American Military Thought

Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc, 1966. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Good. liii, [1], 554 pages. Occasional footnotes. Chronology. Bibliography. Index. DJ has some wear and soiling. This is a volume in The American Heritage series. Walter Millis (March 16, 1899 - March 17, 1968) was an editorial and staff writer for the New York Herald Tribune from 1924 to 1954. Millis was a staff member of the Fund for the Republic from 1954 to 1968. He later became the director of the Fund for the Republic's study of demilitarization in 1954. Millis, widely recognized as a historical writer, wrote eight books including: Road to War: America 1914-1917, This is Pearl! The United States and Japan—1941, Why Europe Fights, Viewed Without Alarm: Europe Today, Arms and Men: A Study of American Military History, The Martial Spirit: A Study of Our War with Spain, and An End to Arms. He also edited The Forrestal Diaries and American Military Thought. Among the 47 extracts of documents in this volume are Elihu Root's Annual Reports of the Secretary of War, 1899-1903; Theodore Roosevelt's First Annual Message, 1901; and Leonard Wood's Our Military History, 1916. This volume is the first anthology of its kind, the first to collect the original materials that demonstrate ow Americans "have tended to think about war, military policy, and the military factor in their free society." Of obvious value to specialists, it should interest all students of American history, for whom it can open a subject they can no longer afford to neglect. And for al who believe that "war is too important to be left to the generals," the book can provide perspective on the perilous dilemmas that confront the United States. The aim of the anthology is to assemble the most important document for American Military history up to 1945 and to suggest no more than the broader outlines of 'the military revolution' since then. There have been very few theorists of American military policy. The country's leading military figures have usually not been military philosophers, and the country in general has not given serious thought to military problems until quite recently. The documents reflect these realities. Here are selections form several of America's few influential professional military thinkers: Henry W. Halleck, Emory Upton, and Alfred Thayer Mahan. Here are the state papers of presidents and other leading political figures that reflect the national consensus on military thought, from Washington and Hamiliton to Kennedy and McNamara. And here, especially, are little-know official reports of the Secretaries of War and of the Nave, Military commissions and chiefs of staff. This book is one of a series of which the aim is to provide the essential primary sources of the American experience, especially of American thought.