For the Armchair Strategist

DECISIVE BATTLES OF THE U.S.A.--J. F. C. Fuller--Harper ($4).

At the very least, Tunisia and its great naval base at Bizerte must be occupied by us, and powerful airfields must be established there to command the waist of the Mediterranean.

Not last week, but eleven months ago, these lines appeared in the London Sunday Pictorial. A.P. saw fit to cable them to the U.S., and the New York Times bestowed three well-buried inches upon them and their author--"a well-posted military observer and writer."

Major General John Frederick Charles Fuller, of the British Army, who was this author, does something very few of even the best-posted military observers do: he criticizes before the fact. This habit apparently was responsible for his being retired from the British Army in 1933. He kept saying that the British were being outsmarted by the totalitarian powers, that the R.A.F. was being neglected, that failure to mechanize was suicidal, and that war would soon demonstrate the weaknesses of the popular Liddell Hart defense-is-the-best-defense theory.

But if J. F. C. Fuller can be sound about Tunisia eleven months in advance, he can also be very instructive about Thermopylae, 2,400 years afterwards. His Decisive Battles (Scribner; $4.50) is a layman's shortest shortcut to an understanding of war. Now, in Decisive Battles of the U.S.A., General Fuller has given U.S. citizens a similar shortcut to an appreciation of specifically U.S. talents and weaknesses on the field of battle. It is a book for the education of armchair strategists.

Warning. General Fuller is a military expert; his political remarks should be taken either with a grain of salt or several highballs. The general has been called an admirer of Fascism, was even photographed in the days before the war with the gentleman who has since become Lord Haw-Haw. He drops queer passing remarks, which smack of racism, anti-plutocratism, and other Nazi cliches. Example (explaining the Mexican War): "Since the days of Cortes and his followers the country had been largely bastardized, and the half-caste race resulting had not yet had time to form those traditions so necessary to nationhood."

But though the political opinions of Sun Tzu, Alexander, Napoleon, Clausewitz, Foertsch may be repugnant, their military ideas are valuable. So with Fuller: every reader must be his own censor.

Skirmishes for Posterity. General Fuller's definition of a decisive battle may not suit everyone and some of his conclusions may be open to argument, but his viewpoint on U.S. military history is stimulating for anyone whose knowledge of it has been imbibed from American schoolbooks. His decisive battles are almost never last battles. Often victory is not unveiled to public view by them. They are often relatively small.

With the single exception of the Meuse-Argonne, the decisive battles of the U.S. would scarcely rate the front page in news of World War II. Yet each one vitally affected the history of the U.S., some that of Europe as well. The battles:

> Trenton & Princeton, 1776-77. Washington, whose men were ill-clad and unenthusiastic, crossed the Delaware on Christmas night, 1776, to surprise the British at Trenton, then pushed on to occupy Princeton. These actions fired the Revolutionists' morale, saved Philadelphia, broke Howe's plans, made Washington's reputation, so that he became the real leader of the Revolution. U.S. casualties: 40 killed, 100 wounded.

> Saratoga, 1777. General John Burgoyne tried to drive down from Canada in order to join the British commander, Howe, on the Hudson, but was so roughly handled at Bennington and in two engagements near Saratoga, that he capitulated. News of Burgoyne's surrender impressed Louis XVI of France enough to make him sign an alliance with the U.S. Within a few weeks, France and Britain were at war. Total U.S. casualties: 80 killed, 190 wounded.

> Chesapeake & Yorktown, 1781. Washington had long felt that naval superiority was the first requisite of victory. Off Cape Henry a French fleet under Admiral de Grasse achieved that superiority. Washington soon laid siege to Cornwallis and defeated him at Yorktown. These battles clinched victory over Britain, though the war dragged on for 25 months. Allied casualties at Yorktown: 75 killed, 199 wounded, of whom two-thirds were French.

> Lake Erie & Lake Champlain, 1813-14. Disputes over British blockade orders directed mainly against Napoleon led to the War of 1812, in which there was nothing for the U.S. to attack except Canada; the key to Canada was the St. Lawrence-Great Lakes line of water communications. Hoisting his large blue battle flag with the white letters DON'T GIVE UP THE SHIP, Captain Oliver Hazard Perry outsailed and outgunned the British on Erie. On Champlain Captain Thomas MacDonough anchored his ships in such an advantageous position that when the British tried to attack him, he put them to rout without even moving. These two engagements gave the U.S. the necessary naval superiority on the lakes and won the war. U.S. casualties: 79 killed, 154 wounded.

> San Jacinto, 1836, where Sam Houston won Texas from Mexico. U.S. casualties: two dead, 23 wounded.

>Chapultepec, 1847, where Winfield Scott took Mexico City and won New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah and part of Colorado from Mexico. Casualties were relatively severe: 2,703.

> Seven Days' Battle, 1862. Here Robert E. Lee, with inferior forces, outmaneuvered McClellan and saved Richmond, the loss of which would have changed the whole course of the Civil War. Lee's casualties were on a Stalingrad scale: 19,739.

> Gettysburg, 1863, reopened the road to Richmond. Had the Federals followed through, they might have broken the Confederates once and for all. Federal casualties: 17,684.

>Vicksburg & Chattanooga, 1863. General Fuller is a great admirer of General Grant. He calls Grant's Vicksburg campaign "from a strategical point of view one of the greatest in military history." With amazing indifference to orthodox rules of war, Grant deliberately cut himself off from his own supply line, described a huge circle, and attacked the enemy from the side opposite his own base. Success was complete. Grant's casualties: 8,873. At Chattanooga, using routine tactics of turning the enemy's flanks. Grant carried 300-ft. Missionary Ridge. These two victories opened the road to Atlanta--Lee's back door. Grant's casualties: 5,815.

>Atlanta & Nashville, 1864. Sherman's capture of Atlanta and Thomas' victory at Nashville settled the war in the South and West.

> San Juan Hill & Santiago, 1898, were not much as battles but they cast Spain out of the Western Hemisphere and indirectly got the U.S. the Philippines. U.S. casualties: 225 killed, 1.384 wounded at San Juan Hill; at Santiago one killed, one wounded.

> Meuse-Argonne, 1918. This was not battle, but carnage. The men who made war had devised firepower so great that they no longer understood it, and so they had gone to earth like animals, in trenches 500 miles long. When the Americans joined the war, all the Allies wanted was more infantry--more men to hurl against the enemy. Foch wanted to spread these men along the whole front; Pershing fought to build an American Army, and succeeded. "This," says General Fuller, "was not only a victory for Pershing, but also for the Allied cause, for had the readjustment proposed by Foch been agreed upon ... in all probability the war would have continued into 1919." The Meuse-Argonne offensive, which broke the German back, took 47 days and no less than 1,200,000 men on the Allied side took part in it. U.S. casualties: 117,000 killed and wounded.

Generals in General. Through all these battles, General Fuller traces certain U.S. weaknesses.

U.S. generals are inclined to be too considerate of both subordinates and the enemy. Lee, he believes, would have been more successful if less gentle with his generals. Sherman, on the other hand, an advocate of terror, Fuller admires--though he says that the march through Georgia and the Carolinas was of little military use. Except for Grant, U.S. military leaders have not had enough appreciation of the importance of speed, and lost many a golden opportunity by dawdling. Most horrible example: the pious Jackson, who stopped for devotions on the Sabbath.

And After the Decision . . . General Fuller's comments on U.S. battles, on their causes, and on the peaces which have intervened, provoke constant comparisons with the U.S. part in World War II. The net effect is fairly encouraging: the book leaves the impression that Americans fight hard, if not always with utmost efficiency. But after the discussion of the Meuse-Argonne, there is a pithy little passage which ought to make readers want to see a certain difference in the finally decisive battles of 1942-43: "I do not intend here," Fuller writes, "as I have done in former chapters, to conclude the story of this war with a summary of the peace treaty which sealed its end--and for two reasons:

"1) It was not an American peace.

"2) It was not a peace at all."

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