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Show Summer book-of-the-month book described as reporting miracle James Morris' "The Road to Huddersfield," a ird's-e y e view of the revolution of our time, is the Book-of-the-Month Club selection for Midsummer, 1963. Clifton Padiman, describing describ-ing the book to Club members, calls it "a minor miracle of reporting, re-porting, as instructive as it is entertaining" Underdeveloped nations everywhere, ev-erywhere, Mr. Morris notes, find themselves nowadays on the road to Huddersfield." Supplied with suitable leadership leader-ship and provided with adequate ade-quate funds, they need no longer remain underdeveloped. Mr. Morris uses the English town of Huddersfield as a symbol of the process. Huddersfield Hud-dersfield was once a primitive crossroads farm village on the Yorkshire moors. Then, in the 18th century, the first winds of the industrial revolution began be-gan to stir. Huddersfield soon became what it has been ever since: one of England's busiest manufacturing towns, living "by steam, cogs, iron and engine-grease." Underdeveloped areas are Mr. Morris' concern as he surveys sur-veys the modern world. Above all, Mr. Morris is concerned with the World Bank, being established in 1944 to encourage encour-age and help just such areas and which until recently was headed by its founder, the American banker Eugene R. Black. Mr. Black's institution, it has been said, operates on two simple principles: it wants its money used well, and it wants its money back. Industrialization Industrializa-tion takes money,, and money means a bank,- and world industrialization in-dustrialization means a World Bank. As a result of a decade and a half of leading, the World Bank (its formal title is the International Bank for Reconstruction Re-construction and Development) has become one of the chief catalysts of the "revolution of our time." "The Road to Huddersfield" is not a book about finance. Mr. Morris is not a financier or a banker. A young English newspaperman, he is already something of a legend in London Lon-don and Manchester because of his skill as a journalist and a writer of travel books. He has written on subjects as diverse di-verse as Arabian society, South African politics, and the climbing of Mt. Everest. In his latest book his purpose is to describe the transformation transfor-mation of five widely separated separ-ated areas where the World Bank has been at work Ethopia, Siam, southern Italy, Columbia and the Punjab. Ethopia, for example with its feudal Emperor, its gaudy history, its archaic look is being changed as World Bank loans help to transform its communications systems. In Siam, the World Bank's millions mil-lions have made possible the Yanhee Dam on the Ping River. Riv-er. The country is being electric power supplied, and throngs of Siamese workers will soon be "treading the path to the mills." Will modernization, "Westernization," "West-ernization," make the Siamese and other peoples happier ? "Whether or not it will is not history's business," C 1 i f t o n Fadiman remarks in his review. re-view. "The countries evidently have no choice. All roads today to-day lead to Huddersfield. Even southern Italy, where poverty, degradation and the dead hand of tradition work against J Huddersfield, is succombing to the revolution, stimulated by seven World Bank loans although al-though Mr. Morris, who knows this country well, doubts that Naples will change its character char-acter in another, fifty years." Mr. Morris himself concludes that the World Bank has already al-ready done vast amounts of good and is destined to accomplish ac-complish more. "Could. such an instrument," he asks, "one day convince even the Communists that charity is the common duty of us all? Could it per-true-blue senators that the world is irreparably split in hostility? Could it bring a new decency and dignity to the Huddersfield road? Could it really work? Would it really real-ly ' last? |