A Task Completed
The Victory Campaign. By," Strategicus." (Faber and Faber. 12s. 6d.)
AN unavoidable austerity of peace is that we can no longer enjoy in these columns the lucid analyses of the progress of the war which " Strategicus " contributed weekly almost from its very beginning. Since his Foothold in Europe appeared in 1945, many of us have been waiting impatiently- for his final volume, partly from the very natural desire to complete a valued set, but much more to know how he would deal with the great events of the war's last eighteen months. For in this period, rather longer than the author's average for a volume, great events were simultaneously happening in many parts of the world, and the prime difficulty would obviously be that of selection and arrangement. The difficulty has been overcome in a masterly manner ; this vast battle piece is well composed. The transition from one theatre of operations to another Is always easily made, and made in such a way that the essential inter-connection between the theatres is clearly brought out, so that we never forget that it is a single World War which is being described and not a number of isolated local conflicts. Thus " Strategicus " emphasises the close relationship between the fighting on the Western and Russian fronts ; he brings out the importance of the Italian cam- paign ; and, as might be expected from his previous volume, he does,
not make- the mistake of regarding the Far Eastern War as having nothing to do with the war against Germany. The author's choice of a pen-name is significant, and gives an indication of the aim of his book. He is concerned in the main with strategical analysis, and tactical and logistical details are only introduced when they are relevant to his main theme. Such a plan is comparatively easy to carry out in the case of the Russian campaigns ; here it is hardly possible to give more than a broad survey, at the army or even the army-group level, of what was happening. But in the case of the fighting on the Western front, the plan has involved severe and disciplined compression. A good example of the author's metnod and of his skill in applying it may be found in his account of the crossing of the Rhine by Twenty- first Army Group. In just over a couple of pages the crossing is described, its planning and its tactical details are sketched in, allusion is made to the divisions which carried out the operation, and yet throughout we are never allowed to lose the broad strategic vision. The skill which " Strategicus " shows in selection and arrangement has meant compression, but compression has not brought with it dullness. Indeed, dullness is impossible when the architecture of a book is as sound as that of this one is. And throughout we come across the memorable phrase, memorable because it is the result of the careful chiselling of an author who cannot afford to waste a single word. Take a single sentence from this same account of the Rhine crossing. " Spring had hastened forward to take part in the crossing ; and it was at 9 o'clock in the twilight of a lovely moonlit evening that the men crossed." This is not mere decoration ; every word in the second clause is needed to set the scene for the com- mando raid on Wesel. It is the care with which the sentence has been framed that has produced the grace.
In a volume of this size and scale, " Strategicus" is unable to do more than glance at some of the vexed issues in the conduct of the war which have been freely debated since its conclusion. He rightly ignores " superficial revelations," but can spare little space for discussion of genuine points of difference. For example, he has little room for comment on Eisenhower's refusal to accept Montgomery's plan for an all-out British offensive in the north in the late autumn of /944 ; or for an elaboration of his implied criticism of Bradley's dispositions before the Ardennes counter-offensive ; or for an assess- ment of the value of the British campaign in Burma to the progress of the Far Eastern War as a whole. It is true that in a final chapter he draws some general lessons from his survey of the war. Might we hope that he will expand this chapter into a whole volume of such reflections? No man knows more about the war which has lately ended, and such a book would be of vital importance at this time of financial crisis when the harassed politician naturally turns to economising at the expense of security. Such a book, too, would be a worthy epilogue to the eight volumes of thoughtful narrative which have earned a permanent place on the shelves of the student of war, beside the history of the first World War which " Strategicus " published under his own name. To be the contemporary chroniclet of two such struggles is a unique achievement.
S. H. F. JOHNSTON.
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