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Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21802, 6 June 1936, Page 19

FOREIGN AFFAIRS tosMe Europe. By John Gunther. Hatnish Hamilton. 496 pp, (13/6 net.) Mr Gunther, an American jourJialist, quick-minded and industrious, provides in this book a very useful and lively account of Europe and its political problems, brought so nearly up to date, for example, as to ipclude the Hoare-Laval agreement of December last and the remarkable political consequence of its revelation. -The systematic student of foreign affairs will find that he owes the author more for details than f<Jr major information; but others will be almost endlessly grateful for explanations of what has happened and is happening in the European danger centres. Mr Gunther’s story of Hitler’s rise is more connected than his commentary on Hitler’s acts in power, his policy, and his prospects. The analysis of France is valuable for its presentation of important but obscure facts about the political influence of the financial oligarchy Which controls the Bank of France. In the Italian section, what is best is the vivid personal sketch of Mussolini. But Mr Gunther is most mteresting when he turns to the jmaller nations and their place in w>e uneasy situation. There is probably no other single book in which « is possible to learn so much about we recent history and present S. Austria, the policies and j ®uhesions of the Balkan countries, ' transformation of Turkey, and y e . Peculiar balance of impulses and restraints about the Polish Corridor, tuthuania, Danzig, and Memel. sometimes Mr Gunther writes without much sense of proportion; his *|®*Tative of the Nazi putsch, during which Dr. Dollfuss was assassinated, if v «y elaborate—more so, by far, re< iuired for understanding. ~ut then Mr Gunther was on the ®Pot, and his eagerness to use firstmaterial is natural. He is on whole inclined to be too smart ■"fl. slick. He has the gusto of a und tells malicious or innoITy "ttle stories about his heroes villains with a rattling tongue; stories most of them are, (Sr jjhey are inserted, generally, in character sketches and . which are a feature of Who* tt is, in fact, a select * , "ho in European Politics, animated one. The Rusit make a good group. (How jrw New Zealanders, by the way, Litvinov has an English Bjit it is not doing Mr Gunwuifam* justice to say that his SJJrjfl* 1 * and his whole section on specially good because SgSJ*. cynicism is less insistent subtilises his interest.