THE CONFESSIONS OF AN INDIVIDUALIST

Japan Over Asia led me to expect more of this correspondent in his own personal story, and I found it disappointing. Almost any record of the twenty years he spent in Europe and Asia contains substance of vital interest; it is a thoughtful and sincere book, a book of adventures in ideas rather than personalities, but the writing lacks the vital quality one has come to expect, and the comments do not seem to be sufficiently penetrating to give any new contribution. He went to Russia as a sympathizer, and underwent progressive disillusionment -- but Lyons has done that better. He gives us comparisons between communism and Naziism; he discusses Japan and Sino-Japanese controversies; he defends individualism against the related autocracies of Russia, Germany and Italy.