SOURCE: "Men at War," in Commentary, Vol. 7, No. 6, June, 1949, pp. 608-09.

Becker is an educator and author whose books include Paris and the Arts, 1851–1896 (1971) and Master European Realists of the Nineteenth Century (1982). In the following review of Guard of Honor, he contends that while the military detail is authentic, the plot is weak and lacks objectivity and balance in its view of military life.

The slice of life or the cross-section has been used by novelists to give a balanced and objective view of a world too often subject to distortion because of faulty vision or special pleading. James Gould Cozzens, in his Pulitzer Prize novel, [Guard of Honor], uses the technique with skill and urbanity. Yet his very success brings the value of the device into question.

For millions of us, civilian as well as military combatants, the most abiding memory of the late war is of...