Chess and Russian Roulette

Upon first encounter, B. H. Liddell Hart’s Deterrent or Defense (Praeger, $4.95) seems a strange and dismal memoir for so famous a soldier. Although offering sporadic counsel on battlefield tactics and organization, the book suffers from acute softening of the military arteries. In places it cannot be distinguished from the melancholy pacifism of a Bertrand Russell or a Norman Cousins. Captain Liddell Hart salutes the mounting hysteria over the H-bomb as “basically sound common sense”; commends neutrality as probably “the most sensible course” for small nations; advises us we can stay in Berlin only at the sufferance of the Kremlin; and respectfully examines the proposal that Great Britain stop trying to defend itself and commence studying how best to endure a Soviet occupation.

As astounding as these views may be. I believe a little reflection will prove them—in a peculiar and limited sense—to be justified. Indeed, the author has reached them through so cogent a display of military thinking as to rebuke the logic of those who, sharing his major premise, cannot bring themselves to acknowledge his conclusions.

MS

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M. Stanton Evans

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Upon first encounter, B. H. Liddell Hart’s Deterrent or Defense (Praeger, $4.95) seems a strange and dismal memoir for so famous a soldier. Although offering sporadic counsel on battlefield tactics and organization, the book suffers from acute softening of the military arteries. In places it cannot be distinguished from the melancholy pacifism of a Bertrand Russell or a Norman Cousins. Captain Liddell Hart salutes the mounting hysteria over the H-bomb as “basically sound common sense”; commends neutrality as probably “the most sensible course” for small nations; advises us we can stay in Berlin only at the sufferance of the Kremlin; and respectfully examines the proposal that Great Britain stop trying to defend itself and commence studying how best to endure a Soviet occupation.

As astounding as these views may be. I believe a little reflection will prove them—in a peculiar and limited sense—to be justified. Indeed, the author has reached them through so cogent a display of military thinking as to rebuke the logic of those who, sharing his major premise, cannot bring themselves to acknowledge his conclusions.