Next War

THE ORIGIN OF THE NEXT WAR --John Bakeless -- Viking ($2.50). Not more than a handful of excessively well-posted people can afford to miss this book. Since it contains not a word of "war scare" claptrap, there is room upon its vivid pages for enough striking fact and comment to burst the covers off an average volume of like heft. Yet Mr. Bakeless' thesis is expressible in a few lines, which he modestly quotes from General Tasker H. Bliss:

"It would seem that there must be a natural limit to the ability of a state to provide for its population. And in some this limit seems very near. When that time comes it will be as natural for a people to swarm as for a hive of bees. Where can the swarms go?"

Where indeed? Author Bakeless, scanning well the entire globe, presents a dispassionate exposition of the expansion problems of Japan, Italy and Germany, etc., which deserves cogitation. Will or will not the 300-odd humans on every square mile of German and Italian soil inevitably expand into the relative vacuum represented by France with only 184 human atoms per square mile? When the fighting Japanese atoms finally burst from Nippon, will they erupt by sea or land? If by land, into Russia or China? If by sea, into Australia of the U. S.? With what chances of success?

Since Author Bakeless presents facts supported by an imposing bibliographical reference list, and since his style is engagingly candid and modest, the dullest reader cannot but take bit after bit of fact in his teeth and go galloping off to all sorts of stimulating thought hurdles.

Lethargic folk, who have not read Admiral Lord Fisher's Memories, are sure to jump when Mr. Bakeless reminds them that as long ago as 1907 "it seemed to Admiral Fisher [then First Sea Lord] simply a sagacious act on England's part to seize the German fleet when it was so very easy of accomplishment . . . probably without bloodshed. . . ."

As everyone knows, Edward VII squelched Lord Fisher's ambitious scheme to seize the navy of a "friendly" power during what Mr. Bakeless calls "the piping times of peace."