A Failure of Will

“Cowardice” is a word used by the authors of the three books here under review—and with reference to recent American conduct in international affairs.

General Gallois is most outspoken on the subject. Perhaps because he realizes that he is one of the last of a vanishing breed—the military intellectual—the General attempts to get in a few quick words before Fulbrightism breaks out in France. He argues that the maintenance of nuclear weapons and their improvement may point the way to the preservation of peace. This thesis obviously collides with current downtown D. C. thinking. But General Gallois does much to support the logic of his position. He contends that both sides have good reasons for not using nuclear weapons (our side because we just don’t like to contemplate the effects; their side because they think they might win without using them; and both sides because neither can be sure of destroying the other’s second-strike, retaliatory capability). Remove nuclear weapons, he adds, and war again becomes profitable, or at least thinkable, because retaliation loses much of its terror.

WJ

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Walter Darnell Jacobs

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“Cowardice” is a word used by the authors of the three books here under review—and with reference to recent American conduct in international affairs.

General Gallois is most outspoken on the subject. Perhaps because he realizes that he is one of the last of a vanishing breed—the military intellectual—the General attempts to get in a few quick words before Fulbrightism breaks out in France. He argues that the maintenance of nuclear weapons and their improvement may point the way to the preservation of peace. This thesis obviously collides with current downtown D. C. thinking. But General Gallois does much to support the logic of his position. He contends that both sides have good reasons for not using nuclear weapons (our side because we just don’t like to contemplate the effects; their side because they think they might win without using them; and both sides because neither can be sure of destroying the other’s second-strike, retaliatory capability). Remove nuclear weapons, he adds, and war again becomes profitable, or at least thinkable, because retaliation loses much of its terror.