THE LAST OPTIMIST

An absorbed autobiographical consideration of a life concerned with revolutionary Socialism offers a colorful career against a colorful background. For del Vayo, of Spanish birth, with a military father and a dying religious mother, was a rebel from the start and only finished his education in law so that he could eventually escape to France, England, Germany, and with the coming of World War I, to America. As a correspondent he knew the '20's in Europe and later came to know South America; as a diplomat he represented his country in Mexico, and was a delegate to the League of Nations. There is a great, warm personality here -- a personality which reflects vividly the important -- and unimportant -- people he met and/or knew, the issues for which he lived and argued, the international events in which he was either an interested observer or active participant. Wonderfully alive sketches of names-in-the news, a sensitive evaluation of not only the Spanish political and literary scene but also of international problems yesterday and today.