Naval Policy Between the Wars. Volume 2 The Period of Reluctant Rearmamament.

UK,8vo HB+dw/dj,1st edn.FINE/NFINE.No owner inscrptn, and no price-clip to dw/dj.Publisher's review slip laid in. Bright,crisp,clean,glossy laminated dw/dj; with negligible shelf-wear and creasing to edges and corners.3 tiny closed tears to bottom edges,around the foot of the spine/ backstrip,which is also lightly sunned/faded - as usual/ normal.Top edge coloured blue,fore-edge bright and clean; contents bright,tight and pristine - no dog-ear reading creases to any pages' corner tips - possibly an unread copy? Publisher's bright,clean,unblemished,original blue/black speckled cloth boards with bright pristine blocked gilt letters to spine/backstrip with immaculate plain dark blue endpapers.UK,8vo HB+dw/dj,1st edn,11- 525pp [paginated] includes glossary of abbreviations, author foreword,15 chapters,12pp contemporary b/w photographs interspersed throughout the text and the book, b/w facsimile documents,appendices (5,A-E), supplement to bibliography,an index; plus [unpaginated] half-title+title pages,illustrations+contents lists/tables,2pp blanks,and 2pp blanks to rear.
'Captain Roskill's second volume,dealing as it will with the naval implications of Hitler's rise to power and the growing militancy of Japan,will be awaited with great eagerness after its impressive forerunner.' So wrote the Times Literary Supplement,reviewing the first volume of the work here brought to its conclusion.There can be little doubt that expectation has been fulfilled.From the London Naval Conference of 1929-30,through the period of cuts in defence expenditure imposed by the slump,through the last attempts to achieve disarmament by international agrrement to the sinister rise of aggressive power in Japan, Germany and Italy, Captain Roskill traces the story of what the politicians and the Chiefs of Staff did and what they tried to do.
Interspersed with the main history of this critical period are chapters of intense interset on the Mutiny at Invergordon (perhaps the most balanced and penetrating account yet published [then 1976]) and on the Spanish Civil War. The crisis in the Middle East brought about by the Italian invasion of Abyssinia,the questions involved for Britain as a Mediterranean power,the over-extension of resources entailed by our commitments in the Far East are examined,criticised and evaluated carefully and sympathetically.Capt. Roskill does not seek to sit in judgement on the politicians and defence chiefs of that difficult and dangerous time.Indeed the Guilty Men thesis,
so recklessly formulated by propagandists understandably anxious to cover their own tracks,is here quietly but firmly demolished.The book's greatest strength is that the author is not only easily the foremost scholar in this field but also a professional naval officer who served with many of the men he is writing about and knew some of them extremely well.Few readers of the second volume will disagree with Michael Howard's verdict on the first:
'Distinguished by the impeccable sholarship,the elegant style and the firm,courageous judgments with which Capt. Roskill has made us familiar.'
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