Current Literature
WAYS OF ESCAPE By Sir Philip Gibbs Mr. J. M. Keynes once compared economists to dentists. Sir Philip Gibbs' new book (Ways of Escape, Heinemann, 8s. 6d.) suggests a similar comparison. " I am not an economist, just the ordinary fellow trying to understand things," he writes. Such candour is certainly engaging, but as at least fifty per cent. of any book such as his, devoted as it is to a discussion of the world crisis and to suggested remedies, must deal with economic questions, this con- fession of ignorance is not altogether encouraging. What, for example, would a patient feel if, as he sat down in the dentist's chair, he was told, " Of course, I am no dentist, but just an ordinary fellow trying to understand teeth " ? Sir Philip Gibbs' pages, in spite of much good sense, do, it must be admitted, substantiate their author's view that he is no economist. On the other hand, they show that their author has had first-hand knowledge of many of the important events of the last ten years. Above all, they show that whatever Sir Philip Gibbs is not, he is a first-rate journalist. Thus, if we find the later chapters'of the book; which are devoted to such questions as " Money, Men and Minds " and " Society and the Individual ", unsatisfactory, we cannot but admit the combined force and sensitiveness of his first chapter, entitled " World Bewilderment." This chapter is really a sketch of the state of mind prevalent throughout the world to-day, and it is admirably done. The present mood, he says, is one of doubt which shows signs of deepening into panic. Men feel," Sir Philip Gibbs writes, ".as though mysterious and malignant forces over which the human mind had no control were bearing down upon the nations and the individual." And he quotes a terrible letter from a young German which ends : We belong to a youth without hope in the future and without happiness in the present." Even if he has no remedies to offer, Sir Philip Gibbs has done us all a service by so well expressing the tragic mood of the moment.
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