Retreat to Victory

ALLAN MICHIE went to London at the outbreak of the war and reached Egypt in the spring of 1941 — just as the British were driven from Crete. He came home via the East Indies after a year in the Middle East, leaving Manila on the last steamer to sail before the Japanese attack. By this mischance he missed the war in Malaya and the East Indies, but for good measure in his book he retells this unhappy story in a series of final chapters. This story the author had to learn after his return home quite like the rest of us — by reading the daily papers. Yet it is presented in the same crisp, positive tone, with the same assurance and finality of judgment, as matters the author had a chance to observe at first hand. In this same tone, he offers concise verdicts on civilian defense and other matters from the home front; for example: “Except for the shipping situation, America’s production battle is already won.”

Retreat to Victory is a mixed grill of articles and commentaries on more or less familiar topics of the first, three years of the war. T. H. T.