Davee On Samamano The Rebirth of fentral._Asla joseph Kunis, Lawrence & Wishart, London, 1/6
Soviet statistics know very well that they have a delightful sympathy with Lord Randolph Churehill's refusal to understand "those dem dots,"
The author must be given a certain latitude because he is writing talien tongue, but whatever inay be hhis intentions in producing this pressionist sketch of Samarkand, it difficult {o resist the wish that he had been more methodical in the development of his thesis and more coherent {in his narrative. "It is not very satisfactory to pounce upon paragraphs containing egregious errors in fact and dismiss the book entirely on those rounds without being able to give the author credit for industrious study and arduous exploration. The reviewer's difeulties are by no beans lessened when no index Is available.
The reader is asked at the outset to think of the romance of Bokhara, Samarkand and the rest, and then he {is plunged into a violently partisan indictment of the regime which was expelled by the Soviet Republics. On the basis of the new dispensation he asked to believe that 0 magnificent spirit is abroad among the people and that hope is dawning where previously despair and cruelty had their sway, To those who have had a little' experience of the pace appropriate to the East this seems unreal, However, that is a familist trick on the part of the assailants of so-called imperialism. They build entirely mythical notion of a golden age in the dim distant past, and then accuse the wicked imperialist of having, by some perversity, destroyed that prosperity. So it is tobe hoped that. the unsophisticated reader will not be misled by the poesy of Mr. Kunitz' Thapsodies or even by the animus of his misrepresentations. Nor would it be altogether wise to accept his figures when, for example, he describes the amount of money poured Soviet Government. Headers. of [Britain's Gigantic Endeavour It is hardly worth while attempting to deal seriously. with Mr. Kunitz' accusations—ngainst the British government through its -subordinate government of India, But a speclmen may be taken to throw light on the general idea, as the soldiers say. The reader is asked to observe that in 1918 and at the beginning of 1919 the grandiose plans of British penalism were about to be realized:
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.