DARE CALL IT TREASON

The contrast between appearance and reality was seldom better manifested than in the position of France in 1919. She was a victor power, and the most glorious of victors. She had survived an ordeal such as few armies or nations had had to endure. But the reality was very different. Desperately wounded on the battlefield, the Third Republic committed suicide, condemned itself as no previous regime had done, and brought France down with it. Mr. Watt has written an eminently readable and concise account of France during this period. To give the reader background in the politico- military history of the Third Republic, and to show the awesome casualties suffered by the army, the author devotes the first six chapters to the origins of the Third Republic, the Boulanger movement, the Dreyfus Affair, and the Battle of Verdun. He then examines in detail the French Army mutinies and the political passivity which accompanied them-- and particularly the political treason of Caillaux and Malvy. The book is both authentic and dramatic to ensure general reader interest beyond the perhaps limiting phase and period with which it deals.