Since Then

Extract

What a whirl of memories are stirred up by this new book of Sir Philip Gibbs! To read its pages is to be confronted by forgotten hopes, by noble plans that failed of their purpose, and again by ignoble greeds that equally failed to secure the accomplishment of their designs. Even the mistakes of postwar policies are hardly less in evidence than the inability of selfishness to establish its controls. A cynic would have merely given a catalogue of the blunders of the politicians; a sentimentalist would have talked glibly of the records of disarmament, of the League of Nations, and of the increase of the standard of comfort of the working man. Sir Philip is neither cynic nor sentimentalist, at least he is neither for very long, though he is sometimes each by turns : however, he chiefly sets himself to the task of telling us the story of what has actually befallen our world since the war ended. By ‘our world’ is meant exclusively the world that went to war. Thus Spain, the first of the dictatorships, the earliest of the new fashion of government, gets no mention : Holland and Scandinavia are equally and deliberately ignored.

But the spirit in which the book is written is amply demonstrated on the front page of it: it is called Since Then, The Disturbing Story of the World at Peace. You realise that Sir Philip is considerably disturbed by what has happened since the war ended; and as you read the volume, and especially as you read the last pages of it, you also realise why he is disturbed.