IT IS one of the good fortunes of mankind that actualities do not accord with descriptions. For men are prone to extravagant expressions which, if they represented reality, would defeat all our hopes and dreams. Characteristic of this tendency to overstatement is a current phrase worn smooth in the stream of conversation and official utterance. "Total war" has been used so often and so widely that it is taken for granted and becomes a barrier rather than a guide to understanding the struggle. In some connotations and with proper technical reservations the expression is useful. It indicates the profoundly dislocating effect of war. In a world as delicately intermeshed as ours, social and economic dislocations spread in ever widening circles. In several respects, however, the phrase tends to confuse rather than clarify our ideas. In the first place, this cliche carries an underlying assumption that total war is a new phenomenon in human history. Earlier experience is made to seem invalid, and the concept of a fundamental historical discontinuity is promoted. The assumption and the inferences it stimulates are incorrect and misleading. It is true that mechanized warfare requires the labor of many more workmen for every combat soldier than in earlier times. But the difference is relative. It is true, also, that modern care of casualties necessitates an elaboration of organization which did not previously exist. But the engrossment of the energies of a large section of the populace for the civilian support of the fighting man is no new thing under the sun. In the days of the French Revolution, for example, there was a "people's army," and everyone was expected to perform some function. The decree, read in the Convention on August 23, 1793, ran as follows: