Hair-Raiser

How TO RUN A WAR--Bruce Winton Knight--Knopf ($2).

In the first chapter of this harsh and hair-raising little book, Author Bruce Winton Knight, professor of economics at Dartmouth, gravely announces his argument: "Thus far in human history no formula has proved equal to the task of preventing more or less extended periods of peace." Purporting to solve that problem, How to Run a War is an ingenious pacifist tour de force, addressed to wealthy and politically powerful U. S. citizens who are "primarily responsible for American policies and opinions." As such, the book is filled with material that is likely to frighten good pacifists out of their wits.

Professor Knight begins his demonstration with some explicit advice on how to get into a war, detailing the steps that led to the U. S. entry into the World War as an illustration. He ends his grisly volume with an account of the cost of the World War (his estimate is $400,000,000,000) and a warning to his hypothetical audience of powerful individuals on the cost of another such conflict to them. Between these two points he has compressed into 243 pages an inclusive study of war propaganda, a rapid but convincing survey of innovations in warfare finance, an exposition of the fallacies underlying the idea that the defeated force can be made to pay the cost of War. While he discounts lurid stories of wholesale destruction, Professor Knight leans to the theory that the next war, like the last, is likely to be a war of positions, fought with deadlocked mass armies, and consequently more costly in terms of human life than the last. With no concrete solution to offer, he nevertheless suggests that his theoretically powerful audience can prevent war if the desire to do so is genuine. If it does not do so, he announces with ferocious urbanity, "Sirs, here are your blue-prints," in an effort to make terrible alternatives terribly plain.

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