Theory of war

“ Indeed every nation, of a military disposition, and addicted to warlike pursuits, considers war not merely as a means of repelling the attacks of [pg 262] enemies, or of gaining plunder or territory by being itself the invader. ”

“ Gradually, I dreamed, the firearms became more and more destructive, while all the elements, and everything in existence, were pressed into the service of war; and so absorbed were my human beings in the perfecting of war that they invented a subsidiary state of affairs called 'Peace,' which, on referring to these creatures' dictionaries, I found to be 'An interval necessary to the effective preparation of war.' The nations were never altogether in their element during these intervals; and, of course, any protracted peace meant the gradual impoverishment of the soil for want of the fertiliser. ”

“ While the guns roar from the North Sea to the Mediterranean, and the greatest armed host that history has ever known is still locked in a life-and-death struggle on a dozen fronts, another war, more potent and permanent perhaps than the one which now engulfs Europe, lurks beyond the distant horizon of peace. ”

“ But whether wars result from sheer temper, national "hot fits," or not, it is quite certain that the lengthy preparation for war, the condition of armed peace, the burden of armaments which is almost worse than an occasional war, does not result therefrom. ”

“ The idea of war altogether made her feel uneasy, uneasy. When men began organized fighting with each other it seemed to her as if the poles of the universe were cracking, and the whole might go tumbling into the bottomless pit. ”

“ This warfare, I am aware, is a thing of which many know nothing. Talk to them about it, and they are ready to set you down as a madman, an enthusiast or a fool. And yet it is as real and true as any war the world has ever seen. It has its hand–to–hand conflicts and its wounds. It has its watchings and fatigues. It has its sieges and assaults. It has its victories and its defeats. Above all, it has consequences which are awful, tremendous and most peculiar. In earthly warfare the consequences to nations are often temporary and remediable. ”

“ The preparation for battle is so vast in its scale, so unceasing, so increasing, so far in the lead over all other efforts among men, that it seems like a new affirmation of belief that war is the natural order of the world. ”

“ I believe that every people has the right to defend its existence, sword in hand; I know that for many years to come war will be the customary method of settling international disputes, [Pg 208] and that methods of warfare will be both honourable and, alas! ”

“ Every nation is fighting in self-defence, every nation is fighting to destroy the tyranny of armaments, every nation is fighting to show that unprovoked aggression cannot be practised with impunity. Every nation pays homage to peace by maintaining that its enemies began the war. ”

“ In the first place, armies in all ages, past, present, and to come, have been, are, and will be calculated for offensive and defensive war; while therefore war subsists among men, armies in one way or other, will be necessary. ”

“ To believe it possible, to maintain peace, at present, therefore, would be a dangerous blindness: war surrounds us on all sides, and it is on the field of battle alone, that peace can be regained by France. ”

“ I am persuaded that we are not on the immediate verge of a war; nor is a war between civilized nations any longer thinkable. We are on the verge of peace. A war of battles is a phenomenon which the consciousness of civilized nations has got beyond. ”

“ Again and again the world had been assured that war would break down with its own weight, that no war could be financed beyond a certain brief period, that the very nature of modern warfare, with its terrible engines of destruction, made swift decisions a necessity. ”

“ If it be ‘yes, that he will fire at you if you attack the French under his protection,’ then, if you have force enough, make your attack on the whole body, and take them all if you can, for I should consider such an answer as a perfect declaration of war. ”

“ I was not disturbed by any inkling of the shadow of a possibility that one could think of war’s not being in the world at all. As well might one think of leaves not being on the trees, or waves on the sea. Why, war is the form in which human history accomplishes itself: the founding of empires, the settlement of controversies, are seen to by war. ”

“ The greatest difference between the present peace movement and previous ones is that now among many of those who study the problem the offensive-defensive relationship in warfare is being not only questioned but rejected. ”

“ Then will war stand forth before their view in all its hideousness, its features distorted by rage, and its garments dripping with blood,—a mournful and a fearful spectacle. Oh! when shall the time come, that the true character of War—its horrors, its vices, its crimes, unredeemed by a single trait properly its own,—shall be understood. ”

“ To watchers of the present conflict it seems an intolerable thought that, after the fighting is done, we should once more return to a condition of “armed peace,” with jealous, distrustful, and revengeful Powers piling up armaments and plotting singly or in groups against their neighbors until Europe is plunged into another war more terrible, more bloody, and more costly than this. ”

“ The gory field of Europe is the inevitable consequence. So sure as martial ideas are fabricated, so sure as these ideas are persistently entertained, so sure will war result, for it is the very essence of ideas to issue into action. ”

“ Modern wars are not internecine wars, in which the killing of the enemy is the object. The destruction of the enemy in modern war, and, indeed, modern war itself, are means to obtain that object of the belligerent which lies beyond the war. ”

“ War is the highest exercise of that violence, and modern war is no simple reversion to savagery. The General Staffs would not be needed if war were only an uncomplicated orgy of homicide—a mere getting-mad and throat-cutting season in the life of man. Quite to the contrary, modern war—as a function of modern society—reflects the institutional, political complexity from which it comes. A modern battle is a formal, ceremonialized and technically intricate operation. ”

“ It would seem that there are forces visibly at work that make for peace, and this in spite of the bloody history of man and the huge armaments which may mean the fear of war rather than the love of it. ”

“ All nations picture their side as defensive. Previous peace movements accepted this attitude. Accordingly, when a conflict arose, these opponents of war usually yielded to the pressure because they thought their nation was being attacked by an aggressor. ”

“ Nations shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nations shall not lift up swords against nations, nor shall they learn war any more.’ This prophecy was rather hasty. ”

“ Unless the great states which have set this hideous example agree to call a halt and to knit their subjects into a pacific, united Europe, war is the only issue I can perceive. And when I say war, I mean a conflict which will surpass in horror the most brutal armed conflicts known to human history, and entail distress more widespread and more terrible than living men can realize. ”

“ Let the general possibility of war be left open, in Heaven's name, for the imagination to dally with. Let the soldiers dream of killing, as the old maids dream of marrying. But organize in every conceivable way the practical machinery for making each successive chance of war abortive. ”

“ The art and science of war has so enhanced the means of defense and taken the pomp and circumstance from war that all the world in arms can not again conquer and abjectly subjugate an enlightened, homogeneous and loyal people of fifty millions. This war can be settled only by exhaustion of many years and a truce of perhaps a year to compose many compromises. ”

“ In the plan of a war it is necessary to settle which it is to be in accordance with our powers and resources of attack compared with the enemy's resources for defence, and where our culminating point of victory is likely to be, on this side of the enemy's capital or beyond it. ”

“ In the middle of the twenty-second century, every nation had a standard defense. The weapons of war of each were equal--not in proportion to size, but actually, since man-power no longer counted high. ”

“ Every new gun, every new ship was an act of war. The nations were already in collision. They lived in distrust and fear and hate of one another. They carried on an existence of menace and wrath."
We will not think sanely about war. We talk as though the world had no Righteous Ruler, and reason as though order was not earth's first law. Whatever a nation sows it reaps. If it sows armaments, it reaps world-shaking wars. War is an effect of obvious causes ; and we must get at the causes in order to stop the effects; and one of them is the continuance of Europe as an armed camp. ”

“ When the art of war, too, has gradually grown up to be a very intricate and complicated science; when the event of war ceases to be determined, as in the first ages of society, by a single irregular skirmish or battle ”

“ Instead of improving, however, many nations renowned for their knowledge in the art of war, have totally neglected their military institutions in time of peace, and as a very natural consequence, frequently drawn upon themselves invasion, defeat, and ruin. ”

“ The means of attack and defence appear to have been among the first essays of human invention, and the miserable art of war has, perhaps, in succeeding ages, called forth the powers of the human mind in a greater degree than any of the arts of peace. ”

“ Comprehension of warfare, therefore, consists, first, in the apprehension and acceptance—the mental grasp—of a few simple general principles, elucidated and formulated by admitted authorities upon the subject, and, second, in copious illustration of these principles by the application of them to numerous specific instances, drawn from actual experiences of war—from history. ”

“ The cardinal principles on which the art of war is based are few and unchangeable, resembling in this the code of morality; but their application varies as the theatre of the war, the genius and temper of the people engaged, and the kind of arms employed. ”

“ We have seen that those ideas maintained the warfare unceasingly, it being the first principle of life to find an outlet for the ideas of the mind and the impulses of the blood, and to war for them when they are thwarted; and we saw that warfare successful in winning back much of what had been lost, and especially winning back the land on which the old polity had been based. ”

“ If the terrible instruments of destruction now possessed by the nations seem to shorten wars, will not, on the other hand, the battles be more deadly? And in this century, when the unexpected plays such an important role, may not war bring about the most sudden and unforseen results? ”

“ During the early part of the war the eyes of all, in every land, who felt an interest in the struggle, were directed to it, and it was generally supposed that it must soon yield to the apparently overwhelming force that the enemy was preparing to hurl against it. ”

“ Let us learn to fear the fleets and armies of the enemy, much less than those iniquities at home which this alarming dispensation may be intended to chastize.
The war which the French have declared against us, is of a kind altogether unexampled in every respect; insomuch that human wisdom is baffled when it would pretend to conjecture what may be the event. ”

“ Then you mean to say, and this applies also to all commanders and offices involved, that the question of whether or not a war is a war of aggression, or whether it has to be conducted for the defense of a country, in other words, whether a war is a just war or not, was not in the field of your professional deliberations and decisions?
KEITEL: No; that is what I wish to express, since...
DR. NELTE: What you are giving is an explanation. But you are not only a soldier, you are also an individual with a life of your own. ”

“ Peace-loving nations are confronted by a Power which has prepared for war for forty years, equipped in every detail as no Power has ever been equipped before, with a docile and well-disciplined people trained to arms, fortified by a well-founded belief in their invincibility, reinforced by armies of spies in every country, hostile or neutral. ”

“ The increase in armies, the frightful implements of slaughter, the total failure of the peace propaganda—they have all defied civilization!
“And then, too, the old, red-blooded emotions of battle have all been eliminated by the mechanical conditions of modern warfare in which men and women are just so many units, automata. ”

“ It is certain that, during the last fifty years, the period in which peace societies have been at work, armies have been growing steadily larger, the means of destruction have been multiplying, and wars have been as frequent and as bloody as ever before; and, what is worse, the popular heart goes into war as it has never done in past ages. ”

“ When two civilized nations go to war, each strains every nerve to mow the other down, to cut his throat, to mutilate and kill him,—by fair means or foul,—and when the battle is lost and won, they commiserate and sympathize with them, and grieve to see so many hundreds of their fellowmen writhing in agony on the battlefield. ”

“ Indeed, apart from certain restrictions, everything may eventually be the object of a means of warfare, provided the means are legitimate in themselves and are capable of fostering the realisation of the purpose of war. ”

“ I believe that War is Murder. I believe that armies and navies are at bottom the tinsel and braggadocio of oppression and wrong, and I believe that the wicked conquest of weaker and darker nations by nations whiter and stronger but foreshadows the death of that strength. ”