Book Review: Military and Scientific Affairs: The Politics of Military Unification
| Author | Richard A. Preston |
| Published date | 01 June 1967 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070206702200222 |
| Date | 01 June 1967 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
BooK
REvIEws
325
decades.
The
disadvantage under
which
Dr.
Higham
has
worked,
of
lacking
access
to
official
sources,
is
of
less
significance
here,
for
publica-
tion
is
itself
the
criterion
of
a
writer's
claim
on
his
consideration. He
has
produced
a
most
valuable
catalogue
ragsonnde
of
the
works,
not
only
of
such
well-known
pundits as
General
J. F
C.
Fuller,
Sir
Basil
Liddell
Hart,
Admiral Sir
Herbert
Richmond
and
J.
M.
Spaight,
but
such
lesser
figures
as
Captain
Bernard
Acworth,
V
W
Germains,
and
L. E. 0.
Charlton-men
who
were
in
many
ways
more typical
of
their
times
than
the
better-known
giants.
Until
the
archives
are
opened
it
will
not
be
possible
to
tell
the
extent
to
which
these
men
actually
influenced policy.
Dr.
Higham
does
not
fall
into
the
error
either
of
supposing
that
they
did
not
(Fuller
and
Liddell
Hart
were,
within limits,
very
influential
indeed)
or
of
lamenting
that
they
were
not more
effective.
He
might
indeed
have
dwelt
a
little
more
on
the
qualities
of
intellectual
arrogance
which
made
so
many
of
them
persona
non
grata
with
their
colleagues.
As
he
wisely
says,
their
achievement
was
that
they
"provided
the
policy
and
strategy-makers
in
Britain
with
a
different
point
of
view.
If
any
policy
was
debatable,
they
could
be
counted upon
to
have
some
opinion.
They
were
at
least
as
useful
in
provoking debate
as
they
would
have
been
in
formulating
policy.
What
happended
when
they
did
formulate
policy
in
the
case
of
the
Royal
Air
Force,
Dr.
Higham
shows
in
what
is
by
far
the
best
section
of
his
book. On
air
doctrine
and
its
influence
there
is
enough
evidence
available
from
official
histories
to
make
up
for
lack
of
access
to
documents,
and
Dr.
Higham
makes
excellent use
of
it
in
showing
the
interaction
of
personalities,
organization and
policy
during
the
formative years
of
that
Service.
If in
doing
so
he wanders
far
from
his
brief,
no one
will complain.
This
work
still
shows some
of
the
flaws
which
marred
Armed
Forces
m
Peacetime;
in
particular,
the
accumulation
of
more
informa-
tion
than
the author
is
quite
able to
digest.
He
also
has
a
tendency
to
make
sweeping
and
controversial
statements
about
matters
of
general
policy
which
he
does
not
back
up
by
hard
facts
and
arguments.
But
it
is
churlish
to
complain
about
a
book which places
scholars
of
the
period
so
heavily
in
Dr.
Higham's
debt.
We
shall
look
forward
to
learning
yet
more
from
him
when
the
promised
abrogation
of
the
Fifty-Year
Rule
enables
him
to
carry
his
researches
into
the
official
archives.
King's
College,
University
of
London
MICHAEL
HowARD
THE
PoLrrics
op
MI=TARY
UNIFICATION.
A
Study
of
Conflict
and
the
Policy
Process.
By
Demetrios
Caraley
1966.
(New
York:
Columbia
Umver
sity
Press.
Toronto:
Copp
Clark.
xiii,
345pp.
$8.95)
Beginning
during
the
war,
in
1943,
a
determined
effort
was
made
by
the
United
States War Department
to
bring
about
the
unification
of
the
armed
forces. Although
it
was
generally
agreed
that
wartime
co-
operation had
been of
an
unusually high
order,
the
War
Department
ciaime,
that
it
wanted
to
take advantage
of
the
popular
feeling
in
favour
of
closer
co-operation to
ensure
that
arrangements
like
those
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