The Future of Militarism: an Examination of F. Scott Oliver's Ordeal by Battle

Publisher Marketing: Those who, like Mr. F. S. Oliver, are concerned about the power of the Party System, have many grounds for comfort. When leaders of parties agree to a patriotic truce, any half-dozen of their normal adherents can see to it that domestic strife shall continue. You have only to say that you put country above party and you are self-absolved. ("Ordeal by Battle") Frederick Scott Oliver, or F. S. Oliver (1864-1934), was a prominent British political writer and businessman who advocated tariff reform and imperial union for the British Empire. He played an important role in the Round Table movement, collaborated in the downfall of Prime Minister H. H. Asquith's wartime government and its replacement by David Lloyd George in 1916, and pressed for "home rule all round" to resolve the political conflict between Britain and Irish nationalists. From Press Opinion: -"The book is a plea for national service in its widest sense, the complete organisation of Britain with a view to victory. 'Under conditions of modern warfare it is not only armies which need to be disciplined, but whole nations.' The moral is brilliantly pointed, and we may be sure that Mr. Oliver will not lack disciples to emphasise it. But the book is more than an argument in favour of a special policy. It is a storehouse of political thought, set out with a precision and an eloquence which have long been absent from the literature of politics, . . . A rare eloquence and 'a wealth of illustration which recalls Burke. Mr. Oliver is incapable of taking a bad point, and he has the most scrupulous intellectual honesty. Every page is lit up by some memorable phrase. Mr. Oliver never fulminates, but his irony is as merciless as it is urbane and delicate. . . . The war has produced a crop of analyses of German aims and the modern German temperament. The chapter on the subject in this volume seems to us to surpass in insight and fairness anything else written on the subject."