CURRENT LITERATURE
PEACE WITH GANGSTERS? By George Glasgow
Mr. Glasgow has been for many years a contributor to the Observer and the Contemporary Review on international affairs, and Peace with Gangsters? (Cape, 7s. 6d.) is based on a selection of his articles over a long period. The historical section is a vigorous denunciation of the Versailles Treaty, and the attempts to enforce it. The note is struck by the heading "Allied Responsibility for Nazi Germany." The Czecho- Slovak crisis is discussed with full consciousness of the difficulties of the situation, and of the shortcomings of the Czecho-Slovak case. The question, " Was Munich Wholly a Gaffe? " is answered in the negative, but somewhat lukewarmly and with rather strange arguments, e.g., that one of the results of Munich has been to remove Germany's colonial claims from the field of practical politics. Mr. Glasgow's strongest point appears to be that we have hitherto kept our head and kept the peace in spite of every provocation. " If you drive a car, it is your business to avoid a smash, no matter how many drunkards, lunatics or gangsters happen to be driving the other cars. If you do collide, is it any excuse, still less any consolation, to argue that it was the other fellow's fault, even if it really was the other fellow's fault? " But the general impression left by the book is one of confusion—in which respect Mr. Glasgow perhaps accurately reflects the mind of his countrymen at the present time. Throughout the book itself Mr. Glasgow gives the impression of trying to hold the balance even, and see all sides at once. But the preface is as violently and crudely vituperative of Germany as anything that has appeared in print since 1918. Altogether, an odd and bewildering mixture.
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