BOOKS

Northern Advocate, 22 July 1939, Page 5 (Supplement)

BOOKS

* &£ WVy -v’ f

Mr. Steer Says “No”

What was formerly German Africa is not too well known, yet, at any moment it may loom up in political adjustments. Mr George L. Steer made a name for descriptive and dependable examination of flic situation in Abyssinia, and again in Spain, with his powerful analysis of the Italian expedition, under the title Caesar in Abyssinia, He was a keen observer in Spain and wrote a smashing story in The Tree of Gerrika. Now he comes to light with Judgment on German Africa (Hodder and Stoughton, 12/6). He has been described as “one of those writers' who lifts reporting to an extraordinarily high level." Certainly he has just returned from a tour of the former German colonies _in Africa and written of what he saw, what he investigated and what problems are involved in any proposal to return these colonies, as seen from the inside, on the spot. The author sums up, without hesitation against the return of the colonies. He does not do this, says Mr Ronald Lewin, for economic reasons: for he provides abundant evidence to prove that the German hullabaloo about access to raw materials is nonsense. Germany’s former colonics wouldn’t produce a fraction of the raw materials she expects from them. No,

Should Germany Get Her Colonies?

Mr Steer's objections arc purely strategical: and his arguments are marshalled with such force lha’t h is terrifying to think we may, in an appeasing moment, hand over these eligible air-bases, naval depots and vitally' important military centres without a struggle or a qualm. ! The Renaissance of France Perhaps the Peace Bloc will strengthen us sufficiently to refuse to return thorn, if they are to be used as mere weapons against us. Here for lire interested' are accounts of a certain arrd a potential member of that Bloc—France and Russia. My France, by Roland Alix (Jarrolds, 7/0 net) is a Frenchman’s account of his country written to prove that “what is certain is that Franco, after being on the point of relapsing to tire rank of a second-class nation and becoming a mere dead-weight in European politics. is about to resume her proper position.” M. Herriot has contributed ■i pugnacious preface in which he pleads for a world which will follow the lead of his master, the great French philosopher Descartes, and live according to reason. “We address ourselves lo all those who have made their whole natures subject to their j intelligence.” M. Alix gives full weight to the part played by the Cartesian philosophy in modern French thought. In his text, and in the really superb photographs he has chosen to illustrate it, he illustrates the other, centuries-deep characteristics of France which will assist her in the renaissance he proudly predicts. i