A TIME OF WAR/A TIME OF PEACE

This deserves more than the meager attention it is likely to get now that the Democratic Convention has ended the Senator from South Dakota's brief fling as presidential aspirant. Here McGovern offers two new essays--one calling for an end to the draft (and its replacement by a well-paid professional army), the other labelling the anti-ballistic missile ""a security delusion,"" Basically, however, the book is an expansion of speeches and writings covering his six years in the Senate. Among them, ""the first opposition on the Senate floor to our military involvement in Vietnam,"" urging instead the ""enclave strategy,"" early support for a nuclear test ban treaty, and proposals for talking to China, to the Cubans and to the enemy in Vietnam. McGovern is a notably good speaker and his writing matches this standard (previous books include War Against Want and Agricultural Thought in the Twentieth Century). It's an interesting book, carefully argued, of principles and specific programs. It shows conclusively that the race for his party's presidential candidacy is the only fight McGovern has ever entered tardily.