WAR PAMPHLETS

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23717, 15 August 1942, Page 2

WAR PAMPHLETS

Oxford Series Fcur additions to the series of Oxford Pamphlets on World Affairs are to be welcomed. Stanley Casson’s Greece (No. 57), an account of the political tradition, character, and modern history of the Greek people, admirably illuminates their recent heroic share in the battle against Fascism. Sir John Pratt, in Great Britain and China (No. 58), interprets the relations between the two countries from the eighteenth century on, through the long jostling for concessions, the fall of the Manchus, and the struggle of the Republic, to the years of Japan’s encroachments. The decision to close the Burma Road, says Sir John, “was a military and not in any sense a political decision.” Who Mussolini Is (No. 59), by Ivor Thomas, reviews the dictator’s “amazing record of self-contradictions and betrayals,” unified by the "one persistent aim—the enhancement of his personal prestige.” The primary facts governing naval strategy are discussed by Admiral Sir Herbert Richmond in War at Sea ToDay (No. 60). Allied Propaganda Dr. Otto Friedmann, a Czech sociologist, in Broadcasting for Democracy (Allen and Unwin. 62 pp. 2/6 net.), rightly says that democratic propaganda might well be better than Nazi propaganda, "because it can be true and is defending a better cause”: Why, then, should democratic propaganda be less efficient? It will continue to be inferior if democratic leaders do not dare to anticipate the building of better conditions of life and if they are unable to’ visualise and prepare to satisfy the deep desires of the masses.

If Germany Wins—“At great risk to my life, I have decided to keep a diary . . . .” So, in the year 1944, writes James Blunt, retired tradesman, of Foxton, in Surrey: in 1944, five months after the capitulation. "I shall write down from day to day some of the things that are happening in German England.” I, James Blunt (Methuen. 56 pp. lOd) is Mr H. V. Morton’s warning vision of what a German victory would mean. — Through Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd. Religious Broadcasts “Clericus” contributes to the Thinker’s Forum series (Watts and Co.) a pamphlet on 8.8.C. Religion, a reasoned protest against the use of the corporation's monopoly power to “impose its own standard of [religious] orthodoxy.” “Clericus” alleges that the official policy is "a flat denial of the democratic principle and of the right of freedom of discussion embodied in the Atlantic Charter.”