the fifth impression of Mr A. J. P. Taylor's The Origins of the Second World War contains a new introductory essay entitled ‘Second Thoughts’, in which he makes explicit some of the important underlying propositions of the book, and deals in greater detail with a number of specific problems. The central issues are now clear beyond dispute.

‘I wrote this book in order … to understand what happened and why it happened … when I speak of morality I refer to the moral feelings at the time I am writing about. I make no moral judgements of my own.’ One of the major themes of Mr Taylor's book is the inability of historians writing on the inter-war period to overcome their horror at the atrocities committed by the National Socialist regime; this horror has led them to mistake the general moral responsibility of the Third Reich for the greatest barbarities in the history of Western civilization for an assumed, concrete historical responsibility for the outbreak of the Second World War. There is certainly much truth in this contention, and Mr Taylor has made a greater effort than any previous historian to achieve an emotional and moral detachment from the subject matter. The importance of making this effort is demonstrated by the brilliance and lucidity of many passages in The Origins of the Second World War: the account of the 1920s, the analysis of the international importance of the Italian conquest of Abyssinia, and the portrayal of relations between Britain, France and Russia in 1939 present most complex themes with outstanding clarity and objectivity.