of Americans falsely arrested for espionage by Russian satellites. The political novelist may cover a short period of time or he may widen his canvas to accommodate a whole era. Stendhal’s _The Charterhouse of Parma_, covers three decades, beginning in 1796 with Napoleon’s entry into Milan and ending years later in the post-Napoleonic period. Howard Spring’s _Fame Is the Spur_ extends from the hero’s birth in 1865 to the day when, heavy with honors, he participates as a peer in the coronation of King George VI. And Hamer Shawcross is a politician, so the novel deals with three quarters of a century of Britain’s political life. As selective as he wants to be, the novelist may comment upon any phase of political life. The subjects in these novels range from small-town corruption to international policy, from the rise and fall of men to the birth and death of parties. Since the reader knows there is a good chance that he will get a deliberately subjective view of political history, there must be good reasons for spending time on novels rather than going directly to Commager, Beard, Macaulay, or Gibbon. Although a novelist may not make it as obvious as did Thackeray, he is a god whose characters are his creations. He looks into their minds and souls. He reveals their ambitions and exposes their doubts more completely than any historian can do, even equipped with the volumes of memoirs and apologias which appear periodically in literary rashes. Even if the writer does not deal with real people, as do Upton Sinclair and others, he may present a recognizable copy or a man so typical as to shed light upon a specific class of political beings. The historian may describe the Chartist riots or Borgia’s capture of Senigallia, but he cannot do it with the vividness one finds in the accounts of Disraeli and Maugham. Only rarely does a book like _The French Revolution_ appear, and writers like Carlyle are even more rare. Then too, if the novelist is perceptive and detached, his description and analysis may be as acute as that of the historian. Disraeli’s known point of view may make the interpretation of history in _Sybil_ suspect, but the aloofness and irony of Maugham’s _Then and Now_ not only add to a tale that is sometimes droll, they help to give keen portraits of two very considerable men--Cesare Borgia and Niccolo Machiavelli. The novelist has at his disposal all the resources of the historian, as witness Sinclair’s use of the 3,900 pages of the Dedham trial testimony in the Sacco-Vanzetti case. But he can do more than research. He can follow his characters into Congress, into their offices, and into their beds. He can also enter into the secret places of the brain, where lie the ultimate springs of political action. GREAT BRITAIN