War Is People

War Is People is the account of the wanderings of a woman, Bostonian by birth, Parisian by revolt, World Citizen by temperament and experience, to whom people are first of all people. To Mrs. Lindsley nationality or race or color or creed is of secondary importance. She has discovered the secret, undiscovered by too many in this world, that fundamentally what is of importance in people is character, intelligence, tolerance, and faith in a decent ideal.

When I use the word “wandering” in describing her experience, I do so with the conviction that it is the exact word for her travels. She never had any very definite assignment or purpose, nor very much money, but she did have infinite courage and determination and the will to understand. She went where her instinct dictated, and by following this plan she touched many of the soft spots in our so-called civilization and took part in many heartbreaking experiences. She was just one of the people. When there were bombs she was one of the anonymous sufferers. When there was desolation and retreat, she was one of the refugees. She tells you in a simple but penetrating fashion what it was like from the people’s point of view.

Mrs. Lindsley was in Barcelona, Valencia, Madrid, in Jerusalem and Jaffa and Tel Aviv, in Paris on the eve of the German invasion; she took part in the panic-infected evacuation to Bordeaux, and went back again to Paris to live under the German occupation.

It is not a pretty story she tells. We have heard some of it before, but rarely from the point of view of the people—a story of the weakness and compromise of the democracies, of feeble, confused leadership which, beginning with the Spanish Civil War, led inevitably toward the rise of the Axis and thedestruction and tragedy it has imposed on the world. Like any other American with intelligent interest in world affairs living in Europe, Mrs. Lindsley knew what was coming and experienced anguish as one tragic error after another was committed by the appeasers and collaborators. She too knew that collaboration with the Nazis was not merely something which happened after France was defeated. Its roots were well established in France, in England, in America, everywhere, long before Germany attacked Poland.

Moved only by a desire to be in the midst of things and to be of what help she could, Mrs. Lindsley went to Spain and witnessed the tragedy there from the inside. After that she went to Palestine at the moment the strife between Arab and Jew was at its worst. Then she returned to France in time to be caught by the war and to live through all the confusion and agony of the collapse and the subsequent occupation.

I know of no other book which, without pretension, makes so clear the real purpose and significance of the Spanish War, nor of any other book which gives you so simply the picture of realities in a hopelessly complicated situation like that of Palestine. She makes you know the very smell and feel of these countries. She makes you know the people. As for the tragedy of France, you live through it in the pages of Mrs. Lindsley’s book, not remotely, objectively, as if you were a correspondent, but personally and realistically, as a participant.

I do not know why Mrs. Lindsley has not written other books before now. I sincerely hope she will write others. In the meantime I recommend highly War Is People.

LOUIS BROMFIELD