DR. TOYNBEE TRAVELS

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28750, 22 November 1958, Page 3

DR. TOYNBEE TRAVELS

q [Reviewed by

H.A.H.I.]

East To West. A Journey Round The World. By Arnold J. Toynbee. Oxford University Press. 243 pp. Index. This Is Dr. Toynbee’s account of the journey round the world which he made with his wife between February, 1956, and August. 1957, after they had both retired from the posts they had held at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London for more than 30 years. He takes the reader with him from Ecuador, Colombia and Peru to New Zealand; thence to Australia and on to Vietnam, Manila, Hong Kong; and through Japan and India to the countries of the Middle East; and there is a large, speciallydrawn fold-in map on which the route taken and the places visited can be located. New Zealanders who remember the Toynbees’ 11-day visit in May, 1956, may be disappointed to find that less than three pages are devoted to this country. Arriving from the arid uplands of the land of the Incas, Dr. Toynbee’s abiding impressions are of North Island sheep, “incredibly thick on the ground,” grazing busily on the luscious green grass of exuberant man-made pastures, and of two floras contending for possession of the same land: Palm and pine grow, side by side, in the same garden, to the perpetual astonishment of the visitor from Northern Europe. Just when he is succumbing to the illusion that he is travelling through the English countryside, a little palm tree pops up to disconcert him. The kaleidoscopic North Island landscape is, indeed, constantly evoking illusory reminiscences of the Old World and the Americas. The green pastures of England give way to the crater lakes of Etruria (Lake Taupo is a second Lake Trasimere) and to the volcanoes of South America (Ngaruruhoe, with its two flanking mountains. all under snow, is the twin of Misti in Peru). The volcanoes, in turn, give way to downs as one approaches Wellington. These downs, though, are more knobbly and more crinkly than the downs in Sussex: and Wellington, when the harbour bursts on one’s view on a sunny day. turns out to be a second San Francisco—till wind and rain transform it into a second London or Shanghai (the weather in Wellington can be as raw as that).

After paying his respects to the “chthonic gods” at Rotorua, Dr. Toynbee remarks: “Whatever the future of sheep and man may be, the Titans beneath Wairakei will go on raging till the end of time,” and thence he takes the reader to Cairns in Queensland. This is in fact no traveller’s guide book, but a collection of

impressions written, as the journey was made, as a series of articles for the London “Observer.” The narrative is not connected, but is rather a succession of rewarding glimpses which are illuminated by Dr. Toynbee’s special insights and his deep knowledge of the world’s history, geography and religious life. Not everywhere does he rush about, as in New Zealand, but in most places he found time to stand and stare. He devotes more space to the Hindus’ attitude to animals in India than to the whole of his 11 days’ stay in New Zealand. and describes pleasantly and reflectively many timeless things —religious beliefs in Japan, the ceaseless traffic on India’s roads, overwhelming tide of Chinese immigration through south-east Asia to Malaya, the effect of topography on the course of history in what we now call the Middle East. Dr. Toynbee is no admirer of either aeroplanes as a means of conveyance, nor of the world’s capital cities. “High powered British aeroplanes carry the passenger so high above the clouds that he cannot see the countries over which he is being hurled. For the traveller whose object in travelling is to see the world, the best conveyance is shanks’s mare.” As for the world’s capital cities, “they are all growing bigger, growing more like one another, and growing more magnetic.” For modernisation begins in the cities, and it standardises urban life on Western lines; so that, in Latin American and Asian countries, the gulf between capital and countryside is now extreme and is steadily growing wider. “If some joker jinn were to dump Tehran where Lima stands, and Lima where Tehran stands, overnight, the Iranian and Quechman peasants, coming into market next morning as usual, would probably fail to notice that there had been any change.” For Dr. Toynbee, the countryside still remains the real world. In the course of his 17-month journey, the author gained glimpses of the real world that are gleanings of priceless value. Now that he has harvested them, readers the world over will be grateful to him for sharing his treasure. This book is a real treat to read. For any reader of his “Study of History” it makes a fascinating supplement—it is a book that only Dr. Toynbee could have written. Full of the joy of living and the personal observations of a strong, healthy and learned mind, this refreshing odyssey will give much pleasure and help to widen the vision of many a reader.