[If there's one moral that can safely be drawn from the succession of gags and incidents which provide M∗A∗S∗H's] sprawling narrative structure, it's that inflexible attitudes to war (chauvinistic, religious, bureaucratic or heroic) lead straight to the strait-jacket. (p. 161)

[Much of M∗A∗S∗H's] ironic tension derives from the contrast between the life-saving activity of the doctors and the destructive impulse of war. And this idea comes closer than most to being spelled out when two recalcitrant surgeons commandeer a Japanese military hospital to treat a local whore's baby: 'We stumbled on him. We didn't want him, but we couldn't back away from him.' But stronger though less explicit than the contrast between medicine and militarism is that between soldier and civilian…. And one suspects the real source of official displeasure with the film is the way its enlisted characters obdurately persist in...