25 MAY 1951, Page 4

In his book, How to Win the War, published this

week, Mr. Paul Hoffman remarks that armaments do not spring into being ready-made "like Minerva from the head of Job." From the tale of the patriarch's sufferings as recounted in the Old Testa- ment this particular aggravation is unaccountably missing, though it is always possible that some new find of papyri may throw light on the subject. Or—more prosaic alternatiye—it may simply be that Mr. Hoffman's book was dictated and inade- quately revised. The third possibility, that the author thought it really was Job who was associated with this unorthodox parturition, I decline to entertain. JANUS.