THE CRIMSON BOOKSHELF

BRUCE Lockhart, an impulsive young Scotchman with a fondness for lovely ladies and a sense of humor, was Lloyd George's "schoolboy ambassador" to Lenin and Trotsky when their government was young. Women and Bolsheviks were his weakness. He relates in "British Agent" his narrow escapes from both with such frankness that one feels throughout the book the added thrill of truth.

After having frowned upon English universities he finished his education in France and Germany, and then went to Malaya as a rubber planter. There he was defeated by the fever and soon sought new vigor in the Canadian Rockies. Refreshed by his stay in North America, he returned to London where he passed a civil service examination which led to his appointment as his Majesty's vice-consul at Moscow. This was Indeed a minor post in tranquil 1912. Today the author recalls how pleasing Russia was to him with its carefree days when many a morning he saw the dawn break over the old Kremlin after a gay night in Moscow. His happy-go-lucky spirit was held in check for a time after he married an Australian girl. Rumors were soon heard, however, of his goings-on with a Russian Jewess. This tale reached his ambassador and Lockhart returned to England "for a rest."

His articles that appeared in London told of the situation in pre-Revolutionary Russia and described the tactics of Kerensky who was his friend and intimate. These caught the eye of Lloyd George, then Prime Minister. Although appalled with the youth of Lockhart, the head of the British government decided to send him to affect a contact with Lenin and Trotsky in non-official capacity. One also finds a pleasing irony in the pictures of God-fearing Arthur Henderson, Lord Robert Cecil thinking that Trotsky was a German officer in disguise, and a dozen others.

Swiftly the stage shifts again to Moscow. In his new capacity the gay young man saw and met Lenin for the first time and the following quotation is his vivid impression of the Red leader: "There was nothing in his personal appearance to suggest even faintly a resemblance to the super-man. Short of stature, rather plump, with a short, thick neck, broad shoulders, round, red face, high intellectual forehead, nose slightly turned up, brownish moustache, and short, stubby beard, he looked more at first glance like a provincial grocer than a leader of men." Later when the Agent knew Lenin better, he was impressed by the man's will-power, his relentless determination, his lack of emotion. Lockhart found that Lenin was not to be moved by any appeal to his vanity. Trotsky seemed to be the very antithesis of the leader for: "Trotsky's vanity could be played upon with some success."

By this time Moscow was the seat of intrigue and the author now sees that no man could have prevented the Russians from plunging into Revolution for the sake of bread and peace. The "British Agent" admired many a Bolshevik bureaucrat and got into hot water with his colleagues and superiors for holding out against intervention. Upon finally giving into those about him, the "Agent" lost the confidence of the Bolsheviks and without gaining anyone else's. When Lenin was shot, Lockhart was held in prison for a month as a spy, but upon the recovery of Lenin no evidence could be found against the emissary. Wishing that he had resigned his post rather than having helped in the intervention, he left Russia forlorn: "My physical body was going forward, but my thoughts were back in Moscow and in the country which I was leaving--probably for ever."

This February choice of the Book-of-the-Month Club is a simply written, but thrilling account of the drama on the world stage at a critical time by one who was able to find humor in the antics of statesmen