FIRE IN THE PACIFIC

The author served during the greater part of eleven years in the British foreign service in China or in the Foreign Office Far Eastern Department. His was a prescience recognized too late. He claims no particular gift, but marshalls facts and historical evidence and clear sighted interpretation to prove his point that the incredible complacency and ignorance of the British and the Americans, the muddle-headedness and weakness of policy and action, virtually left the Far East open for the carrying out of Japanese ambitions, expressed, enforced and obvious for generations. He is realistic -- sometimes cynically so -- about the past. For the future he charts the four tactical principles essential to victory, he recognizes the necessity of a new attitude towards Orientals as allies, a recognition of 75 million madmen as enemies.