CLOSED FRONTIERS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 554, 3 February 1950, Page 17

CLOSED FRONTIERS

EASTERN APPROACHES, by Fitzroy MacJean; Jonathan Cape. HIS is the work of one of those rare individuals who combine a faculty for encountering adventure with a gift for descriptive writing. Brigadier Maclean has a sense of humour and an eye for ridiculous situations. A keen observer, he gains his impressions not only from sights but also from smells-an accomplishment that must considerably widen the oriental traveller’s. field of interest, As a member of the Diplomatic Service he spent some ‘time in Russia, where he travelled extensively, and illegally, in the forbidden areas of Soviet Turkestan, continually shadowed by spies of the N.K.V.D. A spectator at the Moscow purge trials of 1938, he formed a theory concerning the psychology of confession. When war broke out he wanted to leave the Diplomatic Service and enlist, but found that the objections to such a course could only be overcome by first getting himself elected a Member of Parliament. The adoption of this expedient caused him to be described by Mr. Churchill as "the young man who used’ the Mother, of Parliaments as a public convenience." Having discovered that -the life of a private. soldier had "unsuspected tonic qualities," he was given a commission and sent to the Middle East, where he (continued on next page)

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joined the Special Air Service, and took part in raids behind Rommel’s lines, made in co-operation with the L.R.D.G. After a short interlude in Persia, where he successfully kidnapped a Persian general friendly to the Axis, he was dropped by parachute into Yugoslavia as head of a military mission accredited to the then mysterious Tito, or whoever should be found in control of the Partisans. Excepting periodical returns to report on the situation, he remained in Yugoslavia till the German withdrawal, in intimate contact with Tito and the subordinate Partisan leaders. Unlike Lawrence of Arabia, with whose career his own is faintly analogous, Maclean maintains the reserve of his nation and class, never allowing himself to be betrayed into introspection, or deviating from the preoccupation with reality. Yet his picture of war is slightly unreal. The horrors and atrocities’ he occasionally mentions stand apart as adjuncts to the scene rather than parts of the scene itself, like battle pictures hung on the walls of a vicarage drawing room. A writer cannot convey to the réader an atmosphere to which he himself is impervious. Whether this is an adequate explanation or not, one is-left with a vague impression that on the whole the war was rather enjoyable, and that nobody really got hurt. As a contribution to contemporary history the importance of this book rests largely on’ the light it throws on lands that lie beyond closed frontiers, or the manner in which it introduces masked personalities as creditable human beings. What goes on in Asiatic Russia, or what manner of man is Marshal Tito-the answers to questions such as these concern us more nearly than ever in a world rapidly becoming divided into two armed camps. But apart from all attempts at cfitical evaluation of Eastern Approaches from a literary or historical standpoint, Brigadier Maclean’s principal achievement

lies in having written a tale of adventure and personal experience, bearing the hall-mark of authenticity, that is every bit as thrilling as a Tohn Buchan novel.

R. M.

Burdon