THE PROFESSION OF ARMS

General Sir John Hackett

BCA 1984

What is the military profession? How did it come into being and how has it developed? What is the professional man-at-arms, a man dedicated to fighting or a guardian of peace? What role does he play in a world where superpowers confront each other with weapons of mass destruction? What role ought he play? Indeed, is he necessary at all? General Sir John Hackett addresses these and many other questions in this book.

The Profession of Arms ranges across 4000 years of military history to uncover the forces that have shaped the professional man-at-arms of today and to find there lessons of relevance to today – and tomorrow.

Sir John traces the development of the military profession from its roots among the citizen-soldiers of Athens and the soldier-citizens of Sparta. Rome, with its long enduring legions, rises once more for us and falls. Chivalry has its day, and modern nation states emerge. Prussia dominates the development of the profession in the late eighteenth century. Napoleonic France, with its massive national army, moves on towards total war.

Throughout the nineteenth century, political thought and military practice develop along lines leading in the same direction. In the twentieth century, two world wars leave us with the possibility that total war between sovereign nation states may now lead to total destruction. There must never be a total war involving the full use of present means of destruction, Sir John argues, but there will always be warfare between groups of men. This inevitable violence must be properly managed if a slide into nuclear war through miscalculation or mischance is to be avoided. This is why an understanding of the role of the professional man-at-arms today is so important.

The text, now held to be a classic, is based on the influential Lees-Knowles lectures given by Sir John in Cambridge in 1962. These have been brought up-to-date and amplified and enriched by the addition of a brilliant essay on leadership.

Both the book and the dust jacket are in very good condition.