Engels as Military Critic, ed. Chaloner
Reviewed by Brian Pearce
1960Labour ReviewBrian Pearce Read the scan at ETOL (PDF) →Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: words can be misread, and the end of one piece can run into the next. For anything you quote, read the scan.
[p020] Volunteers Engels as Military Critic. Edited by W. H. Chaloner and W. O. Hender- son. Manchester University Press. 25s. In spite of the title, this book con- tains only a part of Engels’ studies cn the art of war. In particular it does not include the important series of articles which he contri- buted to the Pall Mall Gazette during the Franco-German war of 1870-1871. What it presents is a number of articles written for the Volunteer Journal for Lancashire and Cheshire and the Manchester Guard- ian dealing with the problems of the Volunteers (immortalized in many a public house sign) who came together to prepare against possible invasion by Napoleon II in the 1850s and 1260s; with military aspects of the American Civil War, the Schleswig- Holstein war of 1864 and the Austro- sian war of 1866; with the cial characteristics of the French Army; and with the history of. the rifle. Engels’ insistence on the depend- e of the Volunteers on training supervision by regular soldiers ad his refusal to pander to the self- iving ambitions of the Volun- officers anticipate Trotsky’s atti- e towards the building of the Red Army. B.P. Russia’s World Policy