ""phoney war"" because of their lack of action. This extremely amusing book tells why. All it is is a skillful assemblage of facts so arranged that month by month, topic by topic, they create a social panorama of what Englishmen were thinking and doing during that time. The juxtapositions are sometimes hilarious. TB patients for instance were sent home to vacate hospital beds for air raid victims, armed with the warning not to cough over young children. Hotels were seized---air raid scares occurred daily---gas-masks were fitted for infants---black-outs caused car wrecks---Lord Haw-Haw began his derisive propaganda broadcasts from Germany---churches couldn't decide whether to pray for Hitler's soul or not---and armed Home Guardsmen stood ready against invasion by arresting every suspicious person they could find---while all over England, rationing began to make itself painfully felt. A tremendously perceptive assemblage of facts, emphasized by the reproduction of several war-time British government posters and satirical magazine cartoons. Do we face a repeat