War and the Liberal Conscience

by Michael Eliot Howard

Book Overview

For centuries liberal minded men have been horrified by the pain and waste of war. From Erasmus, who saw war above all as a product of stupidity, to the Marxists who see it as a matter of class conflict, they have produced social theories to account for its occurrence and have tried to devise means to end it.

Their prescriptions have been various. The central view of the Enlightenment was that wars would end when the ambitions of princes...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0813511976
• ISBN13: 9780813511979
• Release Date: January 1978
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Length: 143 Pages
• Weight: 0.44 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.6" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Why Wars Persist in a Liberal Age...

Sir Michael Howard may be uniquely qualified to ponder the confrontation between the liberal conscience and the fact of war. As a young man, he served with the British Army in the Second World War. For the last half century, he has been a prominent and acutely observant military historian. By personal politics, he is a liberal. This book, "War and the Liberal Conscience", embodies his Trevelyan Lecture on the topic, delivered at the University of Cambridge in 1977. In a brisk 135 pages, the author reviews the history of classical European political liberalism from 1500 to 1977. Along the way, he deftly delineates the competing strands of political and economic thought which motivated various liberal movements to "end" war. He marks also their failures amid increasingly horrendous wars. His conclusions, equal parts realism and optimism, seem just as relevant as when first delivered. While his context might seem limited by the relative vantage point of 1977, the knowing reader may surmise that nothing that has happened since must have surprised Howard very much. "War and the Liberal Conscience" is very highly recommended to students of military history and of modern politics, who will find much to ponder in a concise but fascinating book.