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When I had read the first few chapters of this book, I found myself critical of the contents for reasons I could not readily understand. So, I reread them and decided that the style was wordy with a tendency to repetition.
There was no doubt left in my mind that Massawa in Africa is not attractive as a summer resort.
Then I became absorbed in the story of the work which was done by Ellsberg and his crew, and the book became for me an engrossing recital of the gruelling work in war that has to be done and always is done if the spectacular and blazoned feats are to be accomplished.
Since the various jobs of salvage were set down in this chronicle in sequence as they occurred, it was no writer’s trick that began early and critical salvage on the Spain with Us accomplishment interrupted and delayed beyond all reason to make for suspense that Would do justice to a mystery novel.
In doing the tasks allotted, Ellsberg and his subordinates demonstrated the highest order of resource, ingenuity, and technical
knowledge, plus great courage and incredible patience under exasperating circumstances.
The author’s frustrations and the irritations provoked by the French Commandant in the port of Oran I can understand, for that official was a newly acquired ally of questionable conversion, but I can make no allowance for a General of our own Army who refuses a minor cooperation with another part of his own country’s forces because he is overconscious of his rank and dignity. No naval officer but Ellsberg would have been as dutiful, subordinate, and respectful to an Army Area Commander, I am sure.
Ellsberg tells the story straightforwardly of what happened to him and his men rather than what they did to help win the War. The book cannot but be of interest to men of the Navy and Merchant Marine and of particular appeal to officers who may be assigned to Damage Control duties.
I am wondering if the author may have reduced his knowledge and experience of ship salvage and damage control to a manual of instruction. If so, I have never heard of it nor do I know of such a treatise by any expert. It would seem that Ellsberg could render the Navy and the sea-going world great service by producing a textbook on the subject.
Aside from the foregoing, it is a book that anyone might read with interest and benefit
as an example of what men do and undergo for their country unheralded in war when there are NO BANNERS—NO BUGLES.
IF RUSSIA STRIKES. By George Fielding Eliot. New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc. 1949. 252 pages. S2.75.
Reviewed by Captain William R.
Smedberg III, U. S. Navy
If Russia Strikes is a particularly interesting and valuable book for a military man, Army, Navy or Air Force, because whether he agrees with the opinions and prognostications of the author or not, his knowledge of foreign areas will be increased, his understanding of the difficulties and problems which are besetting all nations today will be bettered, and he will find himself in possession of a more comprehensive over-all view of the world situation as it appears to a. man who has devoted considerable study to it.
Major Eliot considers that it has been reasonably established as the major premise of Soviet policy, the conviction in the minds of the leaders in the Kremlin, that the Soviet regime, as it is now constituted, cannot live in peace and security with free states, much less co-operate with them fruitfully for common ends. He therefore conceives them to be at war with the Western World right now, waging a cold war in which every device of Soviet diplomacy and propaganda is being employed to break apart the solidifying front of Western unity. He sees five major Soviet objectives, which he refers to as the fronts on which their offensive is being conducted. These fronts, or objectives, are listed as:
The control of Germany,
Consolidation of the satellite states of Eastern Europe into a solid group of Soviet republics,
Expansion in Asia,
Control of the Middle East, and Prevention of recovery', coupled with promotion of political and economic instability in non-Soviet countries.
From the vigorous and apparently successful offensives on all these fronts in 1945 and 1946, the Russians have watched that offensive control gradually pass into \Yestern hands on several of those fronts. If the
Soviets feel that they are indeed losing the cold war, the author poses the question of whether their leaders can afford to lose it without trying the alternative of actual war. Therefore it is his contention that the year 1949 is not only one of grave uncertainty but of actual danger, during a period in which the unity of the Western \\ orld and the military security of its several parts are not yet accomplished facts. He feels that the men in the Kremlin are fully aware of this and must now be weighing the factors upon which they will base their final decision: to strike before another year has given the Western World greater safety and greater unity, or to wait. There appears to be no doubt in Major Eliot’s mind that, with the structure and character of the Soviet state as it exists today, Russia will either strike in 1949 because the dominant factor in the Kremlin can endure the strain no longer, sees the cold war lost, and chooses real war as preferable to the acknowledgment of failure, or will await the day when significant quantities of the atomic bomb will be under Soviet control, at which time Russia will be in a position to make demands to which the rest of the world must yield or face the immediate prospect of horrible atomic war.
An attempt has been made in this book to give the reader some conception of the complexities and uncertainties which attend not only the conduct of war, but the conduct o the policy of a free nation in time of peace.
It contributes to a conviction that the foreign _ and military policies of the United States are inextricably linked together, and that neither can be sound unless the considerations of the other are taken into almost daily account.
CONFLICTING PATTERNS OF THOUGHT. By Karl Pribram. Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press. 1949. I'6 pages. $3.25.
Reviewed by Assistant Professor Thomas P. Carpenter, U. S.
Naval Academy
Dr. Pribram’s closely reasoned and compactly written book can never become popm lar in the sense that One World or None di > although it deals with the same urgent sub'
ject. Short as it is, the treatise makes exhausting demands on the reader, who must have at least a fair knowledge of current events, geopolitics, and the history of Western world philosophy in order to follow Dr. Pribram at all. The style itself, although more fluent than that of so exacting a book as R. H. Tawney’s Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, is almost equally laden with abstract terms, scholarly notes, and academic dicta. Nevertheless, patient attention will bring the reader to the last of these heavily freighted pages with a better understanding of the long and terrible conflict of national policies which has culminated in the Cold War.
Dr. Pribram holds that the fear and hate which compel men to ravage one another’s fields and cities originate in a set of abstractions, that is, in differences in the methods used when basic social concepts are formed. He names the four leading social philosophies as follows: the scholastic, the individualistic, the nationalistic, and the Bolshevistic. Plausible exemplifications would be the medieval Church, the American theory of freedom, Fascism, and Russian Communism. The “patterns of thought” to which these belong are respectively what Dr. Pribram calls the universalistic, the nominalistic, the intuitional, and the dialectical. Roughly simplifying his carefully detailed exposition, we can say that the differences in these patterns arise from irreconciliable beliefs as to what the human mind is capable of doing. Thus universalism insists on the notion of basic ideas which are inherent in the mind; nominalism uses fluid, hypothetical concepts which may be amended at almost any time; intuitionalism relies on “inner light” and flashes of insight; and dialecticism interprets all phenomena in terms of an evolutionary process which is kept in train continuously by basic antagonisms. It is easy to see that these four patterns are widely divergent. Dr. Pribram has no difficulty in showing that the differences are highly practical and have led directly to the most dreadful events.
Without giving up the dry objectivity of his academic detachment, the writer mentions a few familiar horrors and leaves the reader to complete the list. Once the point is grasped, it becomes clear that the wavering but precious progress of American government is full of examples of nominalism (such as the passage and repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment); that Hitler’s intuitionalism led straight to Rotterdam, Stalingrad, and Buchenwald; and that the Kremlin’s dialecticism logically involved the frightful programs of “liquidation” as well as the present maddening intransigence of the Soviet Union. Concerning that chronic intransigence, Dr. Pribram explains grimly, “. . . the doctrine of materialistic dialectics does not permit any lasting peaceful conciliation of fundamentally antagonistic forces. It permits only temporary understandings, resorted to for strategic reasons ...” (Page 159).
In a rapid and bold survey, the author shows how these divergent patterns of thought affect all aspects of a nation: the political, the economic, the scientific, the artistic, the military—thus the list prolongs itself. He does not mention the notorious Lysenko controversy nor the recent punishments of Russian composers; the examples arise instantly in the reader’s mind. So far as he takes sides, Dr. Pribram is a supporter of nominalism, but he freely admits that of all these four patterns of thought nominalism (which underlies so important a force as United States foreign policy) is least capable of two things very important in world affairs: long-range planning and speedy action.
The essay ends with a mildly-worded but unmistakable call to arms addressed to the scientists, educators, politicians, and publicists who understand the values of nominalistic thought. They must explain and combat the fallacies underlying Bolshevist doctrine.
★