NOT PEACE BUT A SWORD

Here's the book that takes up Personal History virtually where it left off. There is not the same continuity of record, for the individual chapters recount separate experiences, not even necessarily chronological in sequence, but covering the proving grounds of Europe's struggle between Democracy and Fascism, -- England, Spain, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Germany. It is an impassioned book, with no mincing of matters where his own opinion of the betrayal perpetrated by England and France is concerned, where his own feeling about the Nazi menace is involved. In justification of writing another book paralleling the news he says:- ""It matters just this; that the news alone, however stated, cannot signify much to the mind unprepared to relate it to the recent past. Statements in newsprint are the record, often incorrect or incomplete, but at least approximate, of the rhythms of contemporary history. There is reason and justification for books which attempt to catch some part of those rhythms into words, recording not the whole but the part that can be caught by one writer at one time, translating the general into the particular and back again."" This his book does, vividly, humanly, unforgettably. Frequently, his comments are penetrating; occasionally they are too angry to be wholly sound. The book is unflaggingly good reading, and he says much that needs to be said.