Volume 17, Number 7 · November 4, 1971
Rational Wars?
By A.J.P. Taylor
Clausewitz
by Roger Parkinson
Stein & Day, 352 pp., $10.00
Studies in War and Peace
by Michael Howard
Viking, 264 pp., $8.95
Twentieth-century man is supposed to be more rational than his forefathers. He attempts to solve his problems by rational discussion. By the use of rational processes he has achieved almost unlimited power over nature. He understands the working of the universe. According to the psychiatrists he can even understand himself. Yet his greatest energies, no doubt most rationally directed, are devoted to the irrational activity of war. Twentieth-century wars have been more expensive and more destructive than all their predecessors put together. The more enlightened a government is in its social policy and the more democratic in its institutions, the more it spends on war or, as it is laughably called, defense. What is the explanation of this paradox? How does it happen that man, who can remove almost all other evils, is more entangled than ever with the worst social evil of all?
Review, 2067 words
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