PRESIDENT MASARYK TELLS HIS STORY

The autobiography of one of the world's outstanding statesmen, a man at the same time scholar, humanist, idealist. There is a stark simplicity in the telling -- almost a naivete in the lack of egotism on the part of the man who has been the first and only president of the republic of Czecho-Slovakia. Though the story falls into obvious divisions, -- childhood, as the son of a serf, schooling, youth, middle years, the war and after, -- one follows his mental and spiritual growth, his development in understanding of the needs of his people, his initiation into his role as liberator. There is little of fire -- virtually no dramatization of incidents that might have been played up -- virtually no anecdotal or personal element. But the story of a great and simple soul, whose strength lay in his very lack of histrionics. An important book for those interested in the lives of eminent men, in the story back of the men who are making modern history. Not a book for sensational sales.