Bøger af Louis Morton

The soldier reading these pages would do well to reflect on the wisdom of the statement exhibited in a Japanese shrine: "Woe unto him who has not tasted defeat." Victory too often leads to overconfidence and erases the memory of mistakes. Defeat brings into sharp focus the causes that led to failure and provides a fruitful field of study for those soldiers and laymen who seek in the past lessons for the future. The statesman and the informed citizen reading these pages will realize that our military means as well as our estimates and plans must always be in balance with our long-range national policy. This lesson-signposted by the Battle of Manila Bay; the Treaty of Paris, signed in December 1898 when we decided to keep the Philippines; the Washington Conference of 1921-22; and the Manchurian Crisis of 1931-we ignored before Pearl Harbor. The result was defeat on the field of battle and the loss of the Philippine Islands. The author of The Fall of the Philippines, Louis Morton, served overseas as a historical officer in the South Pacific area and in the Philippines during World War II. Since 1945 he has been chief of the Pacific Section, Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army. He holds a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Duke University, is the author of a volume on American colonial history, and has written a number of articles dealing with military affairs.

For the United States, full involvement in World War II began and ended in the Pacific Ocean. Although the accepted grand strategy of the war was the defeat of Germany first, the sweep of Japanese victory in the weeks and months after Pearl Harbor impelled the United States to move as rapidly as it could to stem the enemy tide of conquest in the Pacific. Shocked as they were by the initial attack, the American people were also united in their determination to defeat Japan, and the Pacific war became peculiarly their own affair. In this great theater it was the United States that ran the war, and had the determining voice in answering questions of strategy and command as they arose. The natural environment made the prosecution of war in the Pacific of necessity an interservice effort, and any real account of it must, as this work does, take into full account the views and actions of the Navy as well as those of the Army and its Air Forces. These are the factors-a predominantly American theater of war covering nearly one-third the globe, and a joint conduct of war by land, sea, and air on the largest scale in American history-that make this volume on the Pacific war of particular significance today. It is the capstone of the eleven volumes published or being published in the Army's World War II series that deal with military operations in the Pacific area, and it is one that should command wide attention from the thoughtful public as well as the military reader in these days of global tension.

The soldier reading these pages would do well to reflect on the wisdom of the statement exhibited in a Japanese shrine: "Woe unto him who has not tasted defeat." Victory too often leads to overconfidence and erases the memory of mistakes. Defeat brings into sharp focus the causes that led to failure and provides a fruitful field of study for those soldiers and laymen who seek in the past lessons for the future.The statesman and the informed citizen reading these pages will realize that our military means as well as our estimates and plans must always be in balance with our long-range national policy. This lesson - signposted by the Battle of Manila Bay; the Treaty of Paris, signed in December 1898 when we decided to keep the Philippines; the Washington Conference of 1921-22; and the Manchurian Crisis of 1931 - we ignored before Pearl Harbor. The result was defeat on the field of battle and the loss of the Philippine Islands.The author of The Fall of the Philippines, Louis Morton, served overseas as a historical officer in the South Pacific area and in the Philippines during World War II. Since 1945, he has been chief of the Pacific Section, Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army. He holds a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Duke University, is the author of a volume on American colonial history, and has written a number of articles dealing with military affairs.Work on this volume was begun in 1947. The reader may gain some idea of the size of the task of writing this history by an appraisal of The Sources. Orlando Ward Major General, United States Army Chief of Military History