A MILITARY HISTORY OF THE WESTERN WORLD by Major General J. F. C. Fuller (British Army) Funk & Wagnalls, New York 3 Volumes US$18
Though avowedly devoted to the description of "old, unhappy, far-off things, and battles long ago," this work of three tomes. by Major General J. F. C. Fuller of the British Army is intensely interesting. There is the minimum of the soldier's jargon and war technicality that would have spoiled the fun of a layman reader. The author conveniently divides the 3,500 years of recorded Western history into three periods of imperialism and devotes one volume for the description of each period. The first of the trilogy starts with the earliest times to the Battle of Lepanto, 1571. The second volume begins with the Spanish Armada, 1588, to the Battle of Waterloo, 1815, which ushered in the British Empire. The third volume started from the Seven Days' Battle, 1862, to the Battle of Leyte Gulf. 1944. The last-mentioned war has not resulted in the birth of any imperialism, but the author thinks that yet another imperialist power would probably appear — either the United States or Soviet Russia. And he thinks that the next empire is likely to be global.
Throughout his entire work, the author tries hard to give an intimate, first-hand account of what takes place in the battlefield. But as much of the knowledge of the ancient wars was buried with the Assyrians, Egyptians, Greeks and Romans that fought them, the first volume is necessarily of comparatively little interest to those that read far entertainment; though with his masterly style, the writer succeeds very well in making a rehashed story readable. The author's craftsmanship is shown by making such comparatively little known battles as Mursa, 351, and Manzikert, 1071, interesting.
The device he uses to accomplish this end is to give a detailed account of the background of each war. This is a sensible treatment. For if peace is a continuation of war, then war is but a sequel to peace. No war can be properly understood without a proper understanding of its background. In this way the author shows remarkable erudition in political history as well as ill the annals of war.
As a historian, however, the author errs in waxing enthusiastic and being carried away by his subject. It is understandable that a writer likes to lionize his important characters, but for a historian this can only be done at the expense of objectivity. In his account of Alexander, for instance, he says:
"More than a world-conqueror, he established a world idea which ever since has reverberated down the ages, and because of this, no man in history approaches him in the span of his fame. In Rome he was glorified by the early Caesars; in Jewish folklore he was acclaimed the precursor of the Messiah; and in Turkestan and Badakhshan chieftains of note still seek in him their ancestor. The "Romance" which emanated from his life swept from Iceland to the Yellow Sea; it transformed him into the son of the last Pharaoh, Nectanebo; a scion of the Achaemenid House; a fervent Moslem; a Christian saint; and an all-powerful magician. Fabulous though these legends are, each contains a grain of truth, that Alexander was a prodigy among men."
In his enthusiasm, the author includes in the area of worship of his favorite hero, the Yellow Sea. It so happens that people living in lands bordering on the Yellow Sea do not consider Alexander as much of a hero. They know of him, of course. But that is all.
The author again errs when he criticizes both Roosevelt and Churchill for their insistence on the unconditional surrender of Germany. He holds out the hope that if what he calls the "extensive" anti-Hitler faction in Germany were given encouragement, they would have greatly shortened the war. The fact of the matter is that nothing short of unconditional surrender would have satisfied the people who were called upon in the short span of a generation to fight two wars against Germany. As to the anti-Hitler faction, it is easy to exaggerate their importance at this late date: but it is difficult to imagine how under wartime conditions, under the strict control of Gestapo, members of the faction could operate more extensively than they did. They certainly could not do much behind the lines. As to the front, no self-respecting general would think of leading his men to rise up against his government when it was so indissolubly identified with the Nazis.
Nor is he on firmer ground when he proceeds to make a case of Roosevelt's provoking Japan to start the war. The attack on Pearl Harbor took years of planning and months to assemble the necessary personnel and material. It did not begin when the Japanese-American negotiations began to break down. After all, American warships did not operate in Japanese waters or menace Japanese communications. It was the Japanese that bombed Pearl Harbor. To accuse the object of a surprise attack of such disastrous proportions like the .one made on Pearl Harbor of provocation and by implication of aggression is to write history backwards.
GUERRILLA COMMUNISM IN MALAYA Its Social and Political Meaning By Lucian W. Pye Princeton University Press 369 pp., 1956
Communism is a political malady which, like physical diseases, needs a scientific diagnosis before a cure can be prescribed. Ever since the Bolsheviks got their basis for operation in Russia, the malady has become dynamically contagious until now it afflicts more than three fifths of the human race and is shaking the very foundation of human civilization. The danger of the disease lies in its attractiveness to the masses of people, who, disaffected by their unstable environment as a result of wars and restless for changes in their personal and social status, seek in Communism the realization of their hopes for a better life, and mistakenly regard it as a new order of things. It germinates most easily in underdeveloped areas of the world and of Asia in particular.
Politicians and students of political and social sciences have sought hard and long to discover the secrets of Communist successes. With the purpose of utilizing the results of their studies as propaganda material in the war of ideologies, they mostly concentrate their researches on Communist tactics and thereby try to expose the fallibility of Communist theories and the inhumanities of the Communists. It is like warning the people of the danger of a contagious disease without objectively finding out why so many of them have been affected and what are the personal and social backgrounds of those who have voluntarily rallied to the Communist standard. Some antidotes have been recommended and have been actually applied such as economic aid and defense alliances, hut these have not been sufficient to stop the spread of Communism because the political environments of those who are most susceptive to its attractions are still fundamentally unchanged. To uproot this cancerous disease, preventive medicine is equally, if not more important.
The Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has been doing the pioneering work of studying the appeal of Communism as a social and political force to the indigenous people. The basic purpose of its studies is to bring to bear on the elucidation of U. S. foreign policy problems the full resources of available knowledge obtained from analysis of data obtained directly from the people. One of its members, Mr. G. A. Almond, published a pioneer standard work entitled "The Appeals of Communism" which treats of the appeal of Communism to the people of the industrialized West, and on this model, another member has now completed a case study of the People's Liberation Communism in Malaya by interviewing former Malayan Communists.
The purpose of this book is to investigate the character of the People's Liberation Communism in the light of three sets of data. As the author describes it, "In Part I, it is the literature of Communism that provides the evidence of what Communism is intended to be like in underdeveloped countries.... In Part II, we turn to the experiences of the Malayan Communist Party to find out how it grew with respect to the doctrinal model of People's Liberation Communism Part III, which provides the human dimension of this form of Communism, is based upon the words of those who have personally experienced it."
The bulk of the book is devoted, as it should be, to the individual histories of former Communists, who are referred to by the British as SEP (Surrendered Enemy Personnel). In more than 200 pages, he records the personal experiences of more than 60 such people under the headings, "Surrendered Enemy Personnel, Potential Communists, The Experiences of Youth, Understanding Politics, Perceiving the Social Environment, Joining the Communist Party, Adjusting to Life in the Party, Understanding the Communist involvement, Learning Communist Theory, Personal Relations and Promotion, The Process at Disaffection." Chinese readers will find that, except for the colonial characteristics of their country of residence, the experiences of these former Malayan Communists-most of them are Chinese-are not different from those of their counterparts on the Chinese mainland. Like the Chinese Communists, the Malayan Communists started from conspiracy and terrorism and gained power through the use of military force. They used the same deceptive means to enlist recruits, to hold them under harness, to make use of them for the Party's interests. One account by a Malayan Chinese is most descriptive of Communist tactics. “It is very strange" he said, "how I became a fighter for the revolution. My tapping post on the rubber estate was on the edge of the jungle and one-day three Min Yuen men came up and talked with me. I was afraid of them; they were armed, but they just asked me how my work was going. Then they left. A few days later they came again and, after talking a bit more, they asked me to do a few favors for them. Simple things, getting them tobacco and the like. Before I knew it, I was doing a lot more things for them. It just seemed like the safest thing to do. Then one day two of them came and said that the third had surrendered and "that he wanted to tell the police I had been helping the Communists. I was very agitated and went into the jungle with them and before I knew what was happening I was made a fighter of the revolution and assigned to a Min Yuen group. Ai yah! a strange country this Malaya!"
In the concluding chapter the author offers a discerning analysis of the basic problems which must be overcome if underdeveloped communities are to establish free and representative institutions to counter the appeal of Communism.
The book has one rather serious drawback; it does not give a summary of the military successes of the British which have at least checked the Communists from overrunning the whole area. The lesson of the British military action is a good one for the free world to take note of, because extermination of Communism depends as much on military force as on political enlightenment. One has only to quote another example of what had happened in the Philippines under the able governorship of President Magsaysay, who hunted down the Huks with relentless severity, to show what military success can mean in securing political success. If the British had been an indigenous government, they would have succeeded politically as well as militarily and the Malayan Communist Party would not have had the chance to grow to its present importance.
The case of Malaya points to one moral. In combating Communism in Asia, military force must be used. All experiments in economic aid, supply of cultural information, exposition of Communist fallacies, and other peaceful means that have been made by America are not enough. Since Communism in Asia is radiated from Communist China, the tide can be reversed only by the destruction of the Communist regime on the mainland. The Government of the Republic of China, which is the legal government of and has a strong hold on the whole of China though temporarily functioning on the island of Taiwan, can ultimately defeat the Chinese Communists by political as well as military means; and only by the success of the Chinese Government in doing so can the political atmosphere of the world be cleared once for all.