THE WAGES OF WAR 1816-1965: A STATISTICAL HANDBOOK.

Melvin Small '60 and J. David Singer. New York: JohnWiley & Sons, Inc., 1972. 419 pp. $15.95.

War, it is often said, is the second oldest profession. Yet it is one of the least studied and understood, though probably the most written about. Written history began with Herodotus' account of the Persian Wars, and most history down to the 19th Century chronicled wars and the deeds of warriors. But there was no theory of warfare until Clausewitz, no set of principles until Jomini, and no systematic description of war as a social phenomenon until the 1930's with the work of the sociologist Pitrim A. Sorokin (Social andCultural Dynamics), the political scientist Quincy Wright (A Study of War), and the British physicist Lewis F. Richardson (Statistics of Deadly Quarrels). What these men and their associates attempted to do in their pioneering studies was to seek a better understanding of the nature of war, especially its causes and consequences, through quantitative analysis of a large number of conflicts. In this way, they hoped it might be possible to control, eliminate, or find a less bloody substitute for war.

One of the problems of this approach is the difficulty of obtaining relevant, accurate, and comparable data on a large number of widely scattered conflicts, ranging in size from small guerrilla wars of brief duration to wars involving millions of soldiers and dozens of nations and lasting many years. To overcome this difficulty a "Correlates of War" project was established at the University of Michigan, utilizing the latest techniques and tools of the social sciences and financed by the Carnegie Corporation and the National Science Foundation. From time to time during the seven years since the establishment of the project. Professors Singer and Small have reported on their progress, but now, in this detailed and documented volume, they have given us the first full-scale report of their work. The result is impressive, providing a wide variety of data on war, including type (i.e., interstate, colonial, imperial), intensity or severity, magnitude, casualties, duration, participants, etc., on 93 separate conflicts in the 150 years since the Battle of Waterloo. It is a meticulous and carefully researched work, replete with tables and graphs, utilizing the capabilities of the computer as well as the literature on war. Appendices, notes, and bibliography add greatly to its value. If the path to peace lies in this direction, Messrs. Singer and Small will have made an important contribution.

The nationally known Dartmouth professor whospecializes in military history, Mr. Morton isDaniel Webster Professor and the author ofseveral volumes of the official history of WorldWar II, written as the U.S. Army's DeputyChief Historian.