Post-War into Pre-War

AMERICA FACES THE NEXT WAR-- Frank H. Simonds--Harper ($1). When (there is no ''if" in Prophet Simonds' vocabulary) the next great European war breaks out, what is the U. S. going to do about it? In this incisive little book (82 pp.) a keenly realistic observer of international affairs does his high-level best to prove that war is imminent, inevitable, that the U. S. will be in it. Observer Simonds does not believe in fairies, the Kellogg Pact or the League of Nations. He views the present state of the world with grim alarm but thinks an open eye better than a buried head. The Europe of 1933. says Simonds. is ''back in the situation and state of mind of July, 1914." After Japan's deliberate flouting of the Kellogg Pact in her conquest of Manchuria, the failure of the Disarmament Conference, the withdrawal of Japan and Germany from the League of Nations, all that was lacking to complete the dark picture was a militaristic Germany. Looking at the causes of the last war, Simonds finds them inevitable: the Allies' European balance of power mortally threatened by an expanding Germany; Germany's existence menaced by the encircling Allies. Seeing in the causes of all modern European wars a desire for national unity, he thinks another war inevitable because German unity is not yet attained, and because the status quo to which France is committed will not permit its attainment. "Bismarck wrote the first chapter of German achievement, and the second is in the making." Simonds sees in Hitler's domination of Germany what Pitt saw in Napoleon's victory at Austerlitz. Says Mr. Simonds: "When Hitler captured Germany the time had similarly come to adjourn the sessions of the League of Nations and to fold away the Kellogg Pact and all similar parchment collections of words become meaningless in a contemporary world. His coming marked the transition from a post-war to a pre-war era." U. S. participation in the last war temporarily rescued the European balance of power, "therefore accomplished no more than to assist Europe in preparing the way for the next." How soon will war come? Simonds sets no date but says: "In 1934 as in 1914, European peace will be at the mercy of an incident. . . . War in Europe this year or next will be the result of accident, not of design. What is more likely to come than early hostilities is another series of incidents like those that preceded the World War. Thus between 1905 and 1914 Europe moved from Tangier to Bosnia, from Bosnia to Agadir, and from Agadir to Sarajevo. . . . Europe is consciously and visibly headed for war. . . ." But need the U. S. become involved? Yes. says Author Simonds. because "Mr. Roosevelt's foreign policy ... is identical with Mr. Wilson's." The Author, unlike many of his colleagues who are inclined to take the official view on international affairs, is no cheery yes-man. An old hand at explaining world relations, Frank Herbert Simonds writes with the lucid heat of one having authority. Critics accuse him of dogmatism, prejudice, oversimplification, but plain readers find him exciting. Harvardman (1900), he began his career as a lowly reporter for the New York Tribune, slogged his way up through reams of copy to be Washington correspondent and editorial writer. After he went to the Review of Reviews (1914) it reached its peak of influence and circulation. Still there, at 55, his articles are syndicated by 50 U. S. and. foreign papers. Other books: They Shall Not Pass-Verdun, 1916, A History of the World War (5 vol.), Can Europe Keep the Peace?

Honest Lexicon

SUPPLEMENT TO THE OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY--Edited by W. A. Craigie & C. T. Onions--Oxford "($40). Five years ago occurred one of those great literary events which few editors consider newsworthy: The Oxford English Dictionary, begun in 1857. was finished. Last month this No. i Dictionary of the English-American language was reissued in 12 volumes, with a Supplement as 13th. The Supplement was necessary because lexicographers, for all their scholarship, make mistakes and omissions, because in 76 years the English language has grown enormously. With the addition of its Supplement this greatest of all dictionaries is now as up-to-date, as all-inclusive as human mind can make it.* All the words in the Oxford Dictionary are dated, and as the layman thumbs through this Supplement he will see the kind of terms the last generation has added to the language in biochemistry, wireless telegraphy and telephony, mechanical and air transport, psychoanalysis, the cinema. In London last month urbane George Stuart Gordon, president of Oxford's Magdalen College, half-humorously commented: "It [the Supplement'] gives the impression of a talented, nervous, highly-strung generation, equally harassed by its pleasures and its pains. ... I find too many words expressing contempt for age --'dodderer,' 'back number.' and so on. There are too many words devoted to the expression of passing moods extraordinarily analyzed. No one should have had time or leisure to distinguish the fine facets of moods so clearly. I find loo many ingenuities for the expression of fashion distinctions in clothes, both male and female. I find too large a vocabulary --for a virile nation--devoted to distinguish every possible kind of comfort at every hour of the day and night." Most notable increase is in the number of U. S. words and phrases. "However rude or crude" they might be, said Professor Gordon, "they were so expressive, so impudently near the truth, that it was hard to resist them a place in any honest lexicon." U. S. eyes may note examples from Jack London. George Ade, O. Henry, H. L. Mencken, Zane Grey--even so unliterary an exemplar as the late great Baseballer Christy Mathewson ("yellow streak"). In the long list from "aasvogel" to "zooming" some U. S. examples: "Speak-easy" (1889): "Yup. U.S. Variant of yep, yes" (1906); "Razz [short for Razzberry]. Disapproval expressed by hissing or booing directed against an actor or other person" (1926); "Wow. A 'great success'" (1927); "Zipper" (1925); "Vamp" (1918).

Artist as Old Alan

THE WINDING STAIR AND OTHER POEMS--William Butler Yeats -- Macmillan ($2.50). If a Dublin Irishman in the course of conversation raises his right hand as if to take an oath, his wise friends know that he is about to quote from William Butler Yeats. Only Irishman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, Poet Yeats is Erin's uncrowned laureate as well as its most respected living writer. But even poets grow old. Though these latest poems may well seem more satisfactory to him than the wilder mystical verse of his youth, only devoted friends and a few new admirers will follow him up his winding stair. Now he writes Words for Music Perhaps. In the old days he certainly would have given the music too. But Yeats, too subtle an artist to have lost all his cunning, can still write memorable verse, though "those dancing days are gone": Nor dread nor hope attend A dying animal; A man awaits his end Dreading and hoping all; Many times he died, Many times rose again. A great man in his pride Confronting murderous men Casts derision upon Supersession of breath; He knows death to the bone-- Man has created death.

*For those who do not need or cannot afford private ownership of the 13-vol. Oxford Dictionary ($125), the Oxford Press has issued a two-volume Shorter Oxford English Dictionary ($18; TIME, April 3). Owners of the 1028 edition of the big dictionary ($450) got the Supplement free.

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