IF IT HAPPENED OTHERWISE

Taranaki Daily News, 7 February 1931, Page 9

IF IT HAPPENED OTHERWISE

LAPSES IN IMAGINARY HISTORY.

NOTED MEN’S SPECULATIONS.

By Telegraph—Press ■' Assn.—Copyright.

London, February 4. A remarkable jeu d’esprit entitled, “If it Happened Otherwise,” or “Lapses into Imaginary History,” by Mr. Winston Churchill, Air. G. K. Chesterton,. Father Ronald Knox and others, is published by Longmans. Mr. Churchill discusses what would have happened if the Confederates had won the Battle of Gettysburg, the American Union had been broken and 50 years later- the British Empire had become reunited with the States. -

Mr. Chesterton speculates as to what would have happened if Don Juan had married Alary Queen of Scots. Harold Nicholsoii asks the consequences of Lord Byron becoming King of Greece. J. C. Squire wittingly inquires, the results of the discovery in 1930 that Bacon really wrote Shakespeare; thus, the Dover Town Council renames Shakespeare’s Cliff Bacon’s Clifle, while Stratford is ruined as a place of pilgrimage. Finally, Father Knox contributes an answer to the question: “If the general strike had succeeded, would the newspapers have passed under a trade union censorship?” Father Knox parodies the news columns, thus produced.