Everyone admires physical courage but moral courage more often meets with instant hatred and derision. It is only much later that people recognise and praise the courage of an individual who is prepared to sacrifice everything for what he thinks right.

Moral courage has always intrigued Compton Mackenzie. In this witty, con­troversial and highly personal book he gives his views on the subject, drawing on the ex­periences of a long and eventful life. He searches for evidence of it in the lives of famous people of this century—many of whom he knew—like D. H. Lawrence, Oscar Wilde, Conan Doyle, Edwina Mount-batten and the Duke of Windsor; but by no means all his examples are of well known people. Moral cowardice also occupies a large part of this book and in this connection he does not spare people in high places.

In a world of mass responses moral cour­age in the individual has never been more important than at present, and the author quotes a sombre confirmation of this at the end of his book. At his trial, Eichmann pleaded that his crime, one of the most hid­eous in history, amounted in essence to a lack of moral courage.

The following are some of the people studied in the book as examples of moral courage
OSCAR WILDE and his circle

SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

D. H. LAWRENCE

THE DUKE OF WINDSOR

ANEURIN BEVAN

LORD ATTLEE

EDWINA MOUNTBATTEN

WILLIAM DOUGLAS HOME

BERTRAND RUSSELL

SIR SELWYN SELWYN-CLARKE

Members of the German Resistance

British Officers in the Indian Army in 1947