Lionel Curtis has now collected in one volume four of the pamphlets he wrote during the war). We are greatly indebted to him for this collection which certainly deserves careful reading by all who are devoted to the cause of peace and who take the shaping of the future seriously. For the essence of his case, here powerfully stated, is that sovereignty excludes the rule of law and leads to anarchy and to a fragmentation of human society in which the will of the stronger ultimately prevails. Such a world is doomed to war unless the national States surrender their sovereignty and merge it into one international sovereign State.

In fact, it cannot be disputed that international law has failed to maintain peace between the States and that this is mainly due to the fact that the national States have not relinquished their sovereignty. For sovereignty is uncontrolled, irresponsible and unlimited power. It embodies in collective entities the evil spirit of selfishness which knows no restraints and no standards of judgment other than its own. It entitles the State to maintain its political existence in the international sphere, even against justice and law. This state of affairs explains why, in the age of the national state, every international question of political weight has become overlaid by considerations of force and power, and why any State, for the sake of its honour, its political existence or its vital national interests can declare war on another State and thereby annul the existing international relations between the States. Writers on international law have even developed the doctrine of the lawfulness of war, although the effect of war is always to exclude the operation of law. Briefly, sovereignty legitimizes licence and arbitrariness and makes an effective institutional world organisation impossible. It perpetuates chaos in international relationships and cannot lead to a pacification of the world.

One effect of the very strong French habit of self-assessment and self-apprajsal is that foreigners are often mildly surprised to see the literature of the French survive and continue to renew itself. We are apt to take our neighbours’ introspection for granted; we cannot get used to their vitality. They have summarised themselves so often that we expect this to go on almost automatically, and we expect little else. In fact there is much else, a constant renewal of creative effort; but it never or hardly ever gets detached from the the critical reason. And this constant exercise of reason, on the part of the creative writers just as much as of anyone else, tends to make the work of the literary historian easier; for he finds, already in being and ready to hand, defined points of view and definite groupings and loyalties. It must be rather easy to write manuals—bad, facile manuals— of French literature. The “clear idea’’ is everyone’s property and nobody’s earnings, once it has been made clear It becomes, in a word, cliché.

M. Gonzague de Reynold, fortunately, is no dealer in clichés. His recent work on the 17th century is not even a manual, but a lucid summary thrown into a series of short essays, each of which represents a real and powerful effort to understand. It is a good introduction because it is lucid and alive, even if it does, at times, remind one of the commonplace manual, much as a man’s face may remind you of a caricature of him. For M. de Reynold is so sure of himself. From the first page he raps out questions which he is perfectly prepared to answer and to answer immediately; and this speed and this assurance go on for 300 pages.

I was arrested by the Gestapo on May 16th, 1941, and taken to the prison of la Santé. Two months later I was transferred to the Fortress of Romainville, then being used as a concentration camp for prisoners usually released only by death or deportation to Germany.

For cell companions I had three young men from Nantes: Caldecott, a chemist, Hévin, a railway draughtsman, and Labrousse, a student of Legal History. Caldecott, a charming fellow with fair hair, bright eyes, a slightly ironic smile and determined manner, was of English extraction.

Romainville was like a convict prison. No priest ever set foot there. Religious services were forbidden. Convicts’ dress was worn. The first time I met Julien Cain, the Director of the Biblioth&que Nationale, I failed to recignize him in this costume of yellow canvas. Soon I was wearing it myself.

One day I asked him: “Are we hostages here? We shouldn’t be since we haven’t been accused.” He thought that actually we Were not hostages.

Shortly afterwards my question assumed sinister significance. A corporal told me that I must prepare to leave. Was it as a hostage for Nont-Valérien where the executions took place? No, Julien Cain was certain that I was returning to la Santé.

Charles Du Bos has a particular interest for English-speaking readers from the fact that he, a great Frenchman, was not only partly English but that his sympathies were so largely Anglo-Saxon. Some of the last years of his life were spent in America, though he died near Paris in 1939. Had he lived through the occupation to the present delicate task of ‘rehabilitating’ France, who can say what bearing his unobtrusive influence might not have had on the evolution of French policy? Though ignored in his lifetime by the general public, as Martin-Chauffier says in his introduction to the Byron of Du Bos, “there is scarcely a first-class mind in Europe which does not know him and feel for him the surest and best-founded esteem; ... It is not the least of undertakings to trace his influence on so many writers, so many works, so many matters which have stirred public opinion to passion.”

That so potent a mind was unrecognised by the mass is due to the simple fact that Du Bos did not write what the mass cared to read; such writing, while it finally moulds thought and ideals, does so indirectly and slowly. It might also be thought that he wrote too little. For years Charles Du Bos suffered from a “paralysing” difficulty in writing at all; when he seemed to have overcome it, the first Great War supervened; at its close the same “total inhibition”—a doubt as to his own powers and a resulting scruple in writing—returned to him at intervals. His circle, the most exclusive of French cenacles, attributed his lack of production to a less fundamental cause: Du Bos, they believed, was too gifted in another way—he was a superb talker.