Read Ebook: The Reality of War: A Companion to Clausewitz by Murray Stewart Lygon Atteridge A Hilliard Andrew Hilliard Editor

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Armies were supported out of the Treasury, which the sovereign regarded partly as his privy purse, at least as a resource belonging to the Government, and not to the people. Relations with other States, except with respect to a few commercial subjects, mostly concerned only the interests of the Treasury or of the Government, not those of the people; at least ideas tended everywhere in that way. The Cabinets therefore looked upon themselves as the owners and administrators of large estates, which they were continually seeking to increase, without the tenants on those estates being particularly interested in this improvement.

The people, therefore, who in the Tartar invasions were everything in war, who in the old republics and in the Middle Ages were of great consequence, were in the eighteenth century absolutely nothing directly.

In this manner, in proportion as the Government separated itself more from the people, and regarded itself as the State, war became more and more exclusively a business of the Government, which it carried on by means of the money in its coffers and the idle vagabonds it could pick up in its own and neighbouring countries. The army was a State property, very expensive, and not to be lightly risked in battle. "In its signification war was only diplomacy somewhat intensified, a more vigorous way of negotiating, in which battles and sieges were substituted for diplomatic notes."

"Plundering and devastating the enemy's country were no longer in accordance with the spirit of the age." "They were justly looked upon as unnecessary barbarity." "War, therefore, confined itself more and more, both as regards means and ends, to the army itself. The army, with its fortresses and some prepared positions, constituted a State in a State, within which the element of war slowly consumed itself. All Europe rejoiced at its taking this direction, and held it to be the necessary consequence of the spirit of progress."

So think many in this country to-day. They are only a hundred years behind the times.

"The plan of a war on the part of the State assuming the offensive in those times consisted generally in the conquest of one or other of the enemy's provinces; the plan of the defender was to prevent this. The plan of campaign was to take one or other of the enemy's fortresses, or to prevent one of our own being taken; it was only when a battle became unavoidable for this purpose that it was sought for and fought. Whoever fought a battle without this unavoidable necessity, from mere innate desire of gaining a victory, was reckoned a general with too much daring." For armies were too precious to be lightly risked. "Winter quarters, in which the mutual relations of the two parties almost entirely ceased, formed a distinct limit to the activity which was considered to belong to one campaign." "As long as war was universally conducted in this manner, all was considered to be in the most regular order." "Thus there was eminence and perfection of every kind, and even Field-Marshal Daun, to whom it was chiefly owing that Frederick the Great completely attained his object, and Maria Theresa completely failed in hers, notwithstanding that could still pass for a great general."

Beyond this stage of military thought, many in this country have not yet advanced.

If only our politicians could learn this old lesson of the French Revolution! For many, too many, of them appear to derive their ideas of war to-day from some dim reminiscent recollections of school histories of the wars in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

To continue: "After all this was perfected by the hand of Bonaparte, this military power based on the strength of the whole nation, marched over Europe, smashing everything in pieces so surely and certainly, that where it only encountered the old-fashioned armies the result was not doubtful for a moment.

"A reaction, however, awoke in due time. In Spain the war became of itself an affair of the people." In Austria. In Russia. "In Germany Prussia rose up the first, made the war a national cause, and without either money or credit, and with a population reduced one-half, took the field with an army twice as strong as in 1806. The rest of Germany followed the example of Prussia sooner or later." "Thus it was that Germany and Russia, in the years 1813 and 1814, appeared against France with about a million of men."

"Under these circumstances the energy thrown into the conduct of war was quite different." "In eight months the theatre of war was removed from the Oder to the Seine. Proud Paris had to bow its head for the first time; and the redoubtable Bonaparte lay fettered on the ground."

"Thus, therefore the element of war, freed from all conventional restrictions, broke loose with all its natural force. The cause was the participation of the people in this great affair of State, and this participation arose partly from the effects of the French Revolution on the internal affairs of other countries, partly from the threatening attitude of the French towards all nations.

REFLECTIONS

This is so true, that every war since the days of Clausewitz has made its truth more apparent. Since he wrote, the participation of the people in war has become, not a revolutionary fact, but an organized fact, an ordinary fact in the everyday life of nations. To-day every State except Great Britain, securely based on the system of the universal training of its sons to arms, stands ready to defend its interests with the whole concentrated power, physical, intellectual, and material, of its whole manhood. Consequently, European war, as Clausewitz foresaw, "will only take place on account of great interests closely affecting the people." The character of such war will be absolute, the object of its action will be the downfall of the foe, and not till the foe lies powerless on the ground will it be supposed possible to stop. In the prosecution of such a national war the means available, the energy and the effort called forth, will be without limits. Such must be the conflicts of nations-in-arms.

PUBLIC OPINION IN WAR

"War belongs, not to the province of arts and sciences, but to the province of social life. It is a conflict of great interests which is settled by bloodshed, and only in that respect is it different from others. It would be better, instead of comparing it with any art, to liken it to trade, which is also a conflict of human interests and activities; and it is still more like state policy, which again, on its part, may be looked upon as a kind of trade on a great scale. Besides, state policy is the womb in which war is developed, in which its outlines lie hidden in a rudimentary state, like the qualities of living creatures in their germs."

These conflicts of interest can bring about gradually such a state of feeling that "even the most civilized nations may burn with passionate hatred of each other." It is an unpleasant fact for the philosopher, for the social reformer, to contemplate, but history repeats and repeats the lesson. Still more, "It is quite possible for such a state of feeling to exist between two States that a very trifling political motive for war may produce an effect quite disproportionate--in fact, a perfect explosion."

"War is a wonderful trinity, composed of the original violence of its elements--hatred and animosity--which may be looked upon as blind instinct; of the play of probabilities and chance, which make it a free activity of the soul; and of the subordinate nature of a political instrument, by which it belongs purely to the reason.

"These three tendencies are deeply rooted in the nature of the subject. A theory which would leave any one of them out of account would immediately become involved in such a contradiction with the reality, that it might be regarded as destroyed at once by that alone."

So much for the influence of Public Opinion in producing war. Now for its influence in and during war.

"There are three principal objects in carrying on war," says Clausewitz.

" To conquer and destroy the enemy's armed force.

" To get possession of the material elements of aggression, and of the other sources of existence of the hostile army.

"To attain the first of these objects, the chief operation must be directed against the enemy's principal army, for it must be beaten before we can follow up the other two objects with success.

"In order to seize the material forces, operations are directed against those points at which those resources are chiefly concentrated: principal towns, magazines, great fortresses. On the road to these the enemy's principal force, or a considerable part of his army, will be encountered.

"Public Opinion is ultimately gained by great victories, and by the possession of the enemy's capital."

REFLECTIONS

In arousing the national spirit to the requisite height of patriotic self-denial and self-sacrifice, in elevating, preserving, and safe-guarding Public Opinion during a great national struggle, much may be hoped for from the patriotism of our Press. Only in fairness to those whose patriotism is self-originating and spontaneous, it must be made compulsory upon ALL, so that no journal may suffer loss of circulation or pecuniary injury thereby.

THE NATURE OF WAR

"It is necessary for us to commence with a glance at the nature of the whole, because it is particularly necessary that, in the consideration of any of the parts, the whole should be kept constantly in view. We shall not enter into any of the abstruse definitions of war used by Publicists. We shall keep to the element of the thing itself, to a duel. War is nothing but a duel on an extensive scale. If we would conceive as a unit the countless numbers of duels which make up a war, we shall do so best by supposing two wrestlers. Each strives by physical force to throw his adversary, and thus to render him incapable of further resistance.

THE POLITICAL NATURE OF WAR

In endeavouring briefly to describe Clausewitz's method of looking at war, one is continually confronted by the difficulty of selecting a few leading ideas out of so many profound thoughts and pregnant passages. However, a selection must be made.

I assign the first place to his conception of war as a part of policy, because that is fundamentally necessary to understand his practical way of looking at things. This point of view is as necessary for the strategist as for the statesman, indeed for every man who would understand the nature of war. For otherwise it is impossible to understand the military conduct of many campaigns and battles, in which the political outweighed the military influence, and led to action incomprehensible almost from a purely military point of view. History is full of such examples.

Owing to the great importance of this point of view, so little understood in this country, I have devoted the next chapter to it alone, so as to bring out Clausewitz's view more in detail. We can, therefore, pass on for the present.

THE CULMINATING POINT OF VICTORY

Secondly, I select his doctrine of the culminating point of victory, because that is essential in order to understand his division of all wars into two classes, according to how far the attack is likely to be able to extend into the hostile country before reaching its culminating point, where reaction may set in.

THE TWO CLASSES OF WARS

From this consideration of the culminating point of victory follow the two classes into which Clausewitz divides all wars.

In Clausewitz's two plans for war with France in 1831, this difference is plain. In the first plan, he considered Prussia, Austria, the German Confederation, and Great Britain united as allies against France,--and with this great superiority of numbers he plans an attack by two armies, each of 300,000 men, one marching on Paris from Belgium, one on Orleans from the Upper Rhine. In the second plan the political conditions had meanwhile changed; Austria and Great Britain were doubtful, and Clausewitz held it accordingly dubious if Prussia and the German Confederation alone could appear before Paris in sufficient strength to guarantee victory in a decisive battle, and with which it would be permissible to venture even beyond Paris. So he proposed to limit the object to the conquest of Belgium, and to attack the French vigorously the moment they entered that country.

Which strict limitation of the object within the means available to attain it is characteristic of Clausewitz's practical way of looking at things. In each plan, however, a vigorous offensive aiming at a decisive victory was to be adopted.

PREPARATION FOR WAR

The third place, in respect to its present-day importance, I assign to Clausewitz's clear statement that--

Nothing could be more clearly stated than this, or place in greater honour peace preparations. Like his doctrine of the importance of gaining public opinion in war, it is one of those almost prophetic utterances which make Clausewitz the germ of modern military evolution.

Clausewitz elsewhere speaks of "every imaginable preparation." We may nowadays almost go so far as to say that preparation is war, and that that nation which is beaten in preparation is already beaten BEFORE the war breaks out.

A failure to understand this fact is a fundamental error at the root of the idea of war as held by civilians, for many of them think that speeches are a substitute for preparations.

It is plain that these three ideas of Clausewitz regarding the nature of war, its political nature, the distinction between wars with an unlimited object and a limited object, and preparations in peace-time, are as much matters for the statesman as for the soldier, and require study and reflection on the part of the former as much as on the part of the latter.

FRICTION IN WAR

I place friction here before the more detailed consideration of actual war, of war in itself, because it is that which distinguishes war on paper from real war, the statesman's and soldier's part from the part of the soldier only, and is therefore to be fitly treated midway between the two.

Friction in war is one of Clausewitz's most characteristic ideas. He always looks at everything from that point of view, and as friction and the fog of war, and their influence on human nature will always be the chief characteristic of real war as distinguished from theoretical war or war on paper, it is chiefly this habit or mode of thought which makes his writings of such great and permanent value. It is also a habit which we ought sedulously to cultivate in ourselves.

WAR ITSELF

"War is an act of violence which in its application knows NO bounds." "Let us not hear of generals who conquer without bloodshed; if a bloody slaughter be a horrible sight, then that is a ground for paying more respect to war , but not for making the sword we wear blunt and blunter by degrees from feelings of humanity, till some one steps in with a sword that is sharp, and lops off the arm from our body."

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