The appointment, early in 1940, of Sir Samuel Hoare as British Ambassador to Franco Spain evoked cries of protest not only from Liberal Englishmen, but from many Americans as well. With a long record of innocuous service in various Cabinet posts, and with the memory of his Italy-appeasing agreement with Laval in 1935 still rankling in the national breast, Hoare was denounced by many as too half-hearted and vacillating for the straight talking, firm-handed brand of diplomacy required in the Spanish mission.

During his four-and-a-half year wartime sojourn in Madrid, Hoare evidently was neither hesitant nor mercurial in his attitude to the Falange and its "fat, smug, complacent" leader, as he calls Franco. For once, there were no complaints of indecisiveness raised against him at home. In this first volume of his memoirs, the British Ambassador reviews these years, and draws from their experience a few striking and forceful, if not novel, conclusions. His complete condemnation of Franco as an inept dictator is the most vigorously expressed of these conclusions.

Obviously not a convert to Spanish Republicanism, he nevertheless repudiates in most emphatic and explicit tones the entire administration of the Caudillo and would substitute for it a constitutional monarchy. As forceful as his dislike of Franco is Hoare's hearty endorsement of Count Francisco Jordana, who was for two years Franco's Minister for Foreign Affairs. He credits the success of the North African invasion operations partly to Jordana's co-operative and discreet attitude--"pro-Ally to the core."

Hoare's book is in spots awkwardly written and, indeed, reads more like a diplomat's memoranda than a historian's account. The occasional unhappy phrasing and general lack of literary polish, however, is not conspicuous in a work such as this, and should not annoy students of modern Spain, for whom it should be required reading.