ACTION ON ALL FRONTS: A Personal Account of this War

Graphic, grasping, quickstyled, this is PM editing Ralph Ingersoll's picture of Europe and Asia at war, reconstructed from a daily notebook of a 14-week trip around the world. There's not much that his readers don't know, nor any particularly unknown facts or comments, but for non-PM readers, it is a good survey of foreign scenes at war, people, living conditions, conversations. A plane's eye view, as he went to Russia via the Philippines, the Burma Road, Chungking, the Gobi Desert; fairly full picture of Moscow; then through the Caucasus to Turkey, thence to Egypt; a visit to England, and a record of the sense of frustration in the people. The book closes with a discussion of the American planes --with a summation of the score -- with the advice to settle Hitler first (detrimental to the constructive value of the book, it seems to us). Good reportage, but not of vital importance.