EISENHOWER

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25797, 7 May 1949, Page 3

EISENHOWER

HIS OWN BOOK AND HIS DRIVER’S Crusade in Europe. By Dwight D. Lisenhower. Heinemann. Eisenhower Was My Boss. By Kay Summersby. T. Werner Laurie Students of the history of World is? u ll ? 1U seize upon General Eisenhower’s “Crusade in Europe" with a natural enthusiasm. His account, as Supreme Commander in Europe of the planning and fighting “ J™;, final campaign in North Africa and the Allied assault on Germanoccupied Europe' is modest to the point °* , humility; and the details are etched in so clearly as to make it all understandable by the most unmilitary person. As an American, General Eisenhower could have been pardoned for over-emphasising the part of American arms in the Allied victory; but he has gone about his task with objective detachment. What establishes his impartiality raises his stature as a soldier and a man. Yet no one who reads this book can doubt-that Eisenhower was the chief planning and driving force behind the Allied effort. That it was a truly Allied effort was due in very great measure to the Supreme Cornmander’s genius for inspiring confidence in his associates, to his loyalty to them all, which itself w 6n loyalty to him and to the cause, and. above all to his ability to choose his associates and delegate responsible executive authority to them. Eisenhower’s capacity as an organiser, nis physical endurance, his ability to see the over-all' essentials of what had to be done and to co-ordinate the efforts of different national forces under his command, armed as they were with different theories as well as different weapons, disclose the type of genius that has been described as an infinite capacity for taking p'ains. . The Supreme Commander’s essential fairness to his subordinate commanders is shown in a’ thousand ways through his book. That he made mistakes he freely acknowledges, dnd he is quick to explain and excuse the mistakes and failures of others. He was nevertheless, as he had to be. firm and strong and even ruthless when it came to dealing with failures which in nature and origin endangered the Allied effort and unnecessarily imperilled the lives of fighting men. Kay Summersby’s book, a personal and intimate study of Eisenhower, is the work of a woman who, first the civilian driver of his car, became in time a sort of confidential secretary and saw the war through with him. The book would have been a good and useful ore (in many respects it still is) had not Miss Summersby pressed confidently into subjects about which she could inevitably know only enough to make what she ‘writes embarrassing, very controversial, arfd even mischievous. Miss Summersby is a brave and intelligent woman; but having gained a position on Eisenhower's staff in which she was permitted extraordinary liberties. she has taken advantage of them even to criticise the work of generals in the field. It is a pity she did -not match discretion to her other qualities. Her want of it exposes her to a censure which even involves - General Eisenhower, who took her —so it seems —deeper into his confidence than was wise.