Honesty and Humanity

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32210, 31 January 1970, Page 4

Honesty and Humanity

Personal History. By Vincent Sheean. Hamish Hamilton. 448 pp. It is not surprising that Vincent Sheean’s classic, dating from 1935, is published again, garnished with a new and maturely reflective preface. Although it is “a hybrid form, and is neither personal nor historical, but contains elements of both,” this book effectively sketches an epoch in international affairs, from 1918 to 1929, which saw toe running down of toe idealism that attended, for many, the setting up of the League of Nations. At toe same time as it covers some, striking events—for Sheean was a gifted and courageous foreign correspondent—it chronicles toe development of an in-

nocent young man, fascinated if not dumbfounded by “the tone of intricate, overweening snobbery" he found at toe University of Chicago, who would in time be equally astonished by the behaviour of governments. He is wide-eyed when he sees the early Fasdsti (before the March on Rome) functioning as “a national organisation of hoodlums,” living on protection money. It startles him at Geneva to hear toe Japanese maintain that “immigration laws in any country discriminating specifically against them were an offence to their national honour.” Entirely through chance, Sheean was often intimate with the losing side. Much of the book deals with his two hazardous excursions to Riff territory in Abd el-Krim’s War with the Spanish in Morocco; he lost once he was embroiled also with toe French. Sheean knew and admired the group, round Borodin at Hankow which lost power when Chiang Kai-shek in 1927-led the Kuomintang in the suppression of its own left wing. He was in Moscow when this reverse was used to unseat Trotsky. In August, 1929, Sheean witnessed the provocative behaviour of the Jews in Palestine which produced toe first serious clashes with the Arabs (with whom his sympathies lie). Although we have been regaled-with ;even more horrifying; happenings in the years since 1929, Vincent Sheean is still impressive, because of his honesty and humanity and his reasoned and sensitive analysis of his own reactions. JSheeantis unluckjf his references to this country. In 1924 “‘Sir James Craig” appears at Geneva as “the Prime Minister of New Zealand.” One Ulsterman is no doubt as good as another, but your reviewer, without checking, puts his money on Sir James Allen rather than Massey. Then toe Naim Brothers, whose desert transport service is praised, are called Australians.