STAFFORD CRIPPS: Prophetic Rebel

An important biography of Britain's ambassador to Russia, a man who- in the partance of the old school, ""betrayed his class"" by turning from the Conservative to the Radical, from the old aristocratic family background to the service of the working man. He won distinction when Hitler denounced him as starting the war with Russia; undoubtedly the key man in present British-Russian collaboration. Cripps has been brilliantly successful as a militant independent: he refuses to be bound by party lines, gave up a successful law practice to go into politics, was read out of the Labor Party for advocating cooperation with Non-appeasing Conservatives to defeat Chamberlain, and has been an active dissenter in every British political manoeuvre through fifteen years. A great deal of detail about the inner workings of the British Labor Party may discour some readers, but most alert, open-minded readers who recognize him as the brightest for liberal democracy in England in the days of reconstruction ahead will find this rbingly interesting. The material comes up to- and through- the Nazi invasion of Russia, where Cripps was at the time Ambassador to Russia reporting on the home front in London.