Mr. Matthews has passed much of his life working for the New York Times, and the last ten years of it reporting from abroad. During this decade he covered the Ethiopian War on the Italian side and the Spanish Civil War on the Loyalist side; then, after an interlude in India, he reported the recent war in southern Europe. Some of this he has already told about in his previous books. The present volume is devoted rather to an examination of how these stirring events contributed to his political sophistication.