An uninspiring nine-man, one-woman field of candidates will face Bostonians voting in tomorrow's preliminary Mayoralty election. Faced with ranting of School Committee Member Mrs. Louise Day Hicks, the arrogance of former Redevelopment Administrator Edward J. Logue, and seven non-entities in the race, voters would do well to choose Secretary of State Kevin H. White.

White, the Commonwealth's tireless and intelligent Secretary of State, is an impressive vote-getter, undefeated in four statewide elections.

The scion of an old, well-established Boston political family, White is no parochial Bostonian. He combines an ability to do business with district ward-heelers and a keen, compassionate sense of the city's racial problems. There is no doubt that the progress of the New Boston--with infusions of new business and federal aid--will continue under White's shrewd leadership.

With her platform of "Boston for the Bostonians", and her vigorous opposition to what she calls state-run "social engineering," Mrs. Hicks is the strongest of the parochial Dorchester-South Boston-Charlestown candidates who see Boston ideally as a collection of isolated neighborhoods governed by bulky inbred, slow-moving city bureaucracy. Similar in outlook, with minor idiosyncratic variations, are School Committee member John "Make Boston first, but first make Boston safe" McDonough, State Senator Stephen C. Davenport (D-Jamaica Plain).

At the other extreme are the candidates who resemble Chamber of Commerce Bostonian and New Boston architect John F. Collins, the city's outgoing mayor. Former Redevelopment Administrator Edward J. Logue. Logue, who is not a native Bostonian, sees the city as most outsiders do. He'd like to keep on building and revitalizing the downtown and Back Bay Central Business Districts, the old port of Boston, and other decaying neighborhoods close to the city's center.

Logue has a swift temper; he is used to dealing with a high-powered, swift-moving, technically-oriented bureaucracy. Working easily with persistent, often stubborn, occasionally inarticulate people has never been one of his strong points. Snide and inflexible when things aren't going his way, Logue lacks the diplomacy that would commend him to the sensitive office of Mayor.

As the city's racial problems grow more heated, as the power of the Central Business District bankers and businessmen grows greater, and as the city's people grow more confused by the demands placed on them by society and the Commonwealth, the need for a sensitive, knowledgeable, patient Mayor increases. Only one candidate has these qualities and the confidence of the city's district leaders--Kevin H. White. turning film, but there has not been the kind of reaction that Watkins hoped for. Nor will there be. And this, as much as the torn limbs of the dead and the dead faces of the survivors, is what is truly frightening about the movie.

We have been shown many times the horrors of Hiroshima's twisted victims and the Stranglove minds who are eager to update Hiroshima, and that massage has all but lost its message. For years directors of anti-war films have been hoping that the anti-war film will be the anti-war film to end all war.

The virtue of the War Game is that it is not simply an anti-war film. It is a film about a government which has deliberately kept its citizenry in the dark about these horrors--instead calmly instructing readers of a civil defense pamphlet to be sure to carry their bank books with them into homemade shelters. It is also about a citizenry which prefers not to face the horrors. "Strontium-90?" blinks a man-on-the-street interviewee. "That's some kind of gun-powder, isn't it?" The film pans again and again from complacent ignorance to horrible consequence, asking, in effect, after each bland remark, "But what if...?"

The film starts with a hypothetical Communist attack on West Berlin. The British government declares a state of national emergency, and the scene changes to Rochester to see how people react. And they react like animals. A beefy homeowner proudly points to his homemade sandbag shelter and, lying next to it, a shotgun for use on neighbors who try to push their way in. (The average family, as building contractors and lumber dealers push up prices, can afforod one sandbag and a few boards.)

"There's this monster in the attic, but we don't want to admit we've built it or even admit that it's there," says Watkins.In his true-life-story-which-could-easily-happen-to-you-and-yours, he tries to make us face the monster. The actors are for the most part local citizens, amateurs. The film was made on location, much of it with a hand-held camera. The result is a film as gripping--and as distant--as any documentary of Nazi war crimes.

Watkins has already made his point. A film about silence has, in its turn, been silenced. And, beyond the momentary horror, its audience will also remain silent.