Freedom from Fear
The Problem of Security. By Lieutenent-General Sir Giffard MarteL (Michael Joseph. 10s. 6d.)
IT is unfortunate that we have in this country nothing comparable to the biennial reports drawn up by the Chiefs of Staff of the United States Army. Our leading soldiers have no means of making then views on defence policy publicly known and—as was shown by the publication of Sir Henry Wilson's diary—no sure reliance can be placed on statements made by ministers, and purporting to be based on professional opinion. We can only really know the views of our soldiers when they retire from active duty and that is one reason for welcoming this book by a distinguished general who had long been a pioneer of mechanisation and armoured warfare. Another reason for welcoming it is that it appears at a timely moment, at a period which in the past has always been a critical one in our history. The end of a great war is always a time of crisis. The people are weary of campaigning and believe that the problem of defence has been permanently solved. The politician hastens to assert his importance ; establishments and estimates are drastically cut ; and the seeds of future disasters are sown. It was so in 1714, in 1763, in 1783, in 1815, in 1918. Will men in the future say the same of 5945? Most of the traditional signs can be detected—the lack of a Government policy, the feeling that another war is an impossibility, the apathy of the young to the already neglected pre-service training units. It
is the purpose of books such as General Martel's to shock our minds into thought and action on the problem of security.
Unfortunately, General Martel 111s tried to do too much in one book. This deceptively slim volume is tightly packed with closely. reasoned comment on a great variety of subjects. It is a book for the converted rather than a tract for the man in the street and it is to be hoped that the author will follow it up with a more popular version, omitting some chapters and expanding others. The variety of the book makes it extremely difficult to review, and one can only call attention to some of the more controversial topics treated in it. In an excellent chapter on the Committee of Imperial Defence he has no fault to find except that it is not sufficiently imperial. He is critical of the Ministry of Supply and would prefer to see design of weapons become once more entirely a service responsibility under a revived Master General of the Ordnance. Best of all is his eighth chapter on "The Revival of the Art of War." Here he deals with his own subjects, mechanisation and armour, and the pages are full of information and comment invaluable to both soldier and civilian. This chapter, with slight re,shaping, would mike an excellent and telling pamphlet. For one thing, it makes it quite clear that the blame for our unpreparedness in 1939 is not to be laid at the door of the Army. The chapter on India might well have been omitted; sensible though it is, its views are over-simplified and are never likely to win much assent in political circles. Instead of it, I should have preferred to see an enlarged discussion of the problem of train- ing leaders. The decision to defer the release of certain groups of army officers seems to imply that the methods of officer selection and training used in the war have not been altogether successful - and it is high time we inquired whether in fact we are bringing our sufficiently the latent qualities of leadership which our youth
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