Book Review: An Approach to Peace
| Date | 01 March 1963 |
| Author | Frank H. Underhill |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070206301800112 |
| Published date | 01 March 1963 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
Book
Reviews
AN
APPROACH
TO
PEACE.
And
Other
Essays.
By
H.
Stuart
Hughes.
1962.
(New
York:
Atheneum.
Toronto:
McClelland
and
Stewart.
xi,
204
pp.
$5.50)
This
little
book
of
some
two
hundred small
pages
is
by
far
the
most impressive
exposition
of
the
case
for
the
peace
movement
In
our
Western
society
that
I
have
come
across.
It
is
so
quiet. The
writer
is
so
obviously
not
a
neurotic
or
a
beatnik
or
a
New
York
intellectual.
Professor
Stuart
Hughes
of
Harvard
is
one of
the
ablest
of
the
younger
school of
American
historians.
Over
the
past
dozen
years
he
has
made
a
great
reputation
in
his
profession
through
his
studies
in
intellectual history.
His
books
on
Oswald
Spengler
(1952)
and
Con-
sciousfes8
and
Society
(1958)
are
already
in
paperbacks.
The
latter
is
a subtle
and
penetrating
study
of
the
interaction
of
thought
and
politics
in
Europe
from
1890
to
1930.
His
Contemporary
Europe
(1961)
is
a
history
of
Europe
from
1914
to
1960
which
interweaves a
narrative
of
the
political events
in
these
revolutionary years
with
an
analysis
of
the
revolutionary thought
and
art
which
underlay
the
political
revolution.
In
the
fall
of
1962
he
ran
for
the
Senate
as
an
independent
candidate
in
Massachusetts
against
the
Kennedy
and Lodge
families.
And
this
most recent
volume,
An
Approach
to
Peace,
constituted,
I
suppose,
his
campaign
manifesto.
Stuart
Hughes
is
not
a
pacifist,
but
he
stands
for
a
complete
repudiation
of
the
present
power
politics
of
his
country
and
its
Western
allies.
I
should
say
that
the
word
to
describe
him
is
"Anarchist".
Every
genuine
liberal has
a
good
deal
of
the
anarchist
in
his
intellectual
makeup,
and
dreams
of a
society
in
which
reasonable
men will
co-
operate
with
one
another
without
the
imposition
of
institutions
of
compulsion.
A
leaven
of
intellectual
anarchists
is
necessary
in
every
society
to
keep
it
healthy
and
free.
The word
that
Hughes
himself
uses
to
describe his
position
is
Utopian. The
power politics
of
the
West
competing
with
the
power
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