Almanac de Gunther

In Inside Europe, first published three years ago and since continuously revised to keep up-to-date, Correspondent John Gunther wrote a swift, popular handbook of present-day Europe. His system was to take a country, give the lives, habits and personalities of its leaders, put in a few choice anecdotes, make a few sound generalizations about the people, sketch in historical background, retell the nation's most recent and dramatic episodes and then move on to the next country, where the same process was repeated.

In Inside Asia,* published this week, Author Gunther tries out this technique on Asia and produces much the same kind of book: a lively, gossipy, not too profound but interesting encyclopedia of present-day Asia. Jumping-off place for Inside Europe was Germany; Inside Asia begins with Japan. From Japan, the book takes the reader to Manchukuo, makes a brief stopover in Siberia, moves on to China and then, going south and east by way of the Philippines and The Netherlands Indies, rounds the Malay Peninsula for a look at Siam, India, Afghanistan, Tibet, Nepal, Burma, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Trans-Jordan and finally Palestine.

The sacred Japanese Emperor leads the parade of personalities in the newest Almanac de Gunther, as the author discusses his divinity, ancestry, poetry, wealth, family and advisers. After that, among many others, come the venerable, 89-year-old Prince Saionji, last of the Genro; jingoistic Baron Kuchiro Hiranuma, who as Premier has an earthquake-and-assassination-proof house; aristocratic former Premier Prince Fumimaro Konoye, who has made a "cult of languor"; Lieut.-General Seishiro Itagaki, most prominent member of the Army's radical Kwantung Clique, who conquered and now rules Manchukuo; the fabulously rich men who own the Houses of Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, Yasuda and Okura, firms that control 62% of the total wealth of Japan (Mr. Gunther calls them "Men of Yen") ; Emperor Kang Teh (formerly Henry Pu-yi) of Manchukuo, "least consequential monarch on earth."

With a good eye for detail, Mr. Gunther remembers a Tokyo night-club sign in English: WINE WOMEN SONG AND WHATNOT. Illustrating Japanese lack of tact: Geisha girls, entertaining a U. S. naval officer who had been on the U. S. S. Panay when it was bombed and sunk by the Japanese, kept repeating all evening: "Panay! Panay! So sorry! So sorry!" Typical Japanese Army reasoning: Capitalism is responsible for communism, hence to defeat communism capitalism must be overthrown. Author Gunther also picked up a warning that the Japanese are capable of committing hara-kiri on a national as well as individual scale: the more inextricably Japan becomes involved in China the more likely it is that Japan will deliberately attack a stronger enemy and go down blazingly to defeat in a first-class war.

To Mr. Gunther Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek is the "strongest man China has produced for generations, and a terrific disciplinarian. . . . Chiang is the symbol, the personification, the cement, of Chinese unity and resistance against Japan." The famous and thoroughly publicized, U. S.-educated Soong family--three sisters, three brothers, two brothers-in-law--represents "one of the most striking agglutinations of personal power in the world." Soong Meiling, Mme Chiang Kaishek, the "most brilliant of the three sisters," is the "second most powerful personage in China," i.e., after her husband. Warily Author Gunther halfway predicts a long stalemate in the war, the Japanese trying merely to hold what they have. "But they must face the united and regenerated force of the Chinese nation," he adds. "They are fighting a people that have never before been permanently beaten."

Outside of Asia's war personalities, Mr. Gunther was most fascinated by the Mahatma M. K. Gandhi, an "incredible combination of Jesus Christ, Tammany Hall and your father"; Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, an "Indian who became a westerner; an aristocrat who became a socialist; an individualist who became a great mass leader"; Emir Abdullah, of Trans-Jordan, who for laughs keeps a big concave-convex mirror in the entrance hall of his palace in Amman.

In collecting his material Mr. Gunther spent eight months touring Asia. Commented the London Evening Standard long before Inside Asia was completed: "In pre-war days a lifetime of study and devotion was supposed to be necessary to acquire even a bowing acquaintance with the Orient. Although Mr. Gunther has all the conveniences of modern travel at his command, there may be many who will think that the shortness of his sojourn scarcely justifies so ambitious a title." But Mr. Gunther also has countless reliable friends--politicians, newspapermen, informants--who are more than willing to pump him full of biographical detail, information, gossip, anecdotes, wherever he goes. A crack journalist, he is indefatigable in collecting facts, tireless in hunting out the small details. His workmanlike book is exactly what it was meant to be--a handy, popular, political guidebook of a strife-torn continent.

* Harper ($3.50).

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