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Updated: May 16, 2025
The truth is, that so long as the Japanese acted on the principles of limited war, as laid down by Clausewitz and Jomini and plainly deducible from our own rich experience, they progressed beyond all their expectations, but so soon as they departed from them and suffered themselves to be confused with continental theories they were surprised by unaccountable failure.
Yorck von Wartenberg: Napoleon als Feldherr, almost supersedes the older authority of Clausewitz, Jomini, Ruestow, and Lossau. The Armies of Austria and Sardinia Montenotte and Millesimo Mondovi and Cherasco Consequences of the Campaign The Plains of Lombardy The Crossing of the Po Advance Toward Milan Lodi Retreat of the Austrians Moral Effects of Lodi.
She had no such preponderance as Clausewitz laid down as a condition precedent to attempting the overthrow of her enemy the employment of unlimited war. Fortunately for her the circumstances did not call for the employment of such extreme means.
Students of Clausewitz may be expected to remember that the art of war does not consist in making raids that are unsuccessful; that war is waged to gain certain great objects; and that the course of hostilities between two powerful antagonists is affected little one way or the other by raids even on a considerable scale.
So also in the naval sphere there may be a life and death struggle for maritime supremacy or hostilities which never rise beyond a blockade. Such a view of the subject was of course a wide departure from the theory of "Absolute War" on which Clausewitz had started working.
[Footnote 44: References as in the preceding chapter. Also: Cathcart: Commentaries on the War in Russia and Germany, 1812 to 1813. Clausewitz: Der Feldzug von 1812 in Russland, der Feldzug von 1813 bis zum Waffenstillstand und der Feldzug von 1814 in Frankreich. Combe: Mémoires sur les campagnes de Russie 1812, de Saxe 1813, de France 1814 et 1815. Jomini: Précis politique et militaire des campagnes de 1812
It is indeed significant of how entirely continental thought had failed to penetrate the subject that in devoting over thirty pages to an enumeration of the principles of oversea expeditions, he, like Clausewitz, does not so much as mention the conquest of Canada; and yet it is the leading case of a weak military Power succeeding by the use of the limited form of war in forcing its will upon a strong one, and succeeding because it was able by naval action to secure its home defence and isolate the territorial object.
Now seeing the world as others had long seen it, they understood that just as with the individuals so with nations the struggle for existence can most easily be conducted by adopting that war-principle of Clausewitz the restless offensive, and not by writing meaningless dispatches.
In the present attempt to render into English this portion of the works of Clausewitz, the translator is sensible of many deficiencies, but he hopes at all events to succeed in making this celebrated treatise better known in England, believing, as he does, that so far as the work concerns the interests of this country, it has lost none of the importance it possessed at the time of its first publication.
Neither Clausewitz, who first impressed upon the German mind the theory of ruthless warfare, nor Bernhardi, nor Treitschke, who did as much to build up the Emperor's political imagination, strike one as bearing particularly German names. There are indeed very grave grounds for the German complaint that Germany has been the victim of alien flattery and alien precedents.
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