The Changing Face of War: Learning from History

J.L. Granatstein, distinguished research professor emeritus of history
at York University, is the author of Who Killed Canadian History?, and
co-author of The Canadian 100: The 100 Most Influential Canadians of the
20th Century and the Dictionary of Canad

Books of essays, as someone once said, are too often held together only
by their binding. To some extent that might describe this book, a
collection of M.A. papers by students in the War Studies Program at the
Royal Military College in Kingston. Most of the authors are serving
officers, and their essays range widely over military history, strategy,
and tactics; most are based on secondary sources, sometimes very thin
sources. Only one paper has much Canadian content, and even that paper
argues that the Canadian Corps of the Great War owed much of its success
to British staff officers. There are papers on Russian, German,
Vietnamese, and Chinese tactics or leaders, on naval riverine tactics,
on computers and strategy, and on Stealth technology.

The volume has its uses. It demonstrates that serving Canadian Forces
officers are not ill-educated; that the War Studies Program at the RMC
has standards, and is unafraid to expose its graduates’ papers to
public perusal; and that strategic thought, never something that
Canadians were good at, now has some devotees in the military. All these
are good things; so are most of the essays.