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Generals of genius draw from the human heart ability to execute a surprising variety of movements which vary the routine; the mediocre ones, who have no eyes to read readily therein, are doomed to the worst errors. Ardant du Picq, haunted by the need of a doctrine which would correct existing evils and disorders, was continually returning to the fountain-head.
These truths are eternal. This whole volume is but their masterful development. They prove that together with audacious sincerity in the coordination of facts and an infallible judgment, Ardant du Picq possessed prescience in the highest degree. His prophetic eye distinguished sixty years ago the constituent principles of a good army. These are the principles which lead to victory.
Because the officers are lazy and try to get out of a difficulty by giving themselves the least trouble possible." In default of exceptional generals who remold in some campaigns, with a superb stroke, the damaged or untempered military metal, it is of importance to supply it with the ideals of Ardant du Picq. Those who are formed by his image, by his book, will never fall into error.
Unswerved by popular ideas, by the artificial, by the trifles of treaties, by the chimera of theories, by the charlatanism of bulletins, by the nonsense of romantic fiction, by the sentimentalities of vain chivalry, Ardant du Picq, triumphant in history, is even more the incomparable master in the field of his laborious days and nights, the field of war itself.
Carried away by the author's historical and philosophical faculties, he soars without difficulty to the plane of Ardant du Picq. In like manner, du Picq ranges easily from the most mediocre military operations to the analysis of the great functions of policy of government and the evolution of nations.
Ardant du Picq, according to the Annual Register, commanded but a regiment. He was fitted for the first rank of the most exalted. He fell at the hour when France was thrown into frightful chaos, when all that he had foreseen, predicted and dreaded, was being terribly fulfilled. New ideas, of which he was the unknown trustee and unacknowledged prophet, triumphed then at our expense.
It is almost as though courage had become a superfluous and embarrassing factor. Nothing is more likely to poison the army. Ardant du Picq is the best specific against the heresies and the follies of ignorance or of pedantry. Here are some phrases of unerring truth. They ought to be impressed upon all memories, inscribed upon the walls of our military schools.
In tracing a portrait so much resembling bellicose and conquering Prussia, the sharp eye of Ardant du Picq had recognized clearly the danger which immediately threatened us and which his deluded and trifling fellow citizens did not even suspect.
Since she must, sooner or later, take up her idle sword again, may France learn from him to fight well, for herself and for humanity! ERNEST JUDET. PARIS, October 10, 1902. Ardant du Picq has said little about himself in his writings. He veils with care his personality. His life and career, little known, are the more worthy of the reader's interest, because the man is as original as the writer.
They will learn therefrom the art of leading and training our young soldiers and can hope to retrieve the cruel losses of their predecessors. Ardant du Picq amazes one by his tenacity and will power which, without the least support from the outside, animate him under the trying conditions of his period of isolated effort.
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