Activation of new aaa units - Air Defense Artillery

19-18
aircraft carriers was leaving its base in the
Kurile Islands with sealed orders to attack
Pearl I-Iarbor. This plan of attack that they
were to carry out was drawn up in January
1941, nearly a year before. In view of
these facts it is silly to talk about Hull's
memorandum of November 26 as having
"touched off the war."
Hull's memoirs do not answer all questions
as to how the war came, but thev
make an extremely important contributio~
toward that end. They make it clear that
we could only have avoided war in 1941
by sacrificing basic American principles
and long-established policies. Above all
they show the relationship between the
progressive Axis menace to our security
and the steps which the Roosevelt administration
took. That is the only honest
and realistic approach to the problem.-
LIEUT. COL. H. A. DEWEERD.
Gouzenko's Dramat;c Story
THE IRON CURTAIN. By Igor Gouzenko.
E. P. Dutton & Company. 280
Pages; $3.00.
Igor Gouzenko, one-time cipher clerk in
the Soviet Embassy at Ottawa, has come
forth with his own story of how he delivered
to the Canadian authorities the
documentary proof of a widespread espionage
plot against the United States, Canada
and Great Britain. Simply and dramatically,
he sketches his early experiences
, as a young Pioneer, Komsomol and Red
Army lieutenant. The result is an absorbing
story of escape inte> freedom.
From his special vantage point of cipher
clerk, Gouzenko had access to classified
Embassy cables which set forth in detail
the day-ta-day functioning of the Soviet
military espionage network in Canada,
! aided and abetted by disloyal Canadian
citizens. These documents, one hundred in
all, were published in the full Report
of the Royal Commission, and were later
condensed in my own book The Soviet
Spies. Gouzenko has made a further
abridgment of them and offers only those
which bear upon eight conspirators of the
?riginal eighteen arrested. Since there is no
Index, their utilitv as source material is ac-
Cordingly dimini~hed. But he has skillfully
Woven them into his narrative so that
they contribute to the climax of the book.
In the main the Gouzenko story is de-
~ted to sketches of the police terror of the
SSR and the destructive effect of the
C\-er-present NKVD (now MVD) on
normal human relationships. He has no
;;:~ of praise for life in the "workers paralJ
. and points out that only in the Soviet
nJon has food shortage been created as
a deliberate weapon of control over the
toiling masses.
d .\Ii.litary readers will be interested in his
('~Ptions of the Red Army Intelligence
'--eIlter and his evewitness account of the
Panic in J\losco\~ when the Nazi armies
:~roached the city's outskirts. Gouzenkq
h reveals the text of Stalin's order of
t. e day containing the phrase: "The Rus-
SIan people curse the Red Army."
BOOK REVIEWS
There is humor-of a grim sort-in his
description of the alterations made to one
of 1\loscow's "immortal" paintings which
formerly hung in the Hall of the Red
Army. Originally this masterpiece showed
Stalin seated at a table surrounded by a
roomful of generals. First one of the lesser
dignitaries disappeared from the painting,
then another. Their places were taken by
painted-over draperies. Still later three
more generals vanished from view and
draperies fell into the vacant spots. The
mystery was solved when the great purge
of 1937 was announced, and the picture
was finally taken down. The whispered
joke that went the rounds was that Stalin':
e),pression of triumph had changed to one
of loneliness as he was left occupying the
whole long wall with but three of his field
marshals.
As an individual Gouzenko has made an
outstanding contribution to international
awareness of Soviet fifth column tactics in
the postwar world. "Vhen the carefully detailed
evidence was finally accepted by
Prime Minister Mackenzie King in September
1945, it was at once personally
communicated to the \Vhite House and
No. 10 Downing Street. Perhaps it is no
accident that a gradual stiffening :n the
Anglo-American position towards political
and economic concessions to the Soviet
Union stems from that date. As a firsthand
account of existenc-e in the USSR,
and as an expose of Communist subversion
abroad, The Iron Curtain adds an important
title to the expanding literature of
Soviet exiles. Based on an original manuscript
that was part Russian, part English,
the rewriting has been accomplished by a
Montreal editor, A. \V. O'Brien, to whom
credit is due for having achieved a skillfully
literate product.-RICHARD HIRSCH.
Names Are Better than Numbers
MILITARY CUSTOMS. By Major T.
J. Edwards. Gale & Polden. 120 Pages;
Illustrated; $2.00.
Probably the two most famous units in
\VorId \Var I.were the Rainbow Division
and the 1\larine Brigade. In \Vorld \Var
II few civilians remember the 3d Division
or the 37th Division, to take two very
good divisions at random, but if you mention
Merrill's Marauders, or Cadson's
Raiders, or the Rangers, recognition is instant.
How many remember the numerical
designation of Custer's regiment? Contrast
that outfit with Teddy Roosevelt's Rough
Riders. The human mind, tricky mechanism
that it is, finds it hard to associate
glamor and fame with a number. Would
Ingrid Bergman command her loyal following
if her name were X343456? Hardly.
Recently the Army tried a new tactic
in recruiting; it permitted men to enlist
for service in specific units-but the units
are still numbers. The young man who
has been out of high school for a year,
and after a whirl at civilian employment
feels that the Army offers opportunity,
can't see much attraction in being per-
73
SOVIET LAND
By G. D. B. GRAY
SOVIET LAND is one of the
most useful books on Russia ever
published. It combines a geographical
study of the various
areas which make up the territories
of the U.S.S.R. from Siberia
to the Black Sea, notes on the
language, habits, customs of the
scores of different racial groups
within the U.S.S.R., and a discussion
of the industrial and agricultural
potentials and achievements
of the Soviets.
$3.00
TO THE ARCTIC!
By JEANNETTE MIRSKY
First published as TO THE
NORTH in 1934, TO THE
ARCTIC! was withdrawn from
print because of legal difficulties.
The current edition has been revised
and expanded. It worked
out as an invaluable study of the
Arctic based on the accounts of
explorers ranging from the time
of Cabot and Frobisher to the
men who flew over the pole.
TO THE ARCTIC! ranks with
Stephenson's THE FRIENDLY
ARCTIC as a basic book for every
soldier's Arctic library.
The presentation is brief, pointed,
highly factual and tremendously
informative.
ILLUSTRATIONS, MAPS.
$5.00
Order from
Coast Artillery Journal
631 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington 4, D. C.