THE DIPLOMATIC BLUES: AN UNFINISHED DRAMA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 36, 1 March 1940, Page 23

THE DIPLOMATIC BLUES: AN UNFINISHED DRAMA

THE GOVERNMENT BLUE BOOK. By arrangement with His Majesty's Stationery Office. A Penguin Special 254 pp. 6d net Three weeks after the beginning of the war, the prosaic presses of His Britannic Majesty’s Stationery Office gave surprising birth to a_ best-seller that outmoded publishing records of modern best-selling years in a few recordmaking days. For this tragedy, this drama, this human study, this characterisation of the great in international diplomacy; for this commentary on current politics, this record of racial hatreds, this survey of intolerance, anger, confusion, injustice; for this black picture of the black doings of, the poor thing Mr. Wells so cynically calls "Homo Sapiens"; for this book of diplomatic blues, demand rocketed to astronomical figures beyond supply. Suddenly, it seemed, the terse phraseology of the official report had come to life. The dull, deliberate periods of White Paper English had been given a meaning hitherto lost upon a disinterested peace-time public. For once, all Britain wanted to study current history, not’ in the summary of the newspaper report, but in the unexpurgated publication of all the papers passed between its Ministers and the Governments of the other countries featured in the modern tragi-comedy. His Majesty’s Stationery Office, in’ short, sold out its print of the "Documents .Concerning German-Polish Relations and the Ou*break of Hostilities Between Great Britain and Germany on September 3, 1939." Hard on the heels of this: first success came Penguin: Books, Limited, with a reprint. The first’ success. was repeated in. Britain, ‘and is-new in’ process -of repetition in. the Dominions, if .New Zealand sales: are any ‘indication. The play is constructed on the orthodox principle. For a prologue it uses the German- Polish agreement of 1934. For ten years. neither party "will proceed to the application of force for the purpose of ‘reaching -a. decision." For an epilogue,’ with all: the ! characters assembled, row upon "row behind the battlements, the play turns to ‘Mr, Chamberlain’s broadcast bd the German people on poreeys Pahl . + + it has become inevitable." "there ‘comes~ the bon oF the Ba fue Cte ok Event: relentlessly. teilows event. With each Act the same players appear upon the stage, strut, say their pieces, and retire. For Austria, Curtain! For. the Czechs, Curtain! For Poland, Curtain! ‘And with each Exit the stage seems to echo to the ironical laughter of the

play’s buffoon; to sound the slap of his bladder on the boards, and the cynical jingle of his bells. True to the age-old principle of sus pense, the play ends at Act 3 with the plot not ended, with the actors shifting to a wider stage, with the cast growing from the few men of the moment to a few millions of men on the march. __ There the™story ends, no one holding the cue book, and no one knowing how the stage will be set when the Dramatist comes to the end of his lines.