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Updated: May 16, 2025
What were we doing, what was the rest of the world doing, in those days when the Hanoverian peasant's son, Scharnhorst, and Clausewitz were about to lay the foundations of this German army, now the most perfect machine of its kind in the world?
Consequently we get the conception of two armed nations flinging themselves one upon the other, and continuing the struggle with the utmost strength and energy they can command till one or other is no longer capable of resistance. This Clausewitz called "Absolute War." But his practical experience and ripe study of history told him at once that "Real War" was something radically different.
Clausewitz maintains that he should already have removed his headquarters to Nivelles; had he done so and hurried up all available troops towards the Soignies-Quatre Bras line, his Waterloo fame would certainly have gained in solidity.
So little progress has been made in this respect that most deliberations are merely verbal contentions which rest on no firm foundation, and end either in every one retaining his own opinion, or in a compromise from considerations of mutual respect a middle course of no actual value." Clausewitz, On War, p. ix.
Further than this, it fulfilled the condition to which Clausewitz attached the greatest importance that is to say, the seizure of the particular object so far from weakening the home defence of Japan would have the effect of greatly increasing the strength of her position. Though offensive in effect and intention it was also, like Frederick's seizure of Saxony, a sound piece of defensive work.
"Then," says Clausewitz, "the spark in the breast of the commander must rekindle hope in the hearts of his men, and so long as he is equal to this he remains their master.
During the eighteenth century there had been a large number of cases of war actually limited by contingent that is, cases where a country not having a vital interest in the object made war by furnishing the chief belligerent with an auxiliary force of a stipulated strength. It was in the sixth chapter of his last book that Clausewitz intended to deal with this anomalous form of hostility.
The German war plans already cited, which were based respectively on the occupation of Belgium and Alsace-Lorraine, and Jomini's remarks on Napoleon's disastrous Russian campaign serve well to show the point to which continental strategists have advanced along the road which Clausewitz was the first to indicate clearly.
It remained for Clausewitz, unknown to himself, to discover that explanation, and he reveals it to us in the inherent strength of limited war when means and conditions are favourable for its use.
He got them unbrokenly for ten minutes Wontner and Clausewitz mixed, but Wontner in a film of priceless cognac distinctly on top. When The Infant came back, he renewed his clear-spoken demand that Infant should take his depositions. I supposed this to be a family trait of the Wontners, whom I had been visualising for some time past even to the third generation.
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