Appeasement: A Study in Political Decline, 1933-34

What a fascinating book it is. I read it at one sitting, It was so exciting. It is a book with much wider implications than might appear at first glance, for it raises a basic question of politics: how can men who are good, upright, intelligent, and trained to public service make such fantastically bad mistakes of judgment and of conduct. How Rowse brings it all back - the sense of rushing into the abyss, the desperate feeling that nothing could save us, the impatience amounting to despair with good men who did wrong - Henry Steele Commager. A fascinating book. A remarkable personal document, and throws real light on he psychology of some of the leaders of Britain - notably Sir John Simon, Lord Halifax, and Geoffrey Dawson of the Times - in that unhappy hour for the country. It proves that Mr. Rowse, who had come from the working-class people and was highly sympathetic with Labor, saw more deeply into affairs than these leaders did; and that he and some of his associates felt a passionate aversion to the policy of appeasement, which did them great credit. It will be valuable to future historians for this, and for its insights into the political and international complications of the time, - Allan Nevins.