THE ROAD BACK TO PARIS

The New Yorker correspondent has hosts of admirers who will welcome this urbane, sharply observed, neatly recorded commentary — France, England, France again this time in Africa. His pieces touch on a miscellany of men and places and reflect the national temper through small incidents, casual conversations. Belonging to the one-war category of war correspondents, Liebling inveigled an overseas assignment in 1939, promised to stay away from low life, and went to Paris. His stories deal with a motley cross-section, — Generals, Christmas on the Maginet line, German prisoners, the fall of Paris, new capital — briefly — at Tours, etc. Post-Blitz Britain and a return to the States on a Norwegian tanker; then Africa where-with Ernie Pyle, Sheean and others, he stayed in the background — Oran — and then went with the infantry into Gafsa. Precise, informed writing of greater literary merit but less action value than the average correspondent's story today.