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A HISTORY OF MILITARY AFFAIRS IN WESTERN SOCIETY SINCE THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. Edited with Introductions by Gordon B. Turner. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1953. 776 pages.
Reviewed by E. B. Potter
(Professor Potter is chairman of the Naval History Committee in the Department of English, History, and Government, United Stales Naval Academy.)
In the universities of the R.O.T.C. programs, cadets and midshipmen are taught political history by the university faculty; they are taught military history (battles and campaigns, the evolution of tactics, the logic of strategy) by officer instructors. To Professor Turner of Princeton this appeared a false compartmentation for, as Clausewitz pointed out quite some time ago, “War is merely the continuation of state policy by other means. . . . The political design is the object, while war is the means, and the means can never be thought of apart from the object.” Turner put it in terms of education: “Military history should not be taught except in its relation to general history, for military and civil affairs are today so intimately meshed that to study the former without putting it into the context of the latter is to distort it in the mind of the student.” With a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation and the assistance of three of his colleagues, Professor Turner put his theory into practice. This took the form of a lecture- discussion course, now available at Princeton both to military and civilian students, and a book of readings. This book, A History of Military Affairs in Western Society since the Eighteenth Century, is made up of selections from authorities in military and politico- military fields (Fuller, Churchill, Mahan, Brodie, the Sprouts, Upton, Freeman, Baldwin, to name a few) put into chronological context by a series of thought-provoking introductions. The readings, and the lectures, deal with the impact of war on society and of society upon war; with the influence of political decision on strategy and the influence of military decision upon politics; with the relationship between military and political leaders and between leaders of coalitions; and with various aspects of grand strategy, the level of warfare where political and military objectives are most nearly inseparable.
For the general reader, Turner’s collection will open up new horizons. For the student of military matters, it brings together in one book representative passages from the standard authorities and also selections from a number of works he may have missed in his previous reading. For either general reader or military student, A History of Military Affairs will prove deeply interesting and rewarding. Regarding the theory and the course which the book is intended to serve, however, at least two observations need to be made.
First, the project is still in a pioneer and tentative stage. That the editor and publishers recognize this is proclaimed by the format of A History of Military Affairs, which is paper bound and printed in offset from a typescript. Probably no more than a fraction of the necessary questions have yet been raised. The synthesis, when it comes, will probably be in the form of a treatise rather than a selection of readings. The Princeton professors have made a good beginning, but other approaches to the subject will also have influence, notably the extension course in the Philosophy of War offered in Annapolis and Washington under the auspices of St. John’s College by Naval Academy Professors W. R. Russell and H. H. Lumpkin.
Secondly, while the course in Military Affairs, excellent in itself, will doubtless influence the teaching of both general history and military history, it is clearly not a satisfactory substitute for either. It is too specialized for the former and not specialized enough for the latter. The officer, besides dealing with statesmen and keeping the political objectives in mind, must also fight battles and wage campaigns. For that he needs to study in detail the military solutions reached by his predecessors. The probability is that Turner’s book will find its most widespread and possibly most valuable use as collateral reading for courses in general and military history.
CHESAPEAKE BAY: A PICTORIAL
MARITIME HISTORY. By M. V.
Brewington. Cambridge, Md.: Cornell
Maritime Press, 1953. 256 pages. $6.50.
Reviewed by Commodore Dudley W.
Knox, U. S. Navy (Retired)
(iCommodore Knox, a graduate of the Naval Academy in the Class of 1896, is a founder of the Naval Historical Foundation and one of the U. S. Navy’s best known historians.)
An authoritative survey of maritime affairs and technology in long neglected Chesapeake Bay; this book is factual, full of substance and interestingly told. Well selected pictures, mostly contemporaneous with their subject and going back to 1585, are cleverly combined with brief text to tell the fruitful story up to recent times.
The historical significance of the work should be gauged by the cardinal influence of maritime matters upon the development of our country for more than two centuries. Much of this has been written about New England; too little about the productive Chesapeake region where 4,000 miles of shore line with a multitude of navigable rivers, creeks, bays, and harbors have made it especially applicable. Here salt water furnished not only the life-line to the mother country and an avenue of lucrative foreign trade, but also, more than elsewhere, a principal source of food and a necessary and easy means of domestic transport. Until comparatively recent times many people even went to church by boat.
The great Bay saw the first permanent English settlement in the New World. “Here shipbuilding as a profession had its American beginnings; here the first of our purely local watercraft was developed. For a century and a half the Chesapeake’s waters carried cargoes of greater value and bulk than all the rest of America combined. These waters saw the first naval engagement, the first amphibious expedition, and the action which altered the whole course of naval warfare.” The Bay had a major part in our national as well local history.
This significant phase of history is told in fourteen chapters dealing separately with: Explorers and Settlers: Shipbuilding: Sailing Vessels: Steamboats: Ferries: Bay Craft: Ports: Commerce and Trade: Maritime Artisans: Oysters, Crabs and Fish: Pilots: Privateering, Piracy and War: Maritime Museums: Sports.
Each chapter is a monograph setting forth its topic chronologically with brief text and a series of pictures. We should remember the high value of a picture in conveying an idea. Concerning watercraft and many matters related thereto no amount of text can serve such purpose equally well. Pictorial exposition was thus a sound method to adopt, more especially since the picture slection is excellent. The author has chosen the illustrations with priority to a factual, realistic standard rather than an artistic one, and to contemporaneous pictures when available.
The wealth of maritime events and tradition related to Chesapeake Bay, and their national as well as local interest and importance is worthy of a more extensive literature. One foot ashore and the other in a boat has not heretofore seemed to have been conducive to history writing by the natives of that region. Brewington’s work fills a gap that has needed filling. It is of permanent value for standard reference.
TOBACCO COAST: A MARITIME HISTORY OF CHESAPEAKE BAY IN THE COLONIAL ERA. By Arthur Pierce Middleton. Newport News: The Mariners’ Museum, 1953. 482 pages, 28 illustrations, including index. $5.00.
Reviewed by Ernest S. Dodge
(Mr. Dodge is Director of the Peabody Museum of Salem, Massachusetts, and Managing Editor of “The American Neptune: A quarterly journal of Maritime History.’’)
Many friends of Dr. Middleton have been waiting for this substantial book for some time. It has been worth waiting for. In his foreword the author frankly states that he had no time to polish the manuscript nor was any foreseeable in the immediate future. Fortunately he was persuaded that the contents were of immediate value to others, and so he released the manuscript for publication.
The book is divided into five parts: Sea and Bay, Commerce, Shipping, Warfare, and Conclusion. The book begins with descriptions of the hardships of life at sea in seventeenth century Atlantic crossings, followed by a summary of the navigational methods of the period. A geographical description of the rivers emptying into the Bay points out that cities did not arise in the region until tobacco cultivation had moved inland beyond the fall line and the crops had to be brought to navigable water.
The largest section is devoted to commerce and contains an excellent account of the growing, handling, and merchandising of tobacco, in all its ramifications. Small industries arose and flourished in Virginia and Maryland when tobacco prices were low and decreased or became inactive in periods of high tobacco prices. The over-all trend in industry, however, was upward and it became increasingly common toward the end of the Colonial Period. The English government discouraged the production of naval stores in the two Chesapeake Colonies despite abundant natural resources. It was the home government’s desire that nothing interfere with tobacco growing, which brought in rich revenue. After the market for tobacco in Great Britain was filled, enormous quantities were reshipped to the Continent. Toward the close of the Colonial period about nine- tenths of the annual export of nearly 100,000,000 pounds a year was reexported to foreign markets.
While tobacco was the staple article of trade, there was also a brisk trade in grain, with southern Europe, the West Indies, and the northern colonies. In the eighteenth century, a large illicit trade existed with the non-English West Indies where sugar and molasses were cheaper than in the English islands. Although fish abounded in the Bay waters fisheries did not develop into a commercial enterprise during the Colonial period. It is important to note that the value of the Chesapeake trade in the mid-1700s was considerable more than the combined trades of New England, Jamaica, Barbados, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New York, and North Carolina.
The convoy system for protecting the tobacco fleet from French and Dutch warships was developed early and was in general successful. Not so successful was the defence of the Bay. In 1667 and again 1673 Dutch men- of-war entered the Chesapeake and captured tobacco ships. The warships assigned to the defence of the Bay were all too frequently in deplorable condition or too small and lightly armed for the task. Thus the inhabitants of the Bay shores were not only endangered by foreign enemies, but by pirates who caused interminable trouble and annoyance.
Chesapeake Bay’s famous fast sailing vessels, aids to navigation, pilots, merchants and all aspects of the subjects during the Colonial period are pursued and discussed at length and with authority.
In conclusion the author points out that the geographical features of the Chesapeake tidewater, with its great network of navigable rivers, made possible the adoption of
tobacco as a single staple crop and also made unnecessary the early development of towns. This contributed to keeping Maryland and Virginia dependent socially, culturally, and economically upon Great Britain long after the northern colonies had become quite self sufficient. Dividing the single economic entity of the Chesapeake Bay area into two political units, worked greatly to its disadvantage. Agreement on production fisheries, lighthouses, and aids to navigation were long retarded by this political dismemberment.
This is such an important book it is a pity the author did not have more time to work over the manuscript. Its length could have been reduced considerably to its benefit, and there is a feeling that the illustrations might have been better selected. The footnotes are in the back and are followed by an excellent bibliography and several useful appendices.
THE CONTINENTAL SHELF. By M. W. Mouton. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1952. xii and 367 pages. Chart of the continental shelf, appendix, bibliography, and index. Guilders 24.
Reviewed by W. T. Mallison, Jr.
(A student of international law, Mr. Mallison has done considerable research and writing in his special field for the Navy Department.)
This book was awarded the Grotius Prize by the Institute of International Law in 1952. The author, a Captain in the Royal Netherlands Navy as well as a lawyer, brings to his analysis of the legal problems of the continental shelf advantages which a writer trained only in law would not enjoy. In our era of extreme specialization it is encouraging to find naval officer lawyers.
Throughout the book the author reveals a refreshing concern for factual background. One of the depressing deficiencies from which traditional international law has suffered has been the failure to relate the legal doctrines to the facts which give the doctrines significance. This inadequacy has caused international law to become suspect by many practical minded men.
Captain Mouton defines the continental shelf as that part of the subsoil which is landward of the 100-fathom depth line. He believes that this provides ample opportunity for resource exploitation considering extraction techniques available now and in the foreseeable future.
The most extensive treatment in the book is devoted to fisheries. The conclusion on this subject is that there is not such a factual relation between fisheries and the shelf as to make a unified legal approach desirable.
Chapter 5, which provides a striking example of the relevance of facts to law, comprises an interesting summary of offshore extraction methods. From the naval viewpoint one of the most interesting devices is a former L.S.T. mounting complete well-drilling equipment. The advantage of the self-propelled drilling device is that once the well has been drilled, the transportation of the drilling equipment to another place is relatively simple.
In Chapter 4 the author is concerned with the national proclamations and decrees which attempt to assert varying degrees of control over the mineral resources of the continental shelf and, in some instances, control or sovereignty over the high seas and the air space above and even beyond the shelf. Because of the lack of established international law to regulate planning, allocation, and development of the resources of the shelf, Captain Mouton attempts to determine the status of unilateral national action. He concludes that the Proclamation of the President of the United States of September 28, 1945, and the various proclamations of other national states which have followed it are not successful in establishing law. He believes that at most they may point the direction for the development of new law. This reviewer cannot assent to either of these views because they at once give too much effect to some of the proclamations and deny a proper scope to others. It is thought that the author’s analysis is based upon over-emphasizing the common unilateral and national character of all the proclamations while according too little significance to the subjects and degrees of the national controls asserted. The legal effect of unilateral national action is tested in terms of its reasonableness. Here the rights claimed vary greatly. At one extreme, as found in the Proclamation of the President of the United States, we have a mere control or jurisdiction for the special and limited purpose of extraction of the natural resources of the adjacent continental shelf, because such resource utilization and conservation is conditional upon cooperation and protection from the shore. At the other extreme, as shown in some other proclamations, there are ^responsible claims to ownership or sovereignty of the entire land mass of the adjacent continental shelf and the water and air above
and some of the water and air beyond it. Is it possible that claims which vary so widely in terms of reasonableness should be accorded the same treatment under international law? This reviewer is convinced that the action of the United States accomplishes a great deal more than merely pointing the direction of the development of the law. On the other hand, is must be recognized that it would be a severe blow to the free navigation of the high seas and the air space above them if any of the claims to ownership or sovereignty of such water or air were recognized in international law.
In addition to the threat to the freedom of the seas and the air space just described, it is apparent that simple physical obstructions such as platform installations for the extraction of resources can constitute a menace to navigation. There are serious legal problems concerning the location and marking of such installations. It is clear that even the self- Propelled drilling platform in the shape of an ex-L.S.T. could be a navigational hazard when conducting operations in a shipping lane. Captain Mouton’s training as a naval officer enables him to appraise the extent of these dangers to navigation. He believes, however, that platform installations can be used consistent with the requirements of free and safe navigation. This conclusion is in accord with the Draft Articles on the subject prepared by the International Law Commission of the United Nations.
It is understandable that Captain Mou- ton, in common with many others from abroad, has inadequate knowledge of the complicated legal relationships between the United States Government and the state governments within the United States concerning development of the resources of the shelf. Whatever the law on the development of resources (the so-called “Tidelands” Oil
Bill has been enacted into law since Captain Mouton’s book was published), one point should be made crystal clear. It is that none of the state or federal legislation results in giving territorial waters to any of the individual states. Government control over territorial waters is different from development of resources below the waters. The compelling necessity of exclusive United States Government control over our territorial waters can be illustrated by reference to the doctrine of the right of innocent passage of foreign ships through territorial waters. Let us suppose that the practical question arises as to whether a particular foreign vessel is properly within the scope of the doctrine. If such a question could be handled by one of our individual states, then the United States would have ceased to be a single state under international law. The question also has direct impact in terms of national defense. The allocation of the question to one of our individual states would give the states wide powers in national defense as well as in foreign relations. The men who drafted the United States Constitution knew the folly of this in 1787. Today such a course could result in national disaster.
Captain Mouton manifests great faith in international conferences to solve the problems of the continental shelf. It is possible to agree on the desirability of this approach and at the same time to advocate constructive national action until such time as genuine peace can provide the basis for constructive multilateral action. The United States and the other nations of the Free World seek security and peace. This involves extending the rule of law to the continental shelf and beyond it to the world community. Effective law may be defined as rules of conduct combined with some enforcement or sanction. In the world today and in the foreseeable future, the sea power of the Free World can be used to provide a measure of enforcement to the developing law in the world community. Eloquent statement of the indispensability of a sanction has been made before the General Assembly of the United Nations in the following words:
“Peace and order cannot be preserved by words alone. Peace and order cannot be preserved without force, even in the most civilized communities
in the world. Crime and disorder cannot be restrained in New York or in Washington or in London or in Ottawa, or even in Moscow, without force.”[1]
IMPERIAL COMMUNISM, by Anthony
T. Bouscaren. Washington: Public Affairs
Press, 1953; 256 pages; $3.75.
Reviewed by Vice Admiral Leslie C. Stevens, U. S. Navy (Retired)
(President of the American Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia, Admiral Stevens was U. S. Naval Attache in Moscow, 1947-1949.)
Mr. Bouscaren, who is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of San Francisco, presents a world-wide survey of Communist activities as an aggressive attempt to achieve world domination by politico-military action. The four chapters on the Soviet Union consist of a documentation of this aspect of Soviet foreign policy, largely from the writings of Lenin, Stalin, and various Western commentators, a very brief summary of how this policy has been implemented by action since the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia, an expose of the fraudu- lence of Soviet claims on fostering peace, and a short but useful summary of the military strength of the Soviet bloc.
Eighty percent of his pages deals with the machinations of Communist parties outside the Soviet Union. There is a chapter on Communism in China, one on Communism in Southeast Asia, another on Communism in Japan and the Pacific, followed by others on Korea, India and Pakistan, Iran, and so on through fifteen chapters around the world from east to west, ending with Communism in the United States. The pattern of each chapter is a sketchy outline of the vicissitudes, strength, and effectiveness of the local Communist movements and coalitions which they have controlled.
The book is a compilation rather than a developed argument, a handbook rather than a dissertation. It serves a useful purpose by bringing together an accumulation of data which would otherwise require some effort to locate, and the net result is an impressive array of evidence to document the basic thesis.
Although there are few who can read Imperial Communism without learning some things that they do not already know, it is very easy to find fault, not with his thesis, but with the manner in which he carries it out. Unless one is particularly interested in such matters, it is rather dull reading. Being largely a compilation of facts, there is little analysis or interpretation of what lies behind those facts, other than the obvious conclusion that it is the hand of Soviet Russia.
Mr. Bouscaren is a pro-MacArthur, anti- Acheson man, and, since many of his sources are newpapers, it is not surprising to find a certain amount of innuendo, half-statement, hindsight, and one-sided viewpoints in his pages. His chapters are none too well organized, and minor instances of carelessness, contradictions and repetition can be found. Occasionally material which lends itself to strong and impressive handling seems to be slighted.
With all its faults, Mr. Bouscaren’s book is a definite contribution to the anti-Communist cause, although its stature is not as high as the subject seems to demand.
The Jungle Seas. By Arthur A. Ageton.
New York: Random House, 1954. 339
pages. $3.75.
Reviewed by William McFee
(iOne of the outstanding novelists of this century, Mr. McFee has written extensively on the relationship of man and the sea. Every listing of modern maritime fiction is certain to carry the title of several of his books.)
Since the days of Captain Frederick Mar- ryat of the Royal Navy, who died in 1848, and who created the immortal Mr. Midshipman Easy, it has been a tradition in other navies to write books. Even admirals have written them, but it must be admitted they have generally done it to explain how they won a war, or, in some cases, how they lost it. Library shelves groan with this kind of literature, which does not concern us here. We are thinking of novelists, men like Pierre Loti, the French naval officer, and Melville,
who wrote White Jacket, and “Bartimeus” the British Paymaster, and Commander Montserrat, of The Cruel Sea. To this honorable group of maritime pen-pushers we now introduce Rear Admiral Arthur A. Ageton, U- S. Navy (Retired) whose first novel, The Jungle Seas, is before us.
Like his distinguished predecessor, Admiral Ageton achieved professional status as f writer before he took to fiction. Marryat, 't will be recalled, was famous for his signal code for merchant ships before he wrote Master-man Ready. Admiral Ageton is the author of Navy Manuals on celestial navigation and The Naval Officers’ Guide. Thus technically equipped, he plunged into fiction, and has even achieved a degree of Master of Arts in writing at Johns Hopkins.
The Jungle Seas is set exclusively in the South Pacific during the recent hostilities against Japan. It concerns the fortunes, in love and war, of Jerry Doyle, lieutenant and acting captain of United States destroyers. Jerry, as one would gather from his name, is hrave, affectionate, emotional, and inarticulate to the point of imbecility at times in expressing his emotions about women. Most of the 140,000 words or so of The Jungle Seas are devoted to Jerry’s confused emotional disturbances.
We learn nothing of Jerry’s background before he reaches Annapolis. We meet him for the first time when he joins U.S.S. Hale, commanded by Jerry’s old commander, Walter Snow. Captain Snow regards Jerry as a smart naval officer, but considers him a heel for his conduct towards Norma Hale, a descendant of the naval hero after whom the ship is named. Jerry is very contrite about this fall from grace, and this reviewer is unable to follow either Jerry or the author. Jerry thought he was in love with Norma, who loved him. When he found he was not in love, he told her so and left her in tears. Some might argue that he did her a good turn.
Tears are soon dried, and in the excitement of life in Noumea, New Caledonia, Jerry and Walt make new contacts. Walt becomes fond of Mile. Eugenie Beaucoeur, a beautiful Creole who has attended school in the States, but whose conversation is heavily larded with school-room Gallicisms on the lines of “the pen of my uncle.” She even makes the
French word chou feminine when she addresses Jerry as her cabbage. Eugenie is the only daughter of French civilians of good family in Noumea. Jerry is fantastically fortunate, for she not only falls hopelessly in love with him but has a freedom most unusual for a French unmarried girl. Few international love affairs achieve such manifold intimacies when the girl is of social standing.
Cutting out his commander with Eugenie is child’s play for Jerry. Never before has he known love. This is the real thing. It releases his inhibitions. The reader divides his astonishment between the ease with which Jerry has entree into the Beaucoeurs’ establishment (including a car) and the eloquence with which Jerry pleads his suit. For a hardbitten naval officer the following may be offered to the class as a model proposal: “Listen, Jeanie, even though we are far apart, I will always carry you in my heart. On the night watches you will be the light that shines in the darkness, the voice that speaks in the night. And you will be the memory that comes in the dawn.”
It must be confessed that Admiral Ageton feels more at home at sea than on the beach. When Jerry sails for the Solomons, we get action. We get the whole South Pacific war, submarines, landing barges, dive-bombers, depth-charges, cruisers in action, the Hale sunk, and Jerry and his fidus Achates, the yeoman Rodgers, hiding in a jungle swarming with Japs. It is when he is rescued from this affair, after killing a number of the enemy with their own hand grenades, that Jerry, invalided to Noumea, is shanghaied by Eugenie, carried off to her parents’ hideaway in the hills, and nursed back to convalescence. Just how a wounded officer could thus disappear for weeks, a civilian reader hesitates to inquire. The fact is, the Admiral’s sentiments are so carried away that his shore scenes are often .Hike those in Ouida’s Under Two Flags.
Jerry is eager to get back to sea. So is the reader. Neither Conrad, Stevenson, nor Somerset Maugham is Admiral Ageton’s model for romance in the Pacific. Afloat, he is up-to-date. The battle scenes are a'most photographically authentic. Describing silken dalliance, on shore he prefers the well-tried formulas of the Victorian age.
PASSAGE EAST. By Carleton Mitchell.
New York: W. W. Norton Company, Inc., 1953. 248 pages. $5.00.
Reviewed by Boris Lauer-Leonardi
(Mr. Leonardi, himself a yachtsman, is the editor of The Rudder Magazine.)
In the first place, to capture the mood and the sentiments of the moment, the notes for the book were written during the race. This lends it authenticity and must have required iron determination. Then the author had the happy thought of interweaving in his narrative discussions of phenomena of vital importance to the sailor such as drift ice, currents, waves, wind systems, storms and others. These little gems could be wrapped into a small booklet of sea lore by themselves and be well worth having.
The ship designed by the gifted Philip L. Rhodes, was well found and well run— the result is that the race appears easier than it really was. Like any workmanlike job there are no dramatics. Although the liighest daily average speed was near nine knots and the top speed well over eleven, there were many heartbreaking days when the men suffered through averages below four, and this on a race hurts.
In a race no matter what the distance and how happy a ship tension is constant. This becomes apparent from the following remark of the skipper, “It is hard to keep up racing tension. Came on deck earlier to find a cockpit bull session, all hands laughing and talking, the helmsman casually joining in. So for once I turned heavy skipper. . . .”
Yet no matter how fine a ship, crew and skipper, in an ocean race the gods of chance still hold the balance of power. One contestant may be slatting her gear out while not far away another one will be sailing lee rail under. Mr. Mitchell is well aware of this. I quote him again. “The recent Bermuda Race was a good example of the vagaries of wind on the ocean, even when boats were in sight of each other; then we watched smaller competitors come from out of sight astern and go out of sight oyer the horizon ahead while we lay becalmed, lacking even steerageway.”
FROM ARROW TO ATOM BOMB. By
Stanton A. Coblentz. New York. Beech-
hurst Press. 539 pp. $6.00.
Reviewed by William H. Hessler
(.A frequent contributor to the Proceedings and three limes winner of the Naval Institute Prize Essay Contest, Mr. Hessler is foreign editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer.)
With the subtitle “A history of warfare from the earliest times to the present,” this might appear to be a study of the changing weapons and techniques of warfare, or possibly an analysis of the evolution of military tactics and strategy. In fact, however, it is neither. Mr. Coblentz is concerned, not with how wars have been fought, but why. Throughout this lengthy volume, the product of much research, the author is absorbed with the incentives, the purposes, the passions and the coercive pressures that have led so many men to take up arms.
The author has a deep moral revulsion against war as the greatest evil visited on mankind—a revulsion he shares, of course, with multitudes of people, including professional soldiers. This leads him off into many lengthy detours, in which he indicts, over and over, the cruelty and stupidity of war. But his primary thesis throughout is that man by his nature is not a combative animal, that the almost ceaseless wars of history do not spring from the essential qualities of man’s nature.
This thesis he never proves—at least not to the satisfaction of this reviewer. In many passages, with ample proof, he shows that the rank and file of men took up arms only under compulsion. That was true of the armies of Alexander, those of Caesar, and those of modern history in many instances. This confirms what we already knew—that most people do not welcome war. But the author also shows that in the great wars of religion, for example, men were impelled to war by the very intensity of their religious faith. And he shows further that modern nationalism is a powerful psychological force leading millions of men to join gladly in conflicts for great national objectives.
Mr. Coblentz cannot have it both ways. If man is intrinsically a peaceable fellow and has waged war despite his pacific nature, there must have been forces at work in history outside the ranks of men to plunge them into successive holocausts. Yet no such evidence ls produced. The author merely says, in substance, that some men induced many others 1° fight, using various devices of persuasion or coercion. Or else men gradually developed traditions and ideas and principles for which they and others were willing to fight. In a word, men generally do not want war but they have war all the same.
Apart from this rather self-defeating argument, which runs through the whole book, however, Mr. Coblentz has assembled a great deal of absorbing detail of real interest to anyone who wants to understand warfare. Commencing with the assertion, not too well supported, that pre-historic man was not combative and never waged war, he proceeds to a study of early tribal warfare. He finds the incentives to fight in blood feuds arising out of crimes, in the lust for taking prisoners to provide human sacrifices to appease the gods, and in the prestige that goes with ‘taking the heads of enemies.” He also traces the process by which the mere brigandage of Primitive have-nots was converted into more formal war—but still remaining basically a business of plunder.
Examining the great conquests of ancient Egypt, Persia, Greece and Rome, Mr. Coblentz singles out the ambitions of great rulers as a major factor in the cause of war, and finds in the momentum or the dynamics of imperial conquest a force that builds up the drive for more and bigger wars. In this connection, he makes an emphatic point of the reluctance of the Romans, in the afternoon of their empire, to go out themselves and fight their own colonial wars.
True, they preferred to stay at home, engage in agriculture or business, and in many cases to make good profits by supplying the armies of colonials or mercenaries. This does not prove, as Mr. Coblentz tries to make it prove, that war is contrary to man’s peaceful nature. It merely proves that many people would rather find comfortable and profitable billets well behind the front lines. But they still support war as an institution.
In the feudal age, both in Europe and in Japan and China, there developed a quite different pattern of warfare. It was small- scale war, fought by elite groups of feudal aristocracies—knights, samurai, or whatever. The author traces the deterioration of chivalry, the breakdown of the elaborate humanitarian rules of war (such as giving notice before attacking), and the decline of feudal warriors into bands of parasitic idlers—too proud to work, and too indolent to fight.
With great care and thorough documentation, the author carries the narrative through the modern wars of religion, and the age of Louis XIV, Frederick the Great, and Charles XII of Sweden. Here he finds the vanity and ambition of kings to be the prime deriving force that made warfare almost continuous. But here he notes also the rising influence of nationalism, foreshadowing a time when mass armies would replace small elite bodies of troops. In Napoleon, he sees the transition from wars fought because of the ego of rulers to wars fought by whole nations. And in the world wars, he perceives the emergence of total war, absorbing the full energies of peoples numbering many millions—peoples so fully united that they wage war for common aims with almost the solidarity of a family or tribe.
Remarking the new destructiveness of present-day weapons, the author makes an eloquent plea for some alternative to war— which all of us would welcome with equal fervor. But when we look for his way out, we find only vague suggestions that international organization must be supplemented by “psychological conditioning of people everywhere for peace.” This is indeed a meager offering, in view of the eloquent 400 pages preceding, which detail how powerful are the forces making for war. The trouble, this reviewer suspects, lies in the author’s failure to examine the many constructive aspects of war, his failure to analyze what it is wars do and what problems they attempt to solve. This is the best key to finding an effective alternative to warfare.
From Arrow to Atom Bomb does not prove very much, and certainly does not show that man has by his nature a peaceable character, even though he does not ever want war. But in the course of buttressing his argument, the author does set out a wealth of detailed material on the forces at work throughout history to foster war.
[1] The words quoted are those of Sir Carl Berendsen, Official Record, Gen. Assembly, 280th Meeting, Sept. 21, 1950, p. 39. For detail on the requirements of an effective international law see McDougal, Law and Power, 46 Am. J. Int’l L. 102 (1952); The Role of Law in World Politics, 20 Miss. L. J. 253 (1949).