Letter: Silent professor (1984)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Silent professor

Dear Editors,

I have just been reading the introduction to The Communist Manifesto by A.J.P. Taylor. Some of the criticisms he uses against Marx and marxism 1 have come across before and I disagree with him. However, he claims that the Labour Theory of Value has been discredited (p.37 in the Introduction). Having read Volume I of Capital. I find it hard to believe that the value of a commodity is not created by the labour power of the workers.

Could you please let me know what theory/argument Mr Taylor has in mind when he says the Labour Theory of Value is no longer credible and whether or not it has any validity (which I doubt).

S H Lodwick 

Plymouth

Reply:

S.H. Lodwick has a point; where do famously learned people like A.J.P. Taylor find the evidence to support their sweeping condemnations of marxism and its explanation of the workings of capitalist society?

To try to answer this question we wrote to A.J.P. Taylor, some two months ago. telling him that we can't answer our correspondent's enquiry and asking for his help in finding the sources his opinions are based on. But on this point Professor Taylor, who is not famous for any reticence in publicising his views, remains mysteriously silent. We have not had a word from him. by way of reply or even acknowledgement. Readers can draw their own conclusions.

Editors.

Weakness of Nuclear Disarmament Campaign (1958)

From the August 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many rank and file adherents of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, associated with which are Cannon Collins, Donald Soper, Michael Foot and others believe that they are opposed on principle to nuclear weapons. They might be interested to know the reply which was made to a reader of the Socialist Standard who was seeking an “official and authoritative" reply to the undernoted question, from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. The question was:—

"Is it the policy of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament at the next general election to advise their supporters to vote only for a completely anti-nuclear weapon candidate no matter to which party he or she belongs and to abstain in the absence of such a candidate? ”

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament replied in a letter dated June 27th, 1958, signed by Peggy Duff, the C.N.D. Organising Secretary:—

"It is not the policy of the Campaign to advise supporters to vote only for a completely anti-nuclear weapon candidate because we feel each individual must make their decision alone, according to the circumstances in the area in which they live. To do as suggested in many areas would result in the return of a candidate much more opposed to the Campaign than the alternative.”

To put it very charitably, this attitude is certainly not one of principled opposition to nuclear weapons. It is a far cry from A.J. P. Taylor's wildly acclaimed suggestion at the inaugural meeting of the Campaign on February17th this year in Central Hall, Westminster, that politicians who supported the nuclear “deterrent" policy should be branded as “ Murderers! "

It is said by a number of people in the movement itself that some Labour Party politicians are discreetly attempting to use for their own ends the indignation of those who are appalled at the prospects of nuclear warfare and the insidious dangers of fall-out from weapon tests.

Here we see the difference between the approach of the S.P.G.B. to the problem of war and the approach of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. The Socialist Party of Great Britain sees that war happens because of the way the civilian life of the world is carried on, the capitalist system of production and distribution, with its rivalries between the nations for markets, sources of raw materials and the control of trade routes and strategic points.

We hold, therefore, that the only road to peace is through altering the structure of society from capitalism to Socialism. This requires that a majority shall become convinced of the need for Socialism and democratically take organised political action to abolish capitalism and establish Socialism in its place.

It follows that the Socialist Party is opposed on principle and completely to all who help to keep capitalism going (which includes helping to keep war going). Therefore, the S.P.G.B. opposes the candidates of capitalism, Tory, Liberal. Labour, Communist, or whatever label they may be.

On the other hand there are those who say they are opposed on principle to nuclear weapons, but who do not recognise that capitalism is bound to go on producing wan, large or small.

They think that by concentrating on this particular kind of weapon (regardless of bacteriological, chemical or any other known or secret weapons) they can gain time for more rational political policies to be instituted before the radio-active poisoning of plant and animal life or the destruction of civilisation makes politics redundant.

But when it comes to applying their principle in a practical way they find themselves involved in giving support to electoral candidates who do not share their principle. In face of past experience of such attitudes what can they really hope to achieve by this?

We hope that this short article will stimulate those in the Campaign to write to us so that fruitful discussion of the whole problem of war and nuclear tests may ensue.

B.

Political Notes: Humbug & Heffer (1980)

The Political Notes Column from the August 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

Humbug & Heffer

In our May issue, we had a piece referring to the murky Stalinist past of the Labour MP Eric Heffer, who has now announced his intention of entering the race for the leadership of his pseudo-socialist party. As late as 1953, after the death of Stalin, he was extolling the virtues of the monster who had done to death millions of Russian workers in the process of building up the power of the state-capitalist regime. In the Guardian of June 28 there was a long interview with Heffer by John Torode, complete with the usual description of his fondness for smart clothes, good food and fine wine. (It is beginning to seem as though a would-be leader of these pseuds has first got to prove that he has all the worst attributes of a capitalist Pig.)

In the course of the article, Heffer is quoted as reviling the Fabians (who are of course members of his own party) as being “the other side of the Stalinist coin” and went on to remind readers of the way the Webbs had swallowed Stalin. No readers of this journal will have any illusions about the Webbs or any of their ilk; we have on many occasions publicised their appalling views, which fitted so ill with their claims for the Labour Party as a guardian of democracy.

There was never, at any time, the slightest excuse for the Webbs to eulogise Stalinism in the teeth of all the evidence of its atrocities. But by the time Heffer did his grovel, even those who had fallen into the Stalinist trap had, in the main, realised what a murderous dictator he had been. But not Heffer he was still kissing the dead tyrant’s feet. And yet here he is, a quarter of a century later, having the gall to criticise his fellow Stalin-lovers.

Workshy myth

This too is a headline taken from an article in the press (Guardian June 28). It is not bad enough that workers are made redundant (apart from those referred to in the previous note who cannot be thrown onto the scrap-heap because they simply live there and know- no other home). They have to be insulted as well. Workshy, lazy, do better on the dole than working. And the insults are not hurled merely by the capitalist class. All socialist propagandists will be familiar with members of our own class who are all too ready to heap insults on fellow members even less fortunate than they are. (They forget they are always liable to join them!)

Of course it is true that some jobs are so badly paid that workers can actually do better on social security. A fine advert for capitalism that is, to be sure. But the report in the Guardian made it clear that “the vast majority of the unemployed experience serious financial difficulty . . . on average their benefits total only 44 per cent of their former earnings”. We are further told that the “mean benefit” (le mot juste!) for men is the vast sum of £26.34 per week. Also that only 19 per cent get redundancy pay from all sources totalling more than £200. Riches indeed.

Bitter price for youth to pay

The above heading is not our own, but appeared over an article by Shirley Williams, the former Labour Minister of Education, in the Observer (June 29). The article was on the subject of youth unemployment, the fearful prospect facing thousands of school-leavers of never having the privilege of becoming an employed wage-slave. One of the gems offered by Williams was that the government should pay special benefits to young people engaged in training or further education at least on a means-tested basis.

The very term “means test” was always calculated to make a Labourite foam at the mouth, and yet here is one of their own leaders advocating it — and not a single twitch in the paper’s letter columns. In all of its 700 words, there was not room for one single mention of the word socialism. How can someone like Mrs Williams pretend to be a socialist and yet manage to deal with ways of solving capitalism’s problems without even mentioning the word? Let alone understanding what it means.

Make sense of this

In Portugal there is a Conservative government acting under a recently enacted constitution whose second clause provides for the “transition to socialism”. (Taken from an article in the Times Literary Supplement of July 4 which points out that nowhere in the constitution is the term socialism defined!) 

Praising Mosley!

“What Mosley so valiantly tried for, could have saved his country from the Hungry Thirties and the second world war.” Michael Foot.
“Mosley is a superb political thinker, the best of our age.” A. J. P. Taylor.

Now it is well-known that Mosley is the hate-figure supreme of the Left. It is equally well-known that Foot has been a leading Leftie since time began and is now deputy leader of the Labour Party; and that Professor Taylor, that great historian, has also claimed to be a socialist. So it is possible that you might think the above quotes are figments of an overheated imagination. They may be incredible but they are still true. They are taken from the same edition of the TLS of the previous note and are part of the blurb to an advert of Mosley’s memoirs. Further comment would be superfluous.

L. E. Weidberg

History's Loss? (1977)

From the July 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is easy for those people who cherish the idea that great men are the makers of history to accept that what is lacking in the present crisis is the quality of great leadership. Such people will no doubt stamp their feet and gnash their teeth in rage and frustration to discover that a whole period of history missed its chance simply because greatness was brushed aside. The late Winston Churchill’s fan-club will be furious, after all those years of revering him as “the greatest living Englishman”, that he is posthumously to be eclipsed by a man he detained in prison during World War II under Order 18B. You will have guessed that we are referring to none other than Sir Oswald Mosley.

The New Statesman for 27th May 1977 carried a large advertisement for Mosley’s new book My Life. A whole host of household names are listed paying tribute to their fellow mediocrity. Here are some examples.

By general assent he could have become the leader of either the Conservative or the Labour Party . . . political genius.  

Michael Foot.

With or without his black shirt, Mr. Foot? It really says a lot for the alleged differences between the Labour and Conservative Parties that the man who founded the British Union of Fascists could have been leader of either. Without going into pure conjecture, it is obvious that Mosley himself would have changed as all leaders do to ride the tempest and survive in the turmoil of capitalism. The system would still have produced war. It is no consolation to offer the millions slaughtered that they are dying under the leadership of a “political genius”. That is what was said about Churchill, what the Russians said about Stalin and the Germans about Hitler. In any event capitalism had its war; the Conservatives and Labourites managed to muddle through without Mosley, and the millions still died for nothing.

Easy to show that Mosley must have become Prime Minister.

Lord Hailsham.

How he “must have” but did not, we can leave to Lord Hailsham’s knowledge of English. Whom did he plump for — Churchill or Mosley? While the majority of the working class remain politically ignorant, one demagogue is as bad as another. What is needed is an attitude of self-reliance based on Socialist understanding. We shall then have no use for Prime Ministers because society will be changed and the political power of one class over another will have ceased.

A superb political thinker, the best of our age.

A. J. P. Taylor

Well, what would you expect? Politically, Mosley has been nothing more than a reformist and a nationalist. His “thinking” has never penetrated beyond the system of wage-slavery known as capitalism. Neither has that of A. J. P. Taylor or any of the others who now pay tribute to the Jew-baiter whose "superb” thinking crystallized in the slogans "Britain First” and "Britain for the British”.

In eloquence, will power, courage and organizing ability he had in his entire person more to offer than recent entire Cabinets.

Cecil King.

Which is not really saying very much. But it might explain the anti-strike policy pursued by the Daily Mirror particularly while King was in control.

Mosley was spurned by . . . every party leader, simply and solely because he was right.

R. H. S. Crossman.

Strange how this “political genius” has only lately been discovered by people who no doubt thought it best to imprison him during the war because of his Nazi sympathies, and who did not have a kind word to say about him during the days of the Black-shirt rallies, when his talent for being “right” in both senses of the word was most in evidence. Similar sickly comments to those quoted are made by Malcolm Muggeridge and Lord Boothby, then from the New York Herald Tribune comes:

Dominated the TV screen . . . a spellbinder.

Just like Fred Flintstone and David Frost, no doubt. When the workers waken from the spell of the spellbinders they are still suffering from poverty, unemployment and war. The final comment comes from Harold MacMillan:

Great talents and great strength of character.

MacMillan did become Prime Minister. Although like all leaders before and since, he was unable to control the chaotic workings of capitalism, he did earn himself the nickname “unflappable Mac” for managing to remain outwardly calm while the hell of capitalism raged about him. He also managed to delude some workers that they had “never been had so good" (or words to that effect). If those are the qualities he believes to constitute “great talents”, the standard by which he admires Mosley is not a very commendable one. The working class would do well to ignore all purveyors of such nonsense, and organize consciously for Socialism.

Harry Baldwin

A Gold-Filled Irrelevance (1973)

From the November 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

How conditions have improved! At the time of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, or George V’s Silver one, or the Victory Parade, and even the present Queen’s wedding, to see any of it meant notable hardships for the workers. Up half the night to get a place; standing in the street for hours; shouting oneself hoarse; then having to get back home through all the crowds. Compare that with what progress has brought us today. This month loyal subjects will be able to sit in comfort at home, watching on colour TV the romance of Princess Anne brought to its consummation (well, not quite, but no doubt that will come).

Should one laugh or weep ? On one hand, millions riveted to this idiot’s spectacle; on the other, its reduction to only another pattern of moving wallpaper. While the gilt-edged incantations are pronounced, the Golden Oldies of the dirty-joke index are revived for a generation fresh to the ambience of royal weddings. The souvenirs pretending patriotic fervour but representing only fervour for Mammon — cheap mugs and tee-shirts in the High Street, silver and Wedgwood trophies to be hoarded as “investments”. And the sight of radicals and make-believe socialists, straight from the Labour conference, bowing obsequious knees and kissing the fat backside of opulence. Ugh!

In the working class, schoolchildren have the benefits from an occasion like this. For one thing, a day off. But the longer-view benefit is that one day they will be told truths about those they are now supposed to adulate. Elderly people who still remember Queen Victoria could have heard A.J.P. Taylor on television last year describe her as “a woman of the lowest intelligence who wouldn’t have obtained employment as a cook”. Her grandson the Duke of Clarence, who would have become King in this century had he lived, has been brought forward as a candidate for Jack the Ripper’s identity. And George III, we are told (BBC 1, 30th September), “was probably a criminal lunatic”.

But when they do tell you these things, son, don’t be mistaken about what you are learning. “Revelations” about royalty and rulers do not matter. The real truth being told concerns the politicians and pressmen who hoist these preposterous figures for worship by working people. If there are legal reasons why the low-down cannot be given at the time, there are different reasons for sustaining the story which isn’t true. It is like tellings backers that a horse-race was once fixed: if they knew but could not say, why did they go on shouting their odds?

What is the purpose of it all? Royalty is a pretended ruler long since denuded of power but maintained still in glittering barbaric splendour: a mediaeval survival. In most countries those who really rule have decided they are better without it, and in some they still find a use for what history has left them. If class-divided society is to be believed-in, here is a symbol of it. If privileged riches are a social ideal, here they are personified. And if rulers have to provide bread and circuses, here is the Big Top where the horses prance and the troupers have the style.

To be enthralled by this kind of thing is to be m the clutch of capitalism. Remember, however, that capitalism has alternatives. It does not need royalty — and that is why royalty doesn’t matter to the working class either. Working people are no better off in the countries where kings and queens have been superseded or never existed. In the United States the cheering and drum-beating go into presidential election circuses; in the one-party regimes, to ceremonial displays of the State’s might. Better to regard royalty as, in John Osborne’s phrase, “the gold fillings in a mouth full of decay”; then to see about the reasons for the decay. Of course a sane world would have no place for such nonsense, and it is society we must change first.

Robert Barltrop

Editorial: Curious Friends of Freedom (1958)

Editorial from the April 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is one thing that the Tories and the Labour Party, the supporters of “controls" and the defenders of “private enterprise,” have long had in common: they are all the friends of freedom. They were all very anxious, or so they said, to protect the rights of Minorities and see that these Minorities received opportunities to state their point of view. But they differed, and differed violently, about the best way of securing this happy event. The Labour Party has always said that you cannot expect the profit-hungry Press Barons to play the game, and the sole way to get freedom of speech for Minorities was to have the Press and the Radio nationalised; then there would be reasonable facilities for every point of view, however small its numerical and financial backing. The newspapers and the advocates of commercial broadcasting scoffed at this. They pointed to the habit of bureaucratic Government organisations, once they got a monopoly, of blotting out every dissident point of view.

As the Socialist Party of Great Britain is a small organisation, we are the very people whom both groups were dying to serve. So how could we fail to benefit? If Tweedledum defaulted on his principle we only had to turn to Tweedledee to get a fair deal. And thus it didn’t turn out. Tweedledum and Tweedledee found that they don't disagree at all, for they both see eye to eye about not giving the Socialist case a chance to be heard. So for over twenty years the B.B.C. has refused to allow the SP.G.B. an opportunity to put its case on the air and this in spite of the recommendation of the Committee set up by the Government which in 1949 recommended that the B.B.C. should consider giving “all minorities which had messages, religious or other, some time to broadcast.” But there still remained the other groups, those who got their chance to behave differently when commercial television was started. They were going to show how much better they would do things than the B.B.C. On February 10th of this year in an I.T.V. lecture on “ International Socialism," Mr. A. J. P. Taylor, Fellow and Tutor in Modem History at Magdalen College, Oxford, made a statement which viewers heard as bring in the terms that all Socialist Parties supported the 1914-18 war. We wrote to Mr. Taylor and to Associated Television Ltd. on February 11th, drawing attention to this and asking that Mr. Taylor defend or withdraw his statement, and that the controllers of the programme allow us facilities to state our position. In order that there could be no reason for doubt about the facts, we forwarded to Mr. Taylor a copy of the Socialist Standard for September, 1914, in which our manifesto reaffirming Socialist opposition to war was published. From Associatd Television Ltd. we received a letter saying that “the import of Mr. Taylor's remarks in connection with the 1914-18 war were not quite correctly stated by you in your letters"—but not giving the correct version: a courteous letter; which, however, ignored our request, though it expressed the opinion that no doubt Mr. Taylor “will be making any reply to you which is appropriate."

At this point it may strike the reader that Mr. Taylor doubtless erred quite innocently—his historical studies might well not have extended to noticing a small organisation; but he would naturally put the matter right without delay.

But six weeks later we had not heard from him. With our accustomed charity we appreciate that his various activities, including his preparations for and appearance in, a programme called “Free Speech," might take up much time and in addition he was busy writing for the Press. In the Sunday Express (2nd March, 1958) appeared an article by him defending certain organs of the Press against some Bishops and M.P,s and the Times. In this article Mr. Taylor called them men who “imperil freedom.” His particular concern was that these men had made “exaggerated charges, false charges, charges that should never have been made," in connection with the photographs published after the Munich disaster to Manchester United footballers. It may be wondered what this has to do with our subject matter. The point is that Mr. Taylor agreed that the offending critics of the Press made their charges as “the result of an honest mistake." But, he wrote indignantly. “What about a withdrawal and an apology? Not at all. Silence by the bishops; silence by the M.P's.; silence by the Times."

Need we labour the point? Pray, silence for Mr. Taylor of Television Free Speech fame!

Marx and Engels (1968)

Book Review from the January 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels (with an introduction by A. J. P. Taylor) Pelican, 3s. 6d.

A. J. P. Taylor, the television "intellectual" has written an “introduction" to this edition which is longer than the manifesto itself. Since he is not a Marxist one would expect Taylor to misunderstand a good deal of what Marx and Engels wrote. But a surprising feature of this essay is the number of purely factual errors which he has managed to cram into it. A couple of examples: he claims that Marx called his system “dialectical materialism" and that Proudhon coined the phrase “Property is theft”. In fact, the first of these expressions is derived from George Plekhanov (who perhaps got it from Joseph Dietzgen) and was never used by Marx, while Proudhon's famous answer to the question “What is property?" was lifted bodily from Brissot's writings.

But quite apart from such ignorant blunders, Taylor does his level best to misrepresent Marx. He tries to show that Marx was little more than a simple- minded utopian:

The social conflicts which were the basis of his system would finally produce a synthesis where no conflicts were left, and history would come to an end. This synthesis was socialism, an ideal society or Utopia where everyone would be happy without conflict for ever more, (our emphasis)

Anyone who has even glanced at the preface to the Critique of Political Economy will remember that its author writes exactly the opposite—that Socialism will be the beginning of human history, that capitalism with its class antagonisms represents “the closing chapter of the prehistoric stage of human society.” Socialists maintain that when we have freed ourselves from capitalism's strait-jacket mankind will be able to take a leap forward, completely dwarfing the results of all previous social revolutions. Certainly no Socialist, least of all Marx, would suggest that the new society will be similar to the stagnant perfection of the Christians’ paradise.

Another of Taylor’s claims is that “Marx in his analysis never seems to acknowledge the middlemen and administrators who make capitalism work. The more capitalism flourishes, the more there are of them.” Not only did Marx recognise these ‘middlemen’ and managers as being essential to capitalist industry, he also emphasised that they were members of the working class.

Just as at first the capitalist is relieved from actual labour . . .  so now, he hands over the work of direct and constant supervision of the individual workmen. and groups of workmen, to a special kind of wage-labourer. An Industrial army of workmen, under the command of a capitalist, requires, like a real army, officers (managers), and sergeants (foremen, overlookers), who, while the work is being done, command in the name of the capitalist. (Capital. Vol. I Chap. XIII our emphasis)

In the best tradition of Marx's critics, Taylor is also fond of making sweeping, and often staggering, judgments — but offering no evidence to back them up. Thus the Labour Theory of Value is dismissed as “no longer academically respectable" (Marx would probably be relieved at this), while “the fundamental cause of the 1848 revolutions was the increase in population which had become general since the beginning of the century."

It is interesting to note that in contrast to some comments ridiculing Engels’ early work, The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, Taylor concedes that "it is still a historical authority of the first importance, even though apologists for capitalism have criticised its exaggerations." Another striking point is that, towards the end of his essay, Taylor makes a reference to state capitalism in Russia. But this is hardly enough to compensate for the page loads of inanities elsewhere.

Despite its glossy cover, then, this book is a poor bargain at 3/6. A better buy would be the centenary edition of the Manifesto, brought out by our party, which is still selling at a shilling.

John Crump

The First World War (1964)

Book Review from the March 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

The First World War: An Illustrated History by A. J. P. Taylor (Hamish Hamilton)

Perhaps Mr. Taylor is, in the strict sense of the word, our most eminent modern historian. Yet whatever a man's knowledge, nobody should be deluded into believing that his conclusions are unassailable.

Consider, for example, Mr. Taylor's opinion on the cause of the First World War:

Men are reluctant to believe that great events have small causes. Therefore, once the Great War started, they were convinced that it must be the outcome of profound forces. It is hard to disciver these when we examine the details. Nowhere was there conscious determination to provoke a war. Statesmen miscalculated. They used the instruments of bluff and threat which had proved effective on previous occasions. This time things went wrong. The deterrent on which they relied failed to deter; the statesmen became the prisoners of their own weapons. The great armies, accumulated to provide security and preserve the peace, carried the nations to war by their own weight.

and

The First World War had begun—imposed on the statesmen of Europe by railway timetables. It was an unexpected climax to the railway age.

Now this may appeal to those who hold the "accidental" theory of history. But that theory does little more than spell out the process of events; it tells us nothing about the causes of those events nor does it illuminate the larger canvas of human history in all its social phases. Like the 1914/18 soldiers' song, it says, in effect, that we are here because we are here because . . . 

The theory that the First World War was an avoidable accident ignores the previous history of Europe. It ignores the outcome of the Franco-Prussian War, the German ambitions in Africa and the Middle East and the threat which an expanding German capitalism represented to the established European powers. It ignores, even, the very fact that nobody tries to ignore—the massive build up of military strength on the Continent before 1914 and it certainly tells us nothing about the reasons for that build up.

Mr. Taylor, in truth, cannot ignore this fact: -

The German general staff did not believe that they could conquer decisively if they had to fight at full strength on two fronts, against both France and Russia at once. Therefore they had long planned, ever since 1892, to put practically all their armed weight in the west and to knock out France before the slow machine of Russian mobilization could lumber into action.

And if there is a contradiction in a theory which says that a war can break out by accident, although one power has planned for over twenty years to knock out another—well, that is Mr. Taylor's contradiction, not ours. We know how fallible the experts can be.

Apart from this, Mr. Taylor is fashionably harsh upon the generals (one picture of Sir John French, in morning coat and topper hurrying through a crowd, describes the B.E.F. commander as " . . . in training for the retreat from Mons.") and favourable to Lloyd George. The photographs are nothing less than brilliant; each one loaded with the atmosphere of its time. Here are pain and courage, pathos and provocation. Look at these pictures again and again—there seems to be something fresh there every time.

Those from the fighting itself are positively horrific—a legless French soldier, some Tommies who have been blinded in a gas attack and stand dumbly in line, each man guiding himself by his hand on the shoulder in front. The pictures from the home front are no less impressive. The shot of the Eton schoolboys on their way to dig over some plot shows how timeless are the fashions and the demeanour of our master class. These boys could have been photographed yesterday—unlike the working class lads who, on page 21, are cheering the volunteers outside a recruiting station.

And the pictures are supported with biting captions.

The First World War released a flood of human suffering such as few had foretold in 1914. It slashed a great gap into a hopeful generation and it wrecked Europe's morale. Yet in 1939 they were ready to go into it again, ready with the uniforms and the flags and the claptrap about the glory of war.

Let those workers who urge their fellows into uniform study the photographs in this book. Let them smell the mud and the cordite, feel the tight fear of men about to go over the top, share the endurance of a civilian population under bombardment. And let them see, almost at first hand, the pompous cynicism of the generals and the statesmen—the leaders who are at their most beloved and trusted when the world is at its deepest in agonised confusion.

Ivan