VOICE FROM ENGLAND

This is a gamble. I think it has a good chance of catching on, for it is timely, challenging, original. But it may flop because everyone is pretty sentimental about England now, and this is anything but. Here, in letter-into-essay form, are the opinions of a thinking young Englishman, on the eve of active service. The book presents the manuscript as it reached the publishers, ""with all its marks of sincerity and courage and of the pressure of history in the making"". Not an objective analysis, but a very personal digest of one youth's thoughts and reactions as he sees ""history being made by fright"". As a home defense worker, a parashot, he reflects the current feelings of a country at war. He recognized the dangers of the Old School spirit, and the resultant disillusion when Flanders turned the tune. He analyzed class distinctions, snobbery and bigotry of the Tory; he attacks the British mind as reflected in the Press; the substitution of red baiting for more serious and immediate menace. He discusses the future -- what is the answer for Germany. A difficult book to pigeonhole. Loosely written, as ideas and trends occur to him. England emerges from the slough of hidebound tradition to realism, fighting mad, with the reputed bulldog tenacity.