REVIEWS
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
REVIEWS BY EMMETT TYRRELL, JR. The Lawbreakers by M. Stanton Evans and Margaret Moore. Arlington House, $5.95. In dramatically deflating current popular notions on law enforcement, M....
...today too timid to even state that the "people's choice" is not necessarily a military leader in theater operations...
...tired of self-styled experts, such as political appointees, college professors, social do-gooders and college students, trying to dictate basic military policy and succeeding...
...After exhaustive documentation the authors conclude that crime in America is rapidly increasing, revealing serious dilapidations in American society...
...As if to counterpoint these letters, the Indianapolis Star of September 14, 1967, headlined "U.S...
...Emanating from New York and constituted mainly of Jewish intellectuals, the Establishment mutters ex cathedra on all facets of contemporary American letters and is a valid reason for today's would-be readers to take up glass blowing...
...In his letter the pilot (whose name was withheld to protect him) describes the shortage of bombs and ammunition in Vietnam whichhas existed despite McNamara's denials, and which greatly inhibits the effectiveness of our air power...
...It will be worse...
...Exhibiting trenchant insight, impeccable research and the majestic prose of a man possessing a magnificent sense of history The Blast of War must take its place beside Churchill's five volumes as one of the great histories of war...
...Often quoting Churchill, the author reveals a deep reverence for the man and, lest anyone doubt Macmillan's estimate of Churchill, he sedately avers "We were inspired by the greatest Englishman of all time...
...Soon forsaking the obscurity of Parliament's back benches, Macmillan acquired cabinet rank in Churchill's government, successively becoming Churchill's political minister in the Mediterranean, assisting Churchill at Casablanca, and helping create provisional governments in Italy, Greece, and France...
...The Blast of War represents the second volume of Macmillan's memoirs...
...Yet, after reading of Podhoretz's Assumption into this pack of effete intellectuals, only one question lingered— who cares...
...He con8 THE BLAST OF WAB by Harold Macmillan...
...For a man of letters to write a book delighting in such associations is like Howard Hughes writing nostalgically about years spent in a bread line...
...Early in the book Evans and Moore decimate the apologies for permissivism and relativism...
...In his present volume the author discusses the war years and his part in them...
...Only by means of the draft, will Johnson get enough troops to fight the war he is not trying to win...
...And, "I feel that the only way to improve an unsatisfactory situation such as exists is to be certain that the proper individuals know and realize the...
...In the second portion of The Lawbreakers the authors discuss a community action program already harvesting success in Indianapolis...
...Random House, $6.95...
...He describes how money, ordnance, aircraft, and the lives of pilots are needlessly wasted on useless missions—in order to achieve a greater number of sorties for propaganda purposes at home...
...Mencken, for both excelled as critics...
...These observations concur with other reporters' descriptions of Macmillan, for he has always aloofly resisted convention...
...However where Royster lacks Mencken's acerbity and velocity, he possesses far greater prescience in discussing politics...
...apparent incompetence prevailing in upper echelons ofWashington's civilian defense experts - Defense Secretary McNamara being number two on the list...
...is Short 17,000 Pilots...
...A provocative book generally will leave readers questioning...
...They are tired of flying their aircraft for minimum effect...
...We may expect this shortage to continue until the Johnson clique vacates Washington...
...Cataracts of pessimism often blinded Mencken's predictions...
...The students of military strategy, the men who have come here to rain destruction on the enemy...
...It is especially appropriate that Moore and Evans should outline this program for Moore played a critical role in its implementation, and Evans, as editor of the Indianapolis News, daily assayed it with the cool eye of the objective journalist he is...
...This is not idle speculation, nor politically-motivated hyperbole...
...Written with charm, wit and singular point of view, this collection of writings is a credit to its author and an excellent way for readers to improve the appearence of bookshelves degraded by the presence of Making It...
...Continued on Page 8 5 ON A VOLUNTEER ARMY - Continued from Page 7 REVIEWS -Continued from Page 5 soldiers, angered over how they are being senselessly wasted, are leaving the service in large numbers...
...He fully corroborated the Air Force pilot's report, saying: "He has expressed the general attitude of nearly every military man with whom I was associated, right on up to the Flat War Room...
...The authors relentlessly examine reigning opinions of sociology, penology, and law enforcement, and find disconcerting weaknesses in these, unfortunately influential, opinions...
...He describes how time after time, pilots have watched fighter-bombers taxiing for take-off, carrying only a pair of small bombs—one-tenth or one-twelfth of the number they could carry to the enemy...
...Bell and his ilk have made careers lecturing a tormented public that no crime wave exists and that all the Boston Strangler needed was a little understanding and harpsichord lessons...
...It is not the problem of pay or advancement, but rather the manner in which he feels he is being used...
...The Establishment's members write few books, get a kick out of thinking in public, and attend the most sobering cocktail parties in America...
...6.95...
...They found him affable, witty and possessing a poise that allowed for what, in lesser men, might be considered awkwardness...
...They are sick of a military service that beat the best the German and Japanese could throw at them...
...Writing with extraordinary taste Macmillan's work matches Churchill's war volumes in eloquence and insight...
...eluded: "These men in Vietnam know what the situation is there...
...What creature other than a congenital vulgarian would take pride in sloshing Cutty Sark with Alfred Kazin, Nathan Glazer, and Susan Sontag...
...I was going to ask George Nathan to review this book as it deals with one of his favorite targets (see Incites), but assuredly he would have become ill over its pages and, for his effusions, hazard the humiliation of being adopted into the Jewish literary establishment in which Podhoretz exalts...
...Everyone has known that, in America, there exists a literary establishment, but only Podhoretz has been crass enough to inconditely revel, for 356 pages, about his membership in it...
...Regardless of his disavowals Royster's essays on ethics in government, institutional welfare, and the virtue of criticism, ring with the resonance of contemporary American conservatism as amplified from such vogueish journals as National Review and The Alternative...
...The first volume, Winds of Change discussed his life to 1939...
...Royster has done more than collect jaded observations from the heavily plowed fields of national politics, he has taken readers on an adventurous tour through the wilds of Americana...
...We may also expect a continuing need for a military draft to fill the ranks vacated by those who know what the facts are in Vietnam...
...In their far-reaching peregrinations across America, few members of the Establishment venture beyond the distant reaches of Manhattan, apparently fearing (and rightly so) that persons in Oxford, Mississippi would ignore them...
...In his far-ranging interests incisive wit, and penchant for irreverence Royster brings to mind H.L...
...But Winston Churchill had a taste for such fellows (though he preferred brandy with breakfast) and the war allowed both to ascend to the loftiest realms of British government...
...In A Pride of Prejudices, a collection of Vermont Royster editorials earlier published in the Wall Street Journal, the author eschews traditional labels, conservative and liberal, by asserting "Absurdity is no respecter, of political philosophies or the centuries of man...
...the men who seek a pride in their job...
...It is the opinion of military men themselves, as expressed in a letter from an Air Force pilot in Vietnam, to Aviation Week and Space Technology magazine, September 19, 1966...
...Making It by Norman Podhoretz...
...By forcefully attacking the puerile self-indulgence of the "new morality", the breakdown in discipline that—though antithetical to civilized man—characterizes situational ethics, the idea poverty breeds crime, and similar silly notions beatified by the Bell Boys, the authors have frazzled the exhausted ideology which today constricts our legal system and contributes to the crime wave washing America...
...Shortly later, the same magazine published a letter from former Vietnam pilot Norde Wilson, a Navy flyer based on the carriers Enterprise and Banger...
...In dramatically deflating current popular notions on law enforcement, M. Stanton Evans and Margaret Moore have cogently drafted the conservative alternative to "criminal coddling...
...No such ailment affects Royster, who in late October 1964 predicted Lyndon Johnson would win the presidency in spite of exposure of his frolicsome and ambiguously sexed presidential aid at play in a Washington YMCA...
...A Pride of Prejudices by Vermont Royster...
...The author does not restrict his remarks to national issues for Royster sees his editorials as a "throwback to a former time," to "the man who simply wrote as a good conversationalist might talk on whatever topic came to mind...
...these men are leaving the service in ever-increasing numbers...
...The men who can see all this are leaving...
...Knopf...
...Where Bell's ethereal formulae generally and cynically subsume human action, Evans and Moore offer a program of person-to-person contact, respecting men for the confounding creatures they are...
...Ten million dollars in equipment and six highly skilled aviators, being utilized for a valueless target of this nature...
...Wilson recalled, ". . .one mission of three aircraft on which we were directed to make three passes each to destroy two small water wheels on a stream in the middle of nowhere...
...In its present state they can take only so much of the blundering and as the author said '. . .those who can see all this are leaving.' " "The politics of it all has made them sick, and the services are facing a critical shortage for good men...
...In his conclusion, the pilot writes: Here in Vietnam, and in much of the rest of the Air Force, the true professional soldier is dissatisfied with his job...
...The authors lucidly expose the dichotomies inherent in this ideology...
...If not for its voluminous statistics, I commend The Lawbreakers to students because of its point of view which, vis-a-vis our scandent crime rate, represents a thoughtful alternative...
...Though a shrewd diplomat, sagacious adviser, and efficient administrator Macmillan's penchant for gaudy vests, baggy pants and sherry with breakfast would, in normal times, disqualify him from public office...
...Because government, history, and sociology students receive select diets of Daniel Bell, Talcott Parsons, and Paul Goodman serious students should read this book, as its conclusions contrast sharply with the melioristic mush of Bell et al...
...Harper & Row, $11.95 Recently Harold Macmillan visited his mother's childhood home in Spencer where he stayed with acquaintances of mine...
Vol. 1 • April 1968 • No. 5
