This is a book at war with its subtitle.

The background is this: In 1932, Newfoundland -- then an independent Dominion in the British Empire; it was not part of Canada -- was having a debt crisis. Like Greece at the beginning of the twenty-first century, it had borrowed heavily, with everyone shoveling money at it even though it had no plans for repayment; it was using new debt to pay for the old. When the Great Depression came, slashing revenue and increasing demand for services, it became impossible to roll over the debt; there were no lenders left.

The catastrophe caused a government trainwreck, with the old Prime Minister Richard Squires actually being physically attacked by those who needed help. (Of course, the fact that he was a corrupt narcissist who used his office to enrich himself didn't help.) In the next election, the Squires government was heavily defeated and Frederick Alderdice -- an experienced businessman who had been crippled by a childhood accident and perhaps diabetes -- became head of the new government.

This book is partly story of Alderdice, partly a history of the period. It begins with a short overview of Alderdice's life, but hardly a full biography. The book devotes only about a sixth of its length to Alderdice's career prior to 1932, then devotes about three-quarters of its length to 1932 and 1933, then has only a brief postscript about Alderdice's death and the aftermath of the catastrophe of 1933.

To be sure, what everyone cares about is the events of 1932 and 1933, during which Newfoundland gave up its independence and turned its government back to the British crown, with a Commission (half from Britain and half from Newfoundland) running the island. This situation continued until after World War II, when -- with more than a slight nudge from a weary British government and the eager support of Canada -- the Newfoundlanders were convinced (by a bare majority) to join Canada.

So why did Alderdice -- who in the 1932 election had promised that any radical change would be submitted to a popular vote -- become convinced that the only choice was to accept a British takeover without going to the people? That is the nominal subject of this book.

In practice, it's the subject of about a quarter of it. Before we get to the good stuff, we spend about half the book exploring all of Alderdice's attempts to cut costs and to raise revenues. This section is frankly rather monotonous -- I doubt many readers will really care about the details of negotiations to try to sell Newfoundland iron ore on the international market! -- but it is revealing, in that it shows that Alderdice had clearly not had any idea of what he was getting into; he didn't realize how big the debt problem was, and promised to fix it without having any idea how to do so. After all other attempts failed to balance the books, he finally determined that the only possible answer was a partial default on the debt -- in essence, to unilaterally cut the interest rate. The goal was still to pay off the debt, but with only about a quarter of the promised interest.

And that roused the British government. They convinced Alderdice to accept what we would now call a blue ribbon panel to look into things. The panel recommended revoking Newfoundland's self-government in return for Britain taking over the debt, and a weary Alderdice went along and even shepherded the deal through Newfoundland's legislature without submitting it for the promised people's vote.

Of course, with the Newfoundland government dissolved, Alderdice never had to answer to the people for that, and he died soon enough that he likely wouldn't have faced another election even had there been one.

This book was a bit of a slog, because of that long central section on all of Alderdice's failed attempts to fix the budget. But it's still a useful book, because of what it tells us about future crises such as that in Greece. Or even in the United States, where the deficit continues to grow and we increasingly see Richard Squires-like politicians who seem to believe that they are entitled to office and have the right to use that office for their own benefit, or at least the benefit of their own party, rather than for all the people. Alderdice did not prove the answer to either the deficit or to Squires, and Letto suggests (correctly, I think) that he was neither original enough nor energetic enough for the task he had set himself -- but give Alderdice this much credit: At least he was working for the right ends. Considering the number of American politicians who seem to think that they are qualified for high office simply because they want power, an Alderdice might be a welcome change right about now.

[Addendum 1/22/2020: Corrected a few typos. No substantive changes.] ( )