EUROPEAN JOURNEY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26793, 9 June 1948, Page 2

EUROPEAN JOURNEY

Literature

IN SEARCH OF FREEDOM Devil at My Heels. By R. W. Thompson. Macdonald. 14s 6d. This is described as a story of a journey through Europe from the Arctic Ocean to the Black Sea, but actually the book starts at Nuremberg, during the celebrated trials, and carries the reader on from there, througn Czechoslovakia to Vienna, and thence through the equally celebrated Iron Curtain to the Black Sea. Mr Thompson is an experienced writer and a good reporter, and in consequence this book is both entertaining and disturbing. The journey was made in 1946, when Yugoslavia and Bulgaria were only organising themselves on good Communist lines and had not quite attained their present delightful, freedom from political opposition'. Mr Thompson, in consequence, saw the whole horrid business ip the formative stages, and it shocked him to the core. He had begun his journey with a journalist’s appreciation of the fact that the Balkan countries could hardly be expected to reproduce our own particular version of democracy. He also realised that they were under considerable pressure from their big brother to the northeast. Standing somewhere roughly left-centre in political ideas, he was prepared to give Communism a chance. But at close quarters it proved a doctrine that violated every principle which a liberal Socialist holds dear. Mr Thompson gives chapter and verse for his conversion from the role of spectator to that of fervid opponent of this soul-killing way of life. This book is important for its study of Communism in its birth throes. It could quite possibly happen here, and eveiv liberally-minded man would be the better for knowing his enemy as well as he can be known. Mr Thompson, by a very personal route reaches Mr Bevin’s conclusion, that the only salvation for world civilisation is the coalescence of Western Europe in self-protection against the crceoing menace from tbe East. He does not love America 'or the Americans, of whom he met too many unlovely examples among the occupying forces, and he finds in Western Europe the world’s only hope, if the light is not to go out again, as it has so often' gone out before, under an onrush of barbarism. This is a provocative book that will cause resentment in many quarters, but it is also a good book, which adds to the importance of its message the merit of being highly readable. 1 P- H. W. N.