THE LONG WATCH IN ENGLAND

A thoughtful and disturbing book, part of which appeared as a feature article in Harper's. Two Americans, who have been living in a cottage on an English farm, and who love England and what she has stood for, share with their readers the reluctant awakening to the decay that is creeping over the land. They went through the long months of waiting between Munich and the present. Tenderly, hesitatingly but honestly they study the people in all walks of life with whom they are thrown; they realize that England is living in the past, that they are, perhaps, unwilling and incapable of change, that, perhaps, the end is ahead of them, an end of their own building. Some of the people still cherish and nourish that which was England's power and fineness; others they feel are scarcely worth saving, for their day is over. The pages are full of a nostalgic picture of the countryside of the England we love, with a brooding shadow over the land. A book Anglophiles will challenge -- but which has so deep a devotion to England that they cannot resent it. There's an undercurrent of humor, and unfailing perspicacity.