Man of War

THE GREAT GLOBE ITSELF (310 pp.)--William C. Bullittt--Scrlbner ($2.75).

The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind.

--The Tempest

To William C. Bullitt, ex-Ambassador to the U.S.S.R. (1933-36), these lines of William Shakespeare's might well describe what happens when the Soviet Union has enough atomic bombs, and blows Western democracy to hell. Bullitt, who ended the war a major in the French Army, was struck by a car when walking along an icy road beside the Rhine in January 1945, has since spent most of his time recovering from a back injury and writing this book.

The Great Globe Itself, pugnacious Bill Bullitt's latest book, is rounded out with chapters about Russian history and World Wars I & II, plus a trio of lengthy appendices listing the instances of Soviet military aggression, treaty-breaking and antidemocratic political chicanery. But the book's heart is in the relatively few pages in which ex-Ambassador Bullitt brusquely presses upon the American public the necessity of taking prompt steps to surround the U.S.S.R. with democratic military forces.

U.N.'s "Insubstantial Pageant." Bullitt's good friend, the late President Roosevelt, made one of the most disastrous errors in U.S. history, says Bullitt, when he furnished Lend-Lease aid to the U.S.S.R. without exacting, in return, assurances of a pacific Soviet foreign policy in the postwar period. Present U.S. leaders, Bullitt believes, will make an even worse error if they pin their faith to the "insubstantial pageant" of U.N. Bullitt believes that no doubt remains that Soviet aims stop short at nothing less than domination of the globe. Western Europe, the Middle East and the British Empire will, says Bullitt, merely precede the American hemisphere as victims.

Bullitt's plans for halting Russia are militaristic and extreme. Without delay, he insists, the U.S. and Britain must organize the remaining democratic nations of Europe into an "Inter-European League" (membership would also be open to the Anglo-American-controlled sectors of Germany). Britain and the U.S. will not only do their utmost to raise these nations' standards of living (i.e., increase their fighting strength), but will promise them prompt military aid in the event of their coming into conflict with an expanding U.S.S.R. Simultaneously, intensive anti-Soviet propaganda must be carried on throughout Europe, and extended, by radio, into the U.S.S.R. itself. "Our ultimate aim [in Europe] should be to free all the states of central and eastern Europe and the Balkans."

Similar anti-Soviet democratic leagues would include the already existing Inter-American League, the nations of the British Commonwealth, China, and, before too long, Japan.

The sum total, concludes Author Bullitt, would be a world organization named the "Defense League of Democratic States." But in its infancy, the power of such a League would rest primarily on two U.S. means of forceful persuasion -- a mammoth air force and a soaring stockpile of atomic bombs.

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