Side-Show

OUR LORDS AND MASTERS--The Unofficial Observer -- Simon & Schuster ($3.50).

A long (389 page) volume of biographical information, political speculation, insinuation and prophecy. Our Lords and Masters gives a general impression of glibness and self-confidence, succeeds in rendering international affairs even more bewildering than newspaper readers could have guessed. Like an experienced side-show barker, Unofficial Observer announces that his exhibit of contemporary world leaders, wire-pullers and heroes is guaranteed to shock, startle and enlighten, that it is of momentous importance to average citizens, that it must be seen to be believed.

First of Unofficial Observer's monstrosities is the British Empire, an extraordinary "colossus with feet of brass and a head of clay." With its feet of brass it has "trampled down Spain, Holland, France and Germany." Asks Unofficial Observer: "Who will be next? America? Japan? Russia?" This colossus is deathly ill, "weary in every cell," its clay head aching with the problem of preventing war or disorder in Europe which would immobilize the fleet while "the great duel between the white and the yellow races is fought out."

In the next cage roams the forlorn J. Ramsay MacDonald, "after three years as a Peripatetic premier, now here and now there, wandering like a lost soul over the face of the British Empire . . . hated by his former followers and ignored by his Tory colleagues." Winston Churchill, Sir Samuel Hoare, George V, Montagu Norman are less sensational exhibits in the British tent. But before the British Intelligence Service, the Marquess of Reading and Sir Ellice Victor Sassoon. who shifted a fortune of 85 million dollars Mex. to China to escape high taxes, the author pauses, describing their exploits with a shudder not entirely justified by his facts. Stating that conservatives now "have control of the British Intelligence Service, Unofficial Observer propagates an E. Phillips Oppenheim theory of history in suggesting that Sir Basil Zaharoff was once regarded as the power behind the Service, that it "was not altogether ignorant" of the true reasons for the mysterious deaths of Alfred Loewenstein and Prince Radziwill. Their attempt to form rayon companies and a European steel cartel menaced the industries of the clay-headed colossus.

King George V, Pope Pius XI, Trotsky, the Emperor of Japan and Mahatma Gandhi are the stars of the author's side show, with Communism cast as the Wild Man from Borneo, and Fascism "the grinning skull at the victor's post-war banquet." Hitler. Roosevelt, Stalin, Mussolini and Mustapha Kemal are a shade less formidable, while the Freemasons, J. P. Morgan. Chiang Kaishek, Baron Rothschild, Sir Henri Deterding, Michailoff, head of the Macedonian terrorists, are exploited as men of mystery engaged in sinister doings. So far as its direct political interpretation is concerned, the dominant message communicated by Our Lords and Masters is that in all parts of the world individuals about whom little is known are absorbed in intrigues whose exact character cannot be determined, against persons equally enigmatic. Readers who remain to the end are likely to experience the familiar side-show emotion of feeling that the freaks, madmen and monsters presented have scarcely measured up to the claims made for them.

The Authors. Although Walter Winchell identifies Unofficial Observer as John Carter, who also writes under the name of Jay Franklin, no writer has admitted responsibility for The New Dealers, American Messiahs or Our Lords and Masters. Most political-literary gossips ascribe authorship to John Carter and Ernest K. Lindley, author of The Roosevelt Revolution and of a campaign biography of Franklin Roosevelt. Born in Richmond, Ind., in 1899, Author Lindley was a Rhodes Scholar, worked on the New York World and Herald Tribune as political commentator, is married, has two sons, now lives in Washington. Author Carter, formerly on the staff of the New York Times Book Review, left the State Department after writing a magazine article called We Need a War.

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