Three American Commanders in France

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COMMANDING AN AMERICAN ARMY. BY MAJOR GENERAL HUNTER LIGGETT. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1925.

PERSONALITIES AND REMINISCENCES OF THE WAR. BY MAJOR GENERAL ROBERT LEE BULLARD. Garden City: Doubleday, Page, 1925.

LEAVES FROM A WAR DIARY. BY MAJOR GENERAL JAMES G. HARBORD, New York: Dodd, Mead, 1925.

THE Civil War was fought to the somber strains of "John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave" and "In the prison cell I sit." The men who were with Grant, Sherman and Sheridan later read the memoirs of their chiefs and found their own great achievements recorded, in tune with their times, in those excellent volumes. On such and such a date was the battle fought, by such and such units. Success and failure were plotted on the map, and special commendation was awarded where due. The stress and strain of it all was stated as simple fact, largely without the aid of personal sidelight; the highest authorities had spoken and might forever be quoted: clearly these were books to be passed down to one's sons and grandsons. But those same sons and grandsons engaged in a still greater war -- and sang of "Fritzy Boy" and "Madelon." Perhaps in more mature middle age they may be accorded solid pabulum of history as authenticated by their chiefs. In the meantime they must content themselves with the memoirs of Liggett, Bullard and Harbord, generals who make little attempt to rescue Clio from her maze of facts or to instruct future generations.

And well may they be content with those memoirs if they value the personalities of their chiefs and the spirit of the war. There are few better pen pictures of men than Bullard's little etchings of Liggett, Summerall, Harbord, Lassiter, Pétain, Mangin and Degoutte, or than Harbord's more detailed portraiture of Pershing, Dawes and Joffre, and his cynical sketch of House...