THE BOOKMAN

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 103, 3 May 1941, Page 15

THE BOOKMAN

IN THE THROES

EUROPE'S 1940 SPRING

The spring of Miss CJare ' Boothe's scintillating and searing "European Spring," published by Hamish Hamilton, is the spring of 1940. She cane to Europe from the United States to "see about the war" because (as she explains) "I was far less interested in events themselves than in the effect they had on people's hearts and minds. Above all, I was interested in how I felt about how they felt, which is a highly emotional and egoistic approach that would disqualify anybody at once as an 'objective journalist.'" Most of her book is indeed emotional and egoistic, remarks "The Times Literary Supplement" reviewer, and because of that it is supremely interesting and may be supremely important in this different but difficult spring' of 1941. It catches the mood of peoples in that other spring when, among many misapprehensions, France I in general thought in terms of the ' Magmot > Line and Britain of the blockade, when the Norwegian campaign was too rashly i accounted Hitler's Himalayan blunder and hardly less rashly deference 'was paid to. the Duee —when, in bnei total war was not " understood Not all Miss Boothe's judgments and impressions are respectful and sound, but precisely because 'she makes her readers here and in America uncomfortable hers is a book to be read in ihese days. Miss Boothe was lucky in one respect in her pilgrimage of discovery and disillusionment. Most doors opened to her—even those of the Maginot Line. Ambassadors helped her; generals and statesmen talked (more or less truthfully) to her; what are sometimes called "the best circles" admitted her to their chatter and confidences. Probably some of them will not like her confessions over-much, and, probably again, that will not perturb her. Coming over she contacted, to use the American word, with an "oil-man" who talked then and .l^ter good horse-sense ("Isolation is the unwelcome compliment America pays the British Navy" was one of his shrewd, bright sayings. An- ' other was "When we passed the Neuj trality Act we presented Adolf Hitler , with his first great victory over the j Allies; ot its own free will America renounced the first and greatest tenet of democratic capitalist nations, the freedom of the seas"). In Rome where she had Mr. Sumner Welles's hotel suite, and where the oil-man briskly assured her that as Mussolini had been unable to build an empire he had had to excavate one, she met and drank cocktails with Ciano, "the pampered darling" and "absolutely idolised'pet" of "Italian^American cafe society." « THE FALL OF FRANCE. And so on to France, who, "fortified by many a logical but false deduction of ultimate victory , „ marked time and talked and talked and talked." In between grimmer business she Listened to the gossip of the drawing-rooms tone former Minister's wife jubilantly told her when discussing war aims that at least Communism in France had already been destroyed), and heard but was not always taken in by what Minlsters* and Government officials told her. 'Of the malaise, she has her own diagnosis! , If "treachery"', were the "real key to , the fair of France (she writes), then, to be safe, all England need tto now, all America need do tomorrow, to protect themselves is watch for and weed out "traitors." It was not what any one of ttfese gentlemen I the rotating leaders,of the Third, Republic] did before or during the warit was what aH>*,6f them didn't*do. "The price of Liberty is eternal vigilance/'* They did aiot betray France They betrayed with France, over a long period of years, the principles of Liberty and Democracy in all of Europe. That betrayal eventually caught up with them, and with the nation. Into the pilgrimage came the eve of the invasion of Holland, the first bombing of Brussels, and a stay in England before and after what Miss Boothe calls v the "Evacuation Ecstasy." (She pays more than one moving tribute to the men of Dunkirk and to the men and women of wartime Britain.) What worries,her at the end of it all is whether the Battle for Democracy (and the sort of Democracy) is going to be won in these islands and whether Americans have "become a nation of lookers-on and busybodies hanging over the Atlantic back fence just gabbing on and on about our neighbours' family brawl." She describes her country as standing, "at a great crossroad in the evolution of civilisation." She has no faith in the Atlantic as America's Maginot Line, and fears that Americans are repeating the-mistakes made over here—and so serving the further "betrayal" of Democracy. The searching questions she puts to the men and women of her country may be best answered by them. Events have moved far and fast since "European Spring" was finished. The spring ,of 1941, terrible though it may be, gives promise of fairer issue.'