BRASS AND BIG DRUMS
THIS IS OUR WORLD, by Louis Fischer; Jonathan Cape, English price 35/-. "()NE must not listen only to the brass and big drums," writes Mr Fischer when explaining the method of investigation he pursues in the course of repeated visits to country after country. This maxim, however, is not always strictly adhered to. Mr Fischer does spend considerable time listening to "the brass and big drums," and they, apparently, spend no little time listening to him. Throughout This is Our World the same kind of scene recurs with a consistency that becomes mildly irritating. Mr Fischer asks some leading statesman a pointed question. The statesman, with whom in most cases Mr Fischer has long been personally acquainted, replies. Then comes Mr Fischer’s rejoinder, followed by a lecture on the relevant nation. Most of the historical and political essays, to which the foregoing process has been a prelude, suffer from an attempt to cram too much information into too small a space, and as a result the impression produced is one of rather naive oversimplification. "Mr Roosevelt's wartime Russian policy was partly, perhaps largely, shaped by a stubborn fear that Stalin would flip-flop again, as he had in August, 1939, and sign a separate peace with the Nazis." Statements of this kind might more suitably be included in a primer entitled "Foreign Affairs for Beginners." There is, however, another side to the picture, Mr Fischer is free from national prejudice and can take the same impartial view when writing either about his own or another country. The awakening of Asia is a subject on which he has shrewd and thoughtful observations to make. A few of his character sketches, notably that of Jawaharlal Nehru, are of a high order; but his essays on world politics are, in my opinion, far less effective than his reporting. He spent four weeks in Berlin during the abortive rising of 1953 in East Germany, and his account of that tragic affair stands out among the brilliant patches that make This is Our World a book very well worth reading,
R. M.
Burdon
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 944, 13 September 1957, Page 18
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351BRASS AND BIG DRUMS New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 944, 13 September 1957, Page 18
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