Books in Brief

Nehru Seizes Goa, by Leo Lawrence (Pageant, $4.00). The fait accompli of a Sudetenland, or a Goa—the two are incredibly similar structurally—does not, in the passage of time, become morally eroded, but Mr. Lawrence’s exhaustive historiosophy here lacks shock value. Shock may or may not be what’s needed: where is the murmur of indignation over India’s use, then and today, of the arms we sent her with which to battle Red China on the Kashmir border? The world was hardly struck dumb with shock over the seizure of Goa; but on Mr. Lawrence’s convincing evidence, the world in its shock incorrectly marked Nehru as a hypocrite; in fact the designs of Nehru—and of Gandhi before him—were transparent from the beginning, when the Indian Union with loving arms gathered up and assimilated the independent principalities of the Subcontinent. Brutal Mr. Nehru is, but not hypocritical. The book is a deeply researched, and cogently partisan, indictment of Indian expansionism. It is, unfortunately, too finely ground, remaining, however, still readable.

T. J. WHEELER

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Nehru Seizes Goa, by Leo Lawrence (Pageant, $4.00). The fait accompli of a Sudetenland, or a Goa—the two are incredibly similar structurally—does not, in the passage of time, become morally eroded, but Mr. Lawrence’s exhaustive historiosophy here lacks shock value. Shock may or may not be what’s needed: where is the murmur of indignation over India’s use, then and today, of the arms we sent her with which to battle Red China on the Kashmir border? The world was hardly struck dumb with shock over the seizure of Goa; but on Mr. Lawrence’s convincing evidence, the world in its shock incorrectly marked Nehru as a hypocrite; in fact the designs of Nehru—and of Gandhi before him—were transparent from the beginning, when the Indian Union with loving arms gathered up and assimilated the independent principalities of the Subcontinent. Brutal Mr. Nehru is, but not hypocritical. The book is a deeply researched, and cogently partisan, indictment of Indian expansionism. It is, unfortunately, too finely ground, remaining, however, still readable.

T. J. WHEELER