BOOK DEPARTMENT
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JANE’S ALL THE WORLD’S AIRCRAFT, 1933. Edited by C. G. Grey, compiled by Leonard Bridgman. London: Sampson Low, Marston and Co., Ltd. 425.
This is the twenty-third annual edition of Jane’s Aircraft. The publication was founded by the late Fred T. Jane and was intended to report and tabulate aircraft fleets of the world, civil and military, in a manner similar to that in Jane’s Fighting Ships. The editors and publishers seem to be succeeding in this objective.
The volume is less bulky than the 1932 edition but deals with 625 different types of airplanes and 322 aircraft engines and is corrected to October 31, 1933. It is divided into five parts.
Part A treats of civil aviation and includes the names of the principal aeronautical associations, publications, transport companies, aviation schools, air transport routes, and a general map showing the established transport routes in operation in each country.
Part B treats of military aviation and includes the organization and principal officers, location of training schools and fields, and the airplane types used to equip the military services. Three pages at the end of this chapter record the notable flights for the past year and the recognized international records.
Part C records the airplane manufacturers of the countries of the world and a description of their products. The performance data on both military and commercial airplanes are given when such is obtainable and is not confidential.
Part D is devoted to aircraft engines. This chapter contains the names of the aircraft engine manufacturers and a description of their products as to horsepower, weight, materials used, etc.
Part E treats of airships and is of necessity very small owing to the lack of airship activity throughout the world. This chapter is mostly devoted to the airship activities in the United States and Germany.
The various types of aircraft are illustrated and many pictures of airports are also included. In each section the countries appear in alphabetical order and the data for each country are arranged in the same manner. The index is by countries.
TRAVEL BY AIR, LAND, AND SEA. By Hanson Hart Webster. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. 1934. $1.75
This story of transportation through the ages, from before the invention of the wheel to the newest airplanes, makes an absorbing narrative for boys and girls from nine to fourteen. Its scope includes not only all vehicles, from sledges to helicopters and dirigibles, but the ships, railroads, tunnels, bridges, and canals of the world. It tells also about people afoot, trolley cars, elevated railways, and sub ways. It is a book of a thousand stories, told clearly and simply. With 130 black and white illustrations by Hemen Fay and 5 full pages in color.
LA BATTAGLIA DELLO JUTLAND. Vista da un Economista. (Published in Italian.) By Epicarmo Corbino. Milano: G. Colombi & Co. 32 Lire.
Reviewed By Lieutenant Commander A. E. Schrader, U. S. NAVY
The Battle of Jutland has been a fertile field for all kinds of writers on naval engagements—historians, critics, official "whitewashers"—and here is one by a political economist.
The author, while not having had access to any original official data, has read and absorbed a great deal. His bibliography lists 44 volumes: 21 English, 12 German, 7 Italian, and 4 French. In this book, written approximately fifteen years after the various official chronicles have appeared, no new tactical or materiel data are brought to the surface; but the factors of policy and influences are featured.
The volume does not fully record information of gunfire, maneuvering, and the exact corresponding times, but there is compressed within its 360-odd pages an excellent word picture of the birth, growth, and fall of the German High Seas sleet. Starting with Tirpitz and the Naval Acts of 1898 and 1900, the growth of the German Navy is traced, with an occasional cut-back for a contemporary view of the British. The early naval tilts of the war—Heligoland Bight, Coronel, Falklands, and Dogger Bank—are covered as part of the running account of the development and early tests of the two fleets. The British are criticized for not profiting by the experiences of Dogger Bank. Their fire-control gear and projectiles were not improved, nor were protective devices installed in turrets and magazines until after Jutland, although these deficiencies should have been apparent at Dogger Bank. The Germans are criticized for their policy of avoiding a major naval engagement except Jutland (and that was an accident), for their belief in British superiority, and for their ignorance of the tremendous value of the fighting machine that Tirpitz had built for them.
Jutland proper is covered in two chapters: one, the immediate preparations for it and the battle cruiser action; the other, the remainder of the battle. There are no detailed tables, times, ranges, etc. in these chapters, and this makes for smoother reading; conversely, it is of less value to the student of tactics and fire effect.
A formula by the Engineer Orlando for determining the relative strengths of opposing similar forces is alluded to in the account of the battle cruiser action.
It is noted that the caliber, and hence weight of shell and bursting charge are not taken into account, nor the effect of concentration fire.
The author wholeheartedly disagrees with those who consider the battle as anything but a British victory. True, the Nelsonic annihilation was not accomplished, but the effect was practically the same. Great Britain retained control of the sea. Grave doubt is expressed as to whether the Baltic could have been opened and Russia relieved prior to 1917 even if the Nelsonic annihilation had been administered. There was a possibility for that annihilation, and the British Admiralty is condemned for restraining Tyrwhitt from joining the action.
The outstanding figure is Tirpirtz:
If one should stop with the material, from the technical viewpoint, the war in general, and the battle of Jutland in particular, make only one great victor: Tirpitz, in whose name one can also include the triumph of German industry. Germany can justly take pride in saying that, without naval tradition, but effected solely through intuition and method, she had been able to create a magnificent instrument of power, perfection, and force, to which creation all the productive forces of the nation contributed, from the big industrialist to the lowly workman, from the scientist locked in his study to the humble sailor in continual struggle with the elements.
As to leaders:
We have succeeded in creating superdreadnoughts but as yet have not found the formula for creating the supermen necessary to make use of them. Inevitably, some errors are committed by the men at our disposal, and the victory or defeat will only be the result of the greater or lesser errors committed by the opposing admiral, who, being also a normal man, is equally liable to err.
Scheer falls short of being a great leader because
either by excessive rashness or under the influence of the myth of British superiority, he was beaten and afraid to face that encounter with the British fleet which, even with the destruction of part of his ships, would have given the correct measure of the power of the German fleet. Condemning it to inaction after Jutland . . . denotes a serious defect in his qualities of leadership.
Hipper is omitted in the search for leaders. In view of his excellent conduct of the German Scouting Force and the superb indoctrination of that force this seems difficult to understand.
The author is not certain that Beatty had the necessary qualities of leadership, because at Jutland he relied a little too much upon impulse in the early hours, and he was excessively prudent in the middle phase when he could have and should have run the risk of losing a ship or two to carry out his mission as commander of the Scouting Force.
Jellicoe was the only one of the commanders who knew how to make an exact evaluation of his ships and those of the enemy, of the certain risks and doubtful advantages that would be derived from an attitude less than prudent, and of the comparative value of a decisive defeat and of a partial defeat of the enemy. . . all this denotes the possession of such exceptional qualities that one can truly write the name of Jellicoe among those of the greatest commanders of fleets, who, like the great generals, are not those who will only battles, but those who win the war, and that is an entirely different matter.
INTERNATIONAL POLITICS. BY Frederick L. Schuman. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc. 1933. $4.00.
Reviewed By Lieutenant (J.G.) John W. Murphy, Jr., U. S. Navy
Once he has read these lines in the preface of this formidable-appearing volume, nothing will deter the hopeful student of international relations from delving into all that follows:
. . . This volume is designed to be readable for people in general and to be taken seriously by those not under academic compulsion. It purports to be a general presentation of the recent history and present problems of international relations. . . . A textbook . . . is expected either to furnish harmless entertainment for readers on an adolescent level of sophistication or to constitute a vehicle whereby the author can achieve narcissistic gratification by parading his erudition through elaborate documentary citations, bibliographies, and appendices. . . . The present volume…is not intended to insult the intelligence of its readers by assuming that they are afflicted with cerebral paralysis. Neither is it intended to flatter the vanity of the author by demonstrating that he can outdo his competitors in putting on each page innumerable footnotes which are meaningless and listing at the end of each chapter innumerable books that he has not read. The work is intended to present, in interesting and intelligible fashion, a body of factual material and to provoke thinking, on an adult level, about the phenomena described. It assumes that facts devoid of ideas are more worthless than ideas unsupported by facts, and that tentative or even wrong ideas are more stimulating intellectually than no ideas at all.
This work differs from most writings on international affairs we encounter in these soul-trying times in that the author makes little effort to inflict upon his readers a panacea to solve all the world's problems. He has no ax to grind, is blinded by no vain hope. For this reason he will appear cynical to those who look forward to the early end of international anarchy. On the other hand, because he holds some slight brief for the adoption of the one means for betterment of mankind that he perceives, when in the volume's final chapter he allows the pain of great but powerless understanding to evoke from his pen a small plea for world unity, ungenerous readers may dub him "internationalist." No communist, he points the way to peace through enlightened capitalism based on a revamping of national aspirations. He writes metaphorically of a crossing of the roads: one road leads to Geneva, the other, the one straight ahead, through chaos to Moscow.
The subject matter of this excellently planned work is divided among four "books." Book One provides a historical background; Book Two treats of the forms, rules, and procedures involved in the handling of international affairs; Book Three deals with the dynamics of Western civilization; and in Book Four the author exposes his own international political philosophy. While Book Four, "Prospects," containing the forebodings of the author, is perhaps the most spectacular of the four, the three that precede it lend more to assist in the understanding of the machinations of present-day world politics.
In the first Book, "Origins," the Western State System and the conditions that now prevail therein are derived. The year 1648, which saw the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire and the emergence of state sovereignties on the continent of Europe, is assigned as the birth date of the system. Successive threats to re-establish a condition wherein a single state would rule supreme, by Louis XIV, Napoleon I, and Wilhelm II, have been repelled on each occasion by the concerted violence of the threatened states in accordance with the principle of the balance of power. The Western State System survives today, its problems complicated by the rise to power of the United States and Japan and by the stupendous advances in machine technology but none the less essentially the same problems that have perplexed statesmen ever since the peace of Westphalia: a group of states, some seeking the revision of extant treaties imposed upon them by force, others guarding valiantly the status quo, all intensely pursuing nationalistic goals.
The author devotes his second Book, “Forms,” to a general examination of the
legal and institutional foundations of the system, the established principles of law observed by its members, the agencies of diplomacy, and the mechanisms of international intercourse and cooperation: the anatomy of international politics.
While he observes that “Forms” are static, that they are dependent for effectiveness upon the forces that work through them, he does not allow his dissertation to conform wholly to the desultory features of his subject. He describes the structures generally though carefully, and just when the reader is about to become impatient a vent is opened which sets the mechanism to work and brings the reader intellectually to his feet inwardly applauding. International law is dealt with in one chapter; diplomatic forms and procedures in the next; then come the methods of settlement of international disputes without resort to war; and finally the structure of the League of Nations.
From “Forms” the author passes to “Forces.” These he has indicated already in his historical sketch and in the book just turned. In Book Three he utilizes logic and fact to support his previous observations. “Patriotism, Power, and Profits,” vigorous and impressive trinity, are handled in four chapters. Then follow what will appear to some the most valuable contributions to understanding in the whole volume: individual treatments of the foreign policies of the great powers and their complex portrayal on a single writhing canvas. For this feat, that of resolving an intricately complex wave form into its various sinusoidal components, is probably a vile simile, for it indicates the ultimate possibility of understanding fully the international picture and of deducing and formulating the various laws that govern its convulsions. The author does not seriously contemplate such simplicity; he warns against the dangers with which such a conception is fraught.
Book Four, “Prospects,” attempts “to evaluate present tendencies and calculate future possibilities” by following specific lines of thought, considering in succession major features of the picture drawn in the preceding books: the world’s economic dilemma, the conflicts of imperialistic ambitions, the increasing costs of war, and the dilemma of peace. All the author’s conclusions point to the decline of Western civilization. They exert on the reader a distinctly sobering influence, potent because of the thorough and painstakingly sound reasoning upon which they are based and because the author would frankly prefer to be optimistic but is compelled in desperate finality to grasp at the straw of international governments.
One feature of the volume, while by no means unique, is, by reason of its singular effectiveness as there employed, worthy of a word of special mention. That is the delightful practice of pointing remarks by inserting beneath each topic heading some apt and pungent quotation. The following from Alice in Wonderland is particularly happy in introducing a discourse on the pacific settlement of international disputes:
Fury said to a mouse that he met in the house,
"Let us both go to law: I will prosecute you.—
Come, I'll take no denial: we must have the trial,
For really this morning I've nothing to do."
Said the mouse to the cur, "Such a trial, dear sir,
With no jury or judge would be wasting our breath."
"I'll be judge, I'll be jury," said cunning old Fury;
"I'll try the whole cause and condemn you to death."