THIS LITTLE WORLD

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 7, 11 August 1939, Page 37

THIS LITTLE WORLD

BRITISH FOREIGN POLICY. By Maurice Bruce. Nelson. London. 151 pp. With bibliography and index. 2/- net. First on one side, then.on the other, Mr. Bruce argues Britain has spent the last 400 years swinging the balance of power in Europe to suit herself. Between brief periods of peace she has interested herself, sometimes with bloody effect, in the affairs of her neighbours, discovering at suitable moments that the Channel is narrow-that success on her frontiers in Europe meant success along her boundaries in the seven seas. It was only when Walpole and the Pitts had reduced French power, helped Frederick the Great to found the German Empire, and secured for Britain and British commerce the best part of the rest of the world, that Castlereagh discovered, conveniently late, that war could not win peace if it also won material benefits. The lesson he learned has since been forgotten. Trade and territories won by force of arms within Europe and in the outside world have remained a constant temptation and incitement to revenge for the defeated. Whether the foreign policy he outlines with such facts as these has been consistent or inconsistent, whether Britain’s successes or failures have been accidental or inevitable, Mr. Bruce makes them into a good story, as easily read as a school class-book and as necessary to proper understanding as bread to living, especially in the final chapters on the unsteady courses of the Foreign Office since the war. If he says nothing very new or very startling he does good service by packing all the relevant facts into a book small enough for a pocket, neat enough for a library shelf, and impartial enough for a high court judge.