A review by
Carroll Quigley in Military Affairs, October 1970,
of a book:
WAR: An Anthology,
by Edward and
Elizabeth Huberman.
New York: Washington Square Press, 1969
Huberman,
Edward and Elizabeth, ed.
War: An Anthology (New York: Washington Square Press, 1969,
304 pp.,
paperback $1.25).
This little paperback volume will be of little interest to readers of
MILITARY AFFAIRS. It is a "literary anthology" containing 72 poems, 14
short stories, and 17 "essays". Some of these are related to war only in
a peripheral fashion. It would seem that an effort was made to obtain as
diversified a selection as possible within the basic anti-war framework,
but the chief consequence of this has been to make the collection and
its intended audience ambiguous. The pieces range from Erasmus of
Rotterdam to Senator Fulbright and Judge Charles E. Wyzanski, Jr. None
of the writers is dated or identified in any way, and the selections are
simply presented without comment, alphabetically by authors. This
adds to the generally ambiguous impression of the volume and dilutes the
significance of the individual selections, since it is often impossible
to judge what war called forth the selection. This is in accord with the
general assumption of the editors that all wars are the same and all are
bad, which may be true but is not accepted by everyone without
discussion. There is no discussion here, nor any effort to deal with war
in any rational way. On the contrary, the general impression made by
this collection is that it was put together to provide desultory talk
for pot-smoking residents of some hippie pad.
CARROLL QUIGLEY
Georgetown University
