[...] It is called: 'For Peace and Happiness,' and is written by a young worker. At least, that is how he is described by Comrade Butte. In fact, he is nearly forty, has been a Communist Party official these twenty years, was once a bricklayer. The writing is bad, the story lifeless, but what is frightening about this book is that it is totally inside the current myth. If that useful imaginary man from Mars (or for that matter, a man from Russia) should read this book he would get the impression that (a) the cities of Britain were locked in deep poverty, unemployment, brutality, a Dickensian squalor; and that (b) the workers of Britain were all communist or at least recognised the Communist Party as their natural leader. This novel touches reality at no point at all. (Jack described it as: 'communist cloud-cuckoo spit.') It is, however, a very accurate re-creation of the self-deceptive myths of the Communist Party at this particular time; and I have read it in about fifty different shapes or guises during the last year. I say: 'You know quite well this is a very bad book.' A look of dry stubbornness comes over Comrade Butte's long, bony face. I remember that novel he wrote himself, twenty years ago, which was so fresh and good and marvel that this can be the same man. He now remarks: 'It's no masterpiece, I didn't say it was, but it's a good book, I think.' This is the overture, so to speak, to what is expected to follow. I will challenge him, and he will argue. The end will be the same, because the decision has already been taken. The book will be published. People in the Party with any discrimination will be even more ashamed because of the steadily debasing values of the Party; the Daily Worker will praise it: 'In spite of its faults, an honest novel of Party life'; the 'bourgeois' critics who notice it will be contemptuous. [...]