Recovery: the Second Effort

Abstract

THERE could be few more startling contrasts than that between the pedantic platitudes of the naval and military experts of the Disarmament Conference, their endless splitting of hairs, and the balanced and comprehensive survey of the events during the last thirteen years that have been mainly responsible for the present critical world position which Sir Arthur Salter gives us in his book?Recovery?. Alike in his analysis and summing up of the various special problems of currency, finance, reparations and war debts, tariffs, industrial organisation, Government control and security, on which his experience as a high official of the League of Nations, as first general secretary to the Reparations Commission, and active participant in most of the international negotiations and acts in the first effort at post-war recovery fender him an expert authority of the highest standing, Sir Arthur writes with a vision and a sense of values which only emphasises the narrow-mindedness and inadequacy of the military and naval experts. We have been accustomed in Britain to admit such experts to positions of high administration and authority from which the scientific expert is rigidly excluded. When allowance has been made for Government pressure or for the absence of adequate instruction or definite policy from the Conference itself, the proceedings of the experts at the Disarmament Conference make a dismal record which may well endanger the future use of the expert in administration, in spite of the striking success which under appropriate conditions has attended the work of the expert committees of the League in health, finance, economics, transit and communications, etc.

Recovery: the Second Effort.

By Sir Arthur Salter.. Pp. xvi + 306. (London: G. Bell and Sons, Ltd., 1932.) 10s. 6d. net.