BLUEPRINT FOR VICTORY

Not a book calculated to give comfort and hope to the reader. On the contrary, it will make readers good and mad, which is perhaps a good thing. The gist of the book is this:- first a preamble in which he gives a picture of total war today, and the devastating possibility of a long war; then an attempt to tell how the war can be won quickly. Unfortunately, he spends too much time telling what should not have been done. He condemns mistakes made by our Allies and by our leaders; he condemns Dorothy Thompson's idea that we must defeat Hitler first; he goes into a sarcastic account of the blunders of Pearl Harbor and the Philippine campaign, and the loss of the Aleutian outer islands; he criticizes virtually our whole system of defense. Finally, he gets around to his own theory:- Japan first, knocked out with a few well placed blows (he feels they are more vulnerable than they appear). Next, offensive action from the north through the Aleutians, to the heart of the Japanese Empire, rather than the present strategy of working up from the South. He makes it sound logical enough -- but too much of it is based on the conjectures of a confessed amateur (and a sorehead at that). It seems to this reader that he oversimplifies, that he puts his faith on the young, inexperienced officers, rather than the older men....Not a book about which one can be neutral. Perhaps if one wanted to have one's own doubts and distrust substantiated, this would be a book to cherish. Anyhow, it wont be ignored.