THE ELEVENTH HOUR

Retired four-star general Walt is a Marines' Marine and he gives the nation a proper dressing down as he describes the imminence of the Soviet military threat. But it's not too late to avoid surrender or holocaust--if we act now; the General ""can already see a new America, rising as from a sleep and shaking off the mistakes and blunders of the past four decades."" Lambasting our defense policy and political leaders--who ""have chosen the way of expediency"" from Yalta to the current SALT debates--he promises us the ""facts"" about our present military inferiority. As Eugene Rostow writes in his foreword? General Lewis Walt has earned the fight to be heard by the American people?' True enough, but although the clarion call is trumpeted loudly, the notes are off-key. What's amiss is all the fault of the elite in power, and specifically of predictable villains: the bureaucracy, academics, the Eastern Establishment, liberals, leftists, socialists, internationalists, the UN. It's up to ""American nationalists"" to save the country. The ten-point plan to accomplish this features, of course, the recovery of military, strategic and technological superiority but it also includes avoiding a strategic arms limitation treaty, re-establishing the internal security committees of Congress, leaving the United Nations, and regaining our spiritual strength. ""A nation is similiar to a football,"" says General Walt at one point; reading his book is very much like listening to a half-time tirade by Vince Lombardi. The message is loud and clear, and the sincerity is evident; but international relations are much more complex than a football game, and simplistic reactions to modern problems create their own dangers.