Tuesday, May 29, 2007

A Defence of Rash Vows

If a prosperous modern man, with a high hat and a frock-coat, were to solemnly pledge himself before all his clerks and friends to count the leaves on every third tree in Holland Walk, to hop up to the City on one leg every Thursday, to repeat the whole of Mill's `Liberty' seventy-six times, to collect 300 dandelions in fields belonging to anyone of the name of Brown, to remain for thirty-one hours holding his left ear in his right hand, to sing the names of all his aunts in order of age on the top of an omnibus, or make any such unusual undertaking, we should immediately conclude that the man was mad, or, as it is sometimes expressed, was `an artist in life.' Yet these vows are not more extraordinary than the vows which in the Middle Ages and in similar periods were made, not by fanatics merely, but by the greatest figures in civic and national civilization -- by kings, judges, poets, and priests. One man swore to chain two mountains together, and the great chain hung there, it was said, for ages as a monument of that mystical folly. Another swore that he would find his way to Jerusalem with a patch over his eyes, and died looking for it. It is not easy to see that these two exploits, judged from a strictly rational standpoint, are any saner than the acts above suggested. A mountain is commonly a stationary and reliable object which it is not necessary to chain up at night like a dog. And it is not easy at first sight to see that a man pays a very high compliment to the Holy City by setting out for it under conditions which render it to the last degree improbable that he will ever get there.

But about this there is one striking thing to be noticed. If men behaved in that way in our time, we should, as we have said, regard them as symbols of the `decadence.' But the men who did these things were not decadent; they belonged generally to the most robust classes of what is generally regarded as a robust age. Again, it will be urged that if men essentially sane performed such insanities, it was under the capricious direction of a superstitious religious system. This, again, will not hold water; for in the purely terrestrial and even sensual departments of life, such as love and lust, the medieval princes show the same mad promises and performances, the same misshapen imagination and the same monstrous self-sacrifice. Here we have a contradiction, to explain which it is necessary to think of the whole nature of vows from the beginning. And if we consider seriously and correctly the nature of vows, we shall, unless I am much mistaken, come to the conclusion that it is perfectly sane, and even sensible, to swear to chain mountains together, and that, if insanity is involved at all, it is a little insane not to do so.

The man who makes a vow makes an appointment with himself at some distant time or place. The danger of it is that himself should not keep the appointment. And in modern times this terror of one's self, of the weakness and mutability of one's self, has perilously increased, and is the real basis of the objection to vows of any kind. A modern man refrains from swearing to count the leaves on every third tree in Holland Walk, not because it is silly to do so (he does many sillier things), but because he has a profound conviction that before he had got to the three hundred and seventy-ninth leaf on the first tree he would be excessively tired of the subject and want to go home to tea. In other words, we fear that by that time he will be, in the common but hideously significant phrase, another man. Now, it is this horrible fairy tale of a man constantly changing into other men that is the soul of the decadence. That John Paterson should, with apparent calm, look forward to being a certain General Barker on Monday, Dr. Macgregor on Tuesday, Sir Walter Carstairs on Wednesday, and Sam Slugg on Thursday, may seem a nightmare; but to that nightmare we give the name of modern culture. One great decadent, who is now dead, published a poem some time ago, in which he powerfully summed up the whole spirit of the movement by declaring that he could stand in the prison yard and entirely comprehend the feelings of a man about to be hanged.

`For he that lives more lives than one
More deaths than one must die.'
And the end of all this is that maddening horror of unreality which descends upon the decadents, and compared with which physical pain itself would have the freshness of a youthful thing. The one hell which imagination must conceive as most hellish is to be eternally acting a play without even the narrowest and dirtiest greenroom in which to be human. And this is the condition of the decadent, of the aesthete, of the free-lover. To be everlastingly passing through dangers which we know cannot scare us, to be taking oaths which we know cannot bind us, to defying enemies who we know cannot conquer us -- this is the grinning tyranny of decadence which is called freedom.

Let us turn, on the other hand, to the maker of vows. The man who made a vow, however wild, gave a healthy and natural expression to the greatness of a great moment. He vowed, for example, to chain two mountains together, perhaps a symbol of some great relief of love, or aspiration. Short as the moment of his resolve might be, it was, like all great moments, a moment of immortality, and the desire to say of it exegi monumentum aere perennius was the only sentiment that would satisfy his mind. The modern aesthetic man would, of course, easily see the emotional opportunity; he would vow to chain two mountains together. But, then, he would quite as cheerfully vow to chain the earth to the moon. And the withering consciousness that he did not mean what he said, that he was, in truth, saying nothing of any great import, would take from him exactly that sense of daring actuality which is the excitement of a vow. For what could be more maddening than an existence in which our mother or aunt received the information that we were going to assassinate the king or build a temple on Ben Nevis with the genial composure of custom?

The revolt against vows has been carried in our day even to the extent of a revolt against the typical vow of marriage. It is most amusing to listen to the opponents of marriage on this subject. They appear to imagine that the ideal of constancy was a yoke mysteriously imposed on mankind by the devil, instead of being, as it is, a yoke consistently imposed by all lovers on themselves. They have invented a phrase, a phrase that is a black and white contradiction in two words -- `free-love' -- as if a lover ever had been, or ever could be, free. It is the nature of love to bind itself, and the institution of marriage merely paid the average man the compliment of taking him at his word. Modern sages offer to the lover, with an ill-favoured grin, the largest liberties and the fullest irresponsibility; but they do not respect him as the old Church respected him; they do not write his oath upon the heavens, as the record of his highest moment. They give him every liberty except the liberty to sell his liberty, which is the only one that he wants.

In Mr Bernard Shaw's brilliant play The Philanderer we have a vivid picture of this state of things. Charteris is a man perpetually endeavouring to be a free-lover, which is like endeavouring to be a married bachelor or a white negro. He is wandering in a hundry search for a certain exhilaration which he can only have when he has the courage to cease from wandering. Men knew better than this in old times -- in the time, for example, of Shakespeare's heroes. When Shakespeare's men are really celibate they praise the undoubted advantages of celibacy, liberty, irresponsibility, a chance of continual change. But they were not such fools as to continue to talk of liberty when they were in such a condition that they could be made happy or miserable by the moving of some one else's eyebrow. Suckling classes love with debt in his praise of freedom.
'And he that's fairly out of both
Of all the world is blest.
He lives as in the golden age,
When all things made were common;
He takes his pipe, he takes his glass,
He fears no man or woman.'
This is a perfectly possible, rational, and manly position. But what have lovers to do with ridiculous affectations of fearing no man or woman? They know that in the turning of a hand the whole cosmic engine to the remotest star may become an instrument of music or an instrument of torture. They hear a song older than Suckling's, that has survived a hundred philosophies. 'Who is this that looketh out of the window, fair as the sun, clear as the moon, terrible as an army with banners?'

As we have said, it is exactly this backdoor, this sense of having a retreat behind us, that is, to our minds, the sterlizing spirit in modern pleasure. Everywhere there is the persistent and insane attempt to obtain pleasure without paying for it. Thus, in politics the modern Jingoes practically say, `Let us have the pleasure of conquerors without the pains of soldiers: let us sit on sofas and be a hardy race.' Thus, in religion and morals, the decadent mystics say: `Let us have the fragrance of sacred purity without the sorrows of self-restraint; let us sing hymns alternately to the Virgin and Priapus.' Thus in love the free-lovers say: `Let us have the splendour of offering ourselves without the peril of committing ourselves; let us see whether one cannot commit suicide an unlimited number of times.'

Emphatically it will not work. There are thrilling moments, doubtless, for the spectator, the amateur, and the aesthete; but there is one thrill that is known only to the soldier who fights for his own flag, to the aesthetic who starves himself for his own illumination, to the lover who makes finally his own choice. And it is this transfiguring self-discipline that makes the vow a truly sane thing. It must have satisfied even the giant hunger of the soul of a lover or a poet to know that in consequence of some one instant of decision that strange chain would hang for centuries in the Alps among the silences of stars and snows. All around us is the city of small sins, abounding in backways and retreats, but surely, sooner or later, the towering flame will rise from the harbour announcing that the reign of the cowards is over and a man is burning his ships.

Sunday, May 27, 2007

Christianity and Rationalism

My friend, Mr. George Haw, has asked me to state, in one or two articles, my general belief on the subject of Christianity, to be inserted in the Clarion. I will not pretend to any particlular reluctance to do so; but I ought not to do it without first of all offering to Mr. Blatchford our gratitude, and something which is better than gratitude, our congratulations, upon the very magnanimous action which he has taken in thus putting this paper into the hands of the religious opponents. In doing so he has scored, in a generous unconsciousness, a real point.

Most of the awful revelations of Christian evil and ignorance do not, I am afraid, affect me in quite so serious a manner as they ought to. When I hear that a German professor has found the four-hundreth accurate origin of protoplasm, I try in vain to feel excitement; when I read that savages paint their faces green to please the ghosts (or what not), I have no feeling beyond a vague pleasure and sympathy. Both the German professor and the green-faced savage seem to me to be doing the same thing--that is, falling under the influence of that starry impulse which leads men to take a vast deal of trouble about quite useless things.

But such things do not make much difference to my view of Christianity. In the whole of this controversy I have felt the force of one thing, which has really hit practical Christianity; I think it is a good argument; I think it is a terrible argument. It is not that this controversy is being conducted in a non-Christian paper. It certainly is a fair point scored against a religion that the people who seem to be most interested in it are those who believe it to be a fraud. I think, therefore, that Mr. Blatchford's magnanimity, like all magnanimity, is profoundly philosophical and wise.

Nor do I blame him, as some have done, for having discussed it at great length; as the subject is the nature of the Universe, it is necessarily as large as the Universe, and as rich as the Universe, and I may add, as amusing as the Universe.

In fact, I fancy there must be such a thing as Immortality, merely that Mr. Blatchford and I may have time to discuss whether it is true.

Before I give an outline of my view, there is one other thing to be said in which I cannot avoid the personal note. I have been to relise that there are a good many people to whom my way of speaking about these things appears like an indication that I am flippant or imperfectly sincere. Since, as a matter of fact, I am more certain of myself in this affair than I am of the existence of the moon, this naturally causes me some considerable regret; but I think I see the naturalness of the mistake and how it arose in people for removed from the Christian atmosphere. Christianity is itself so jolly a thing that it fills the possessor of it with a certain silly exuberance, which sad and high-minded Rationalists might reasonably mistake for mere buffoonery and blasphemy; just as their prototypes, the sad and high-minded Stoics of old Rome, did mistake the Christian joyousness for buffoonery and blasphemy.

This difference holds good everywhere, in the cold Pagan architectrure and the grinning gargoyles of Christendom, in the preposterous motley of the Middle Ages and the dingy dress of this Rationlistic century. And if Mr. Blatchford wishes to know why we should be surprised if the Duke of Devonshire walked about with one leg red and the other yellow (as a nobleman might have done in the thirteenth century), I can obligingly inform him that it is because of the decay of our faith. Nowhere in history has there ever been any popular brightness and gaiety without religion.

The first of all the difficulities that I have in controverting Mr. Blatchford is simply this, that I shall be very largely going over his own ground. My favourite text-book of theology is God and my Neighbour but I cannot repeat it in detail. If I gave each of my reasons for being a Christian, a vast number of them would be Mr. Blachford's reasons for not being one.

For instance, Mr. Blatchford and his school point out that there are many myths parallel to the Christian story; that there were Pagan Christs, and Red Indian Incarnations, and Patagonian Crucifixions, for all I know or care. But does not Mr. Blatchford see the other side of this fact? If the Christian God really made the human race, would not the human race tend to rumours and perversions of the Christian God? If the center of our life is a certain fact, would not people far from the center have a muddled version of that fact? If we are so made that a Son of God must deliver us, is it odd that Patagonians should dream of a Son of God?

The Blatchfordian position really amounts to this--that because a certain thing has impressed millions of different people as likely or necessary therefore is connot be true. And then this bashful being, veiling his own talents, convicts the wretched G.K.C. of paradox! I like paradox, but I am not prepared to dance and dazzle to the extent of Nunquam, who points to humanity crying out to a thing, and pointing to it from immemorial ages, as a proof that it cannot be there.

The story of a Christ is very common in legend and literature. So is the story of two lovers parted by Fate. So is the story of two friends killing each other for a woman. But will it seriously be maintained that, because these two stories are common as legends, therefore not two friends were ever separated by love or no two lovers by circumstances? It is tolerably plain, surely, that these two stories are common because the situation is an intensely probable and human one, because our nature is so built as to make them almost inevitable.

Why should it not be that our nature is so built as to make certain spiritual events inevitable? In any case, it is clearly ridiculous to attempt to disprove Christianity by the number and variety of Pagan Christs. You might as well take the number and variety of ideal schemes of society, from Plato's Republic to Morris' News from Nowhere, from More's Utopia to Blatchford's Merrie England, and then try and prove from them that mankind cannot ever reach a better social condition. If anything, of course, they prove the opposite; they suggest a human tendency towards a better condition.

Thus, in this first instance, when learned skeptics come to me and say, "Are you aware that the Kaffirs have a story of Incarnation?" I should reply: "Speaking as an unlearned person, I don't know. But speaking as a Christian, I should be very much astonished if they hadn't."

Take a second instance. The Secularist says that Christianity has been a gloomy and ascetic thing, and points to the procession of austere or ferocious saints who have given up home and happiness and macerated health and sex. But it never seems to occur to him that the very oddity and completeness of the men's surrender make it look very much as if there were really something actual and solid in the thing for which they sold themselves. They gave up all human experiences for the sake on one superhuman experience. They may have been wicked, but it looks as if there were such an experience.

It is perfectly tenable that this experience is as dangerous and selfish a thing as drink. A man who goes ragged and homeless in order to see visions may be as repellent and immoral as a man who goes ragged and homeless in order to drink brandy. That is a quite reasonable position. But what is manifestly not a reasonable position what would be, in fact not far from being an insane position, would be to say that the raggedness of the man, and the homelessness of the man, and the stupefied degradation of the man proved that there was no such thing as brandy.

That is precisely what the Secularist tries to say. He tries to prove that there is no such think as supernatural experience by pointing at the people who have given up everything for it. He tries to prove that there is no such thing by proving that there are people who live on nothing else.

Again I may submissively ask: "Whose is the paradox?" The frantic severity of these men may, of course, show that they were eccentric people who loved unhappiness for its own sake. But is seems more in accordance with commonsense to suppose that they had really found the secret of some actual power or experience which was, like wine, a terrible consolation and a lonely joy.

Thus, then, in the second instance, when the learned sceptic says to me: "Christian saints gave up love and liberty for this one rapture of Christianity, I should have been surprised if they hadn't."

Take a third instance. The Secularist says that Christianity produced tumult and cruelty. He seems to suppose that this proves it to be bad. But it might prove it to be very good. For men commit crimes not only for bad things, far more often for good things. For no bad things can be desired quite so passionately and persistently as good things can be desired and only very exceptional men desire very bad and unnatural things.

Most crime is committed because, owing to some peculiar complication, very beautiful or necessary things are in some danger. For instance, if we wanted to abolish thieving and swindling at one blow, the best thing to do would be to abolish babies. Babies, the most beautiful things on earth, have been the excuse and origin of almost all the business of brutality and financial infamy on earth.

If we could abolish monogamic or romantic love, again the country would be dotted with Maiden Assizes. And if anywhere in history masses of common and kindly men become cruel it almost certainly does not mean that they are serving something in itself tyrannical (for why should they?). It almost certainly does mean that something that they rightly value is in peril such as the food of their children, the chasity of their women, or the independence of their country. And when something is set before them that is not only enormously valuable, but also quite new, the sudden vision, the chance of winning it, the chance of losing it, drive them mad. It has the same effect in the moral world that the finding of gold has in the economic world. It upsets values, and creates a kind of cruel rush.

We need not go far for instances quite apart from the instances of religion. When the modern doctrines of brotherhood and liberty were preached in France in the eighteenth century the time was ripe for them, the educated classes everywhere had been growing towards them, the world to a very considerable extend welcomed them. And yet all that preparation and openness were unable to prevent the burst of anger and agony which greets anything good. And if the slow and polite preaching of rational fraternity in a rational age ended in the massacres of September, what an a fortiori is here! What would be likely to be the effect of the sudden dropping into a dreadfully evil century of a dreadfully perfect truth? What would happen if a world baser than the world of Sade were confronted with a gospel purer than the gospel of Rousseau?

The mere flinging of the polished pebble of Republican Indealism into the artificial lake of eighteenth century Europe produced a splash that seemed to splash the heavens, and a storm that drowned ten thousand men. What would happen if a star from heaven really fell into the slimy and bloody pool of a hopless and decaying humanity? Men swept a city with the guillotine, a continent with the sabre, because Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity were too precious to be lost. How if Christianity was yet more maddening because it was yet more precious?

But why should we labour the point when One who knew human nature as it can really be learnt, from fishermen and women and natural people, saw from his quiet village the track of this truth across history, and, in saying that He came to bring not peace but a sword, set up eternally His colossal realism against the eternal sentimentality of the Secularist?

Thus, then, in the third instance, when the learned sceptic says: "Christianiaity produced wars and persecutions," we shall reply: "Naturally."

And, lastly, let me take an example which leads me on directly to the general matter I wish to discuss for the remining space of the articles at my command. The Secularist constantly points out that the Hebrew and Christian religions began as local things; that their god was a tribal god; that they gave him material form, and attached him to particular places.

This is an excellent example of one of the things that if I were conducting a detailed campaign I should use as an argument for the validity of Biblical experience. For if there really are some other and higher beings than ourselves, and if they in some strange ways, at some emotional crisis, really revealed themselves to rude poets or dreamers in very simple times, that the rude people should regard the revelation as local, and connect it with the particular hill or river where it happened, seems to me exactly what any reasonable human being would expect. It has a far more credible look than if they had talked cosmic philosophy from the beginning. If they had, I should have suspected "priestcraft" and forgeries and third-century Gnosticism

If there be such a being as God, and He can speak to a child, and if God spoke to a child in the garden the child would, of course, say that God lived in the garden. I should not think it any less likely to be true for that. If the child said: "God is everywhere: an impalpable essence pervading and supporting all constituents of the Cosmos alike"--if, I say, the infant addressed me in the above terms, I should think he was mouch more likely to have been with the governess than with God.

So if Moses had said God was an Infinite Energy, I should be certain he had seen nothing extraordinary. As he said He was a Burning Bush, I think it very likely that he did see something extraordinary. For whatever be the Divine Secret, and whether or no it has (as all people have believed) sometimes broken bounds and surged into our work, at least it lies on the side furthest away from pedants and their definitions, and nearest to the silver souls of quiet people, to the beauty of bushes, and the love of one's native place.

Thus, then in our last instance (out of hundreds that might be taken), we conclude in the same way. When the learned sceptic says: "The visions of the Old Testament were local, and rustic, and grotesque," we shall answer: "Of course. They were genuine."

Thus, as I said at the beginning, I find myself, to start with, face to face with the difficulty that to mention the reasons that I have for believing in Christianity is, in very many cases, to repeat those arguments which Mr. Blatchford, in some strange way, seems to regard as arguments against it. His book is really rich and powerful. He has undoubtedly set up these four great guns of which I have spoken. I have nothing to say against the size and ammunition of the guns. I only say that by some accident of arrangement he has set up those four pieces of artillery with the tails pointing at me and the mouths pointing at himself. If I were not so humane, I should say: "Gentlemen of the Secularist Guard, fire first."

But there is more to be said. Mr. Blatchford, for some reason or other (possibly want of space), has neglected to urge all the arguments for Christianity. And, oddly enough, the two or three arguments he has omitted to state are the really vital and essential ones. Without them, even the excellent four facts which he and I have respectively explained may apprear superficially unitelligible.

Why will many of you not accept my four explanations? Obviously, in mere logic, they are as logical as Mr. Blatchford's. It is as reasonable, in the abstract, that a truth should be distorted as that a lie should be distorted; it is as reasonable, in the abstract, that men should starve and sin for a real benefit as for an unreal one. You will not believe it because you are armed to the teeth, and buttoned up to the chin with the great Agnostic Orthodoxy, perhaps the most placid and perfect of all the orthodoxies of mean. You could sooner believe that Socrates was a Government spy than believe that he heard a voice from his God. You could more easily think that Christ murdered His mother, than that He had a psychic energy of which we know nothing. I approach you with the reverence and the courage due to a bench of bishops.


- G.K. Chesterton, 'Christianity and Rationalism', from George Haw (ed.), The Religious Doubts of Democracy, 1904

Saturday, May 26, 2007

Napoleon's Maxims

1.) The frontiers of nations are either large rivers, or chains of mountains, or deserts. Of all these obstacles to the march of an army, deserts are the most difficult to surmount; mountains come next; and large rivers hold only the third rank.

2.) A plan of campaign should anticipate everything which the enemy can do, and contain within itself the means of thwarting him. Plans of campaign may be infinitely modified according to the circumstances, the genius of the commander, the quality of the troops and the topography of the theater of war.

3.) An army invading a country may either have its two wings resting on neutral countries or on natural obstacles, such as rivers or chains of mountains; or it may have only one of its wings thus supported; or both may be without support. In the first case, a general has only to see that his line is not broken in front. In the second case, he must rest on the wing which is supported. In the third case, he must keep his different corps resting well on his centre and never allow them to separate from it; for if it is a disadvantage to have two flanks in the air, the inconvenience is doubled if there are four, tripled if there are six; that is to say, if an army is divided into two or three distinct corps.

The line of operations in the first case, may rest on the left or the right wing, indifferently. In the second case, it should rest on the wing which is supported. In the third case, it should fall perpendicularly on the middle of the line formed by the army in marching. But in all the cases above mentioned, it is necessary to have at every five or six days' march, a fort or entrenched position, where magazines of provisions and military stores may be established and convoys organized; and which may serve as a centre of motion and a point of supply, and thus shorten the line of operations.

4.) It may be laid down as a principle that in invading a country with two or three armies, each of which has its own distinct line of operations extending towards a fixed point at which all are to unite, the union of the different corps should never be ordered to take place in the vicinity of the enemy, as by concentrating his forces he may not only prevent their junction but also defeat them one by one.

5.) All wars should be systematic, for every war should have an aim and be conducted in conformity with the principles and rules of the art. War should be undertaken with forces corresponding to the magnitude of the obstacles that are to be anticipated.

6.) At the commencement of a campaign, the question whether to advance or not requires careful deliberation; but when you have once undertaken the offensive, it should be maintained to the last extremity. A retreat, however skillful the maneuvers may be, will always produce an injurious moral effect on the army, since by losing the chances of success yourself you throw them into the hands of the enemy. Besides, retreats cost far more, both in men and materiel, than the most bloody engagements; with this differerence that in a battle the enemy loses nearly as much as you, while in a retreat the loss is all on your side.

7.) An army should be every day, every night, and every hour, ready to offer all the resistance of which it is capable. It is necessary, therefore, that the soldiers should always have their arms and ammunition at hand; that the infantry should always have with it its artillery, cavalry and generals; that the different divisions of the army should be always in a position to assist, support and protect each other; that whether encamped, marching or halted, the troops should be always in advantageous positions, possessing the qualities required for every field of battle that is to say, the flanks should be well supported and the artillery so placed that it may all be brought into play. When the army is in column of march, there must be advanced guards and flank guards to observe the enemy's movements in front, on the right and on the left; and at sufficient distances to allow the main body of the arm to deploy and take up its positions.

8.) A general should say to himself many times a day; If the hostile army were to make its appearance in front, on my right, or on my left, what should I do? And if he is embarassed, his arrangements are bad; there is something wrong; and he must rectify his mistake.

9.) The strength of an army, like the momentum of its mechanics, is estimated by the weight multiplied by the velocity. A rapid march exerts a beneficial moral influence on the army and increases its means of victory.

10.) When your army is inferior in numbers, inferior in cavalry and in artillery, a pitched battle should at all cost be avoided. The want of numbers must be supplied by rapidityin marching, the want of artillery by the character of the maneuvers; the inferiority in cavalry by the choice of positions. In such a situation, it is often of great importance that confidence should prevail among the soldiers.

11.) To operate upon lines remote from each other and without communications between them, is a fault which ordinarily occasions a second. The detached column has orders only for the first day. Its operations for the second day depend on what has happened to the main body. Thus, according to circumstances, the column wastes its time in waiting for orders or it acts at random. It ought then to be adopted as a principle that the columns of an army should be always kept united, so that the enemy cannot thrust himself between them. When for any reason this maxim is departed from, the detached corps should be independent in their operations. They should move towards a fixed point at which they are to unite. They should march without hesitation and without new orders, and should be exposed as little as possible to the danger of being attacked separately.

12.) An army should have but a single line of operations which it should carefully preserve, and should abandon only when compelled by imperious circumstances.

13.) The intervals at which the corps of an army should be from each other in marching, depend on the localities, the circumstances and the object in view.

14.) Among mountains there are everywhere numerous positions extremely strong by nature, which you should abstain from attacking. The genius of this kind of war consists in occupying camps either on the flank or the rear but to withdraw from this position without fighting; and to move him farther back, or to make him come out and attack you. In mountain warfare the attacking party acts under a disadvantage. Even in offensive warfare, the merit lies in having only defensive conflicts and obliging your enemy to become the assailant.

15.) In giving battle a general should regard it as his first duty to maintain the honor and glory of his arms. To spare his troops should be but a secondary consideration. But the same determination and perseverance which promote the former object are the best means of securing the latter. In a retreat you lose, in addition to the honor of your arms, more men than in two battles.

For this reason you should never despair while there remain brave men around the colors. This is the conduct which wins, and deserves to win, the victory.

16.) A well-established maxim of war is not to do anything which your enemy wishes and for the single reason that he does so wish. You should, therefore, avoid a field of battle which he has reconnoitered and studied. You should be still more careful to avoid one which he has fortified and where he has entrenched himself. A corollary of this principle is, never to attack in front a position which admits of being turned.

17.) In a war of marches and maneuvers, to escape an engagement with a superior enemy, it is necessary to throw up entrenchments every night and to place yourself always in a good position for defense. The natural positions which are commonly met with cannot secure an army against the superiority of a more numerous one without the aid of artillery.

18.) An ordinary general occupying a bad position, if surprised by a superior force, seeks safety in retreat; but a great captain displays the utmost determination and advances to meet the enemy. By this movement he disconcerts his adversary; and if the march of the latter evinces irresolution, an able general, profiting by the moment of indecision, may yet hope for victory or at least employ the day in maneuvering; and at night he can entrench himself or fall back on a better position. By this fearless conduct he maintains the honor of his arms, which forms so essential a part of the strength of an army.

19.) The passage from the defensive to the offensive is one of the most delicate operations of war.

20.) Your line of operations should never, as a general rule, be abandoned; but changing it when circumstances require, is one of the most skillful of military maneuvers. An army which changes its line of operations skillfully, deceives the enemy, who no longer knows where his antagonist's rear is, or what are the weak points to threaten.

21.) When an army is encumbered with siege equipage and large convoys of wounded and sick, it should approach its depots by the shortest roads and as expeditiously as possible.

22.) The art of encamping on a position is nothing else than the art of forming in order of battle on that position. For this purpose the artillery should all be in readiness and favorably placed; a position should be selected which is not commanded, cannot be turned, and from which the ground in the vicinity is covered and commanded.

23.) When you occupy a position which the enemy threatens to surround, you should collect your forces quickly and menace him with an offensive movement. By this maneuver you prevent him from detaching a part of his troops and annoying your flanks, in case you should deem a retreat indispensable.

24.) A military maxim, which ought never to be neglected, is to assemble your cantonments at the point which is most remote and best sheltered from the enemy, especially when he makes his appearance unexpectedly. You will then have time to unite the whole army before he can attack you.

25.) When two armies are in order of battle, and one, if obliged to retire, must effect its retreat by a bridge, while the other can withdraw towards all points of the compass, the latter has greatly the advantage. A general so situated should be enterprising, strike vigorously and maneuver against the flanks of his adversary; and victory is his.

26.) It is a violation of correct principles to cause corps to act separately, without communication with each other, in the face of a concentrated army with easy communications.

27.) When you are driven from your first position, the rallying point of your columns should be so far in the rear that the enemy cannot get there before them. It would be the greatest of disasters to have your columns attacked one by one before their reunion.

28.) No detachment should be made the day preceding a battle, for during the night the state of things may change, either by a retreat of the enemy or by the arrival of strong reinforcements, which would put him in condition to assume the offensive and render the premature dispositions which you have made ruinous.

29.) When you have it in contemplation to give battle, it is a general rule to collect all your strength and to leave none unemployed. One battalion sometimes decides the issue of the day.

30.) Nothing is more rash or more opposed to the principles of war than a flank march in presence of an army in position, especially when that army occupies heights at the foot of which you must defile.

31.) When you intend to engage in a decisive battle, avail yourself of all the chances of success; more especially if you have to do with a great captain; for if you are beaten, though you may be in the midst of your magazines and near your fortified posts, woe to the vanquished!

32.) The duty of an advance guard does not consist in advancing or retreating, but in maneuvering. It should be composed of light cavalry supported by a reserve of heavy, and by battalions of infantry, with artillery to support them. The advance guard should be formed of choice troops; and the generals, officers and soldiers, according to the requirements of their respective rank, should be thoroughly acquainted with the peculiar tactics necessary in this kind of service. An untrained company would be only a source of embarrassment.

33.) It is contrary to the usages of war to cause your parks or heavy artillery to enter a defile, the opposite extremity of which is not in your possession; since, in the event of a retreat, they will embarrass you and be lost. They ought to be left in position, under a suitable escort, until you have made yourself master of the termination of the defile.

34.) It should be adopted as a principle never to allow intervals through which the enemy can penetrate between the different corps forming the line of battle, unless you have laid a snare into which it is your object to draw him.

35.) The camps of the same army should be always so placed as to be able to sustain each other.

36.) When a hostile army is covered by a river on which it has several bridgeheads, you should not approach it in front, for in doing so your forces would be too little concentrated and in danger of being broken into detached parts, if the enemy should sally from one of the bridgeheads. You should approach the river you wish to cross in columns disposed in echelon, so that there may be only a single column the foremost one which the enemy can attack without exposing his own flank.

Meanwhile the light troops will line the bank; and when you have fixed on the point at which to pass, you must proceed rapidly to the spot and throw the bridge across. You must take care that the bridge shall always be at a distance from the leading echelon in order to deceive the enemy.

37.) The moment that you become master of a position which commands the opposite bank, you obtain many facilities for effecting the passage of a river, especially if that position has sufficient extent to admit of your planting a large number of pieces of artillery upon it. This advantage is less if the river is more than six hundred yards wide, as the grape no longer reaches the other shore; and consequently the troops that oppose the passage can, by suitable precautions, easily render your fire of little effect. Hence if the grenadiers charged with the duty of passing the river to protect the bridge, succeed in crossing to the other side, they will be swept off by the enemy's grapeshot; as his batteries established four hundred yards from the termination of the bridge are near enough to pour in a very destructive fire, although more than a thousand yards distant from the batteries of the army which is endeavouring to pass. Therefore he has all the advantage of the artillery. So in such a case a passage is not practicable unless you either contrive to take the enemy by surprise, or are protected by an intervening island, or avail your self of a deep re-entrant bend, which enables you to erect batteries crossing their fire just in advance of the point where a landing is to be effected. Such an island or re-entrant forms a natural bridgehead and gives the advantage of the artillery to the attacking army.

When a river is less than a hundred and twenty yards in breadth and you can command the opposite bank, the troops that are thrown over to the other side derive such advantages from the protection afforded by the artillery that, however slight the re-entrant formed by the river may be, it is impossible for the enemy to prevent the establishment of the bridge. Under such circumstances, the most skillful generals, when they have been able to foresee the designs of their antagonist and arrive with their army at the point at which he was making his attempt, have contented themselves with disputing the passage of the bridge. A bridge being in fact a defile, you should place yourself in a half-circle around its extremity and take measures to shelter yourself at the distance of six or eight hundred yards from the fire of the other bank.

38.) It is difficult to prevent an enemy provided with bridge equipage from crossing a river. When the object of the army which disputes the passage is to cover a siege, the commanding general, as soon as he is certain that he cannot successfully oppose the passage, should take measures to arrive in advance of the enemy at a position between the river and the place whose siege he is covering.

39.) In the campaign of 1645, the forces of Turenne were hemmed in before Philipsburgh by a very numerous army. There was no bridge over the Rhine, but Turenne established his camp on the ground lying between the river and the place. This should serve as a lesson to officers of the engineer department in regard to the construction of bridgeheads as well as of fortresses. There should be left, between the fortress and the river, a space in which an army may be rallied and formed; as the entrance of the troops into the place itself would endanger it. An army pursued and retiring upon Mayence, must necessarily be in a precarious situation, since it would require more than one day to pass the bridge, and the works surrounding Cassel are too small to contain an army without crowding and confusion. Four hundred yards should have been left between the works and the Rhine. It is essential that bridgeheads before large rivers should be constructed on this plan; otherwise they will be of little utility in protecting the passage of an army in retreat. Bridgeheads, as they are taught in the schools, are good only before small rivers where the defile is not long.

40.) Fortresses are useful in offensive as well as defensive war. Undoubtedly they cannot of themselves arrest the progress of an army, but they are excellent means of delaying, impeding, enfeebling and annoying a victorious enemy.

41.) There are only two modes of prosecuting a siege successfully. One is to begin by beating the hostile army employed to cover the place, driving it from the field of operations and forcing its remains beyond some natural obstacle, such as a chain of mountains or a large river. This first difficulty overcome, you must place an army of observation behind the natural obstacle until the labors of the siege are finished and the place is taken.

But if you wish to take the place in the face of an army of relief without hazarding a battle, you must be provided with siege equipage, ammunition and provisions for the time during which the siege is expected to continue; and must form lines of contravallation and circumvallation, turning, meanwhile, the peculiarities of the ground such as heights, woods, marshes and overflows to the best account.

As there is then no necessity for keeping up any communication with your depots, you have only to hold in check the army of relief To this end you should form an army of observation which must never lose sight of the enemy and which, while shutting him out from all access to the place, may always have time to fall upon his flanks or rear, if he should steal a march upon you. By taking advantage of your lines of contravallation you can employ a part of the besieging forces in giving battle to the army of relief.

A siege therefore, in the presence of a hostile army requires to be covered by lines of circumvallation.

If your army is so strong that, after leaving before the place a body four times the number of the garrison, it is still equal to the army of relief, it may move to a greater distance than one day's march.

If, after making the detachment, it remains inferior to the army of relief, it should be posted at one short day's march from the place besieged, so as to be at liberty to fall back on the lines or receive succor in the event of sustaining an attack.

If the two armies of siege and of observation, united, are equal only to the army of relief, the besieging army must remain altogether within or near its lines and employ itself in pushing the siege with all possible activity.

42.) Feuquieres has said that you should never wait for the enemy in your lines of circumvallation, but should go out and attack him. The maxim is erroneous. No rule of war is so absolute as to allow no exceptions, and waiting for the enemy in the lines of circumvallation ought not to be condemned as injudicious in all cases.

43.) They who proscribe lines of circumvallation and all the aid which the art of the engineer can furnish, gratuitously deprive themselves of auxiliaries that are never injurious, almost always useful and often indispensable. The principles of field fortification, however, need improvement. This important branch of the art of war has made no progress in modern times. It is even at this day in a lower state than it was two thousand years ago. Officers of the engineer department ought to be encouraged to perfect this branch of their art and raise it to a level with others.

44.) When you have a hospital and magazines in a fortified town, and circumstances are such as not to admit of your leaving a sufficient garrison to defend it, you should at least make every possible exertion to put the citadel in security from a coup de main.

45.) A fortified place can protect a garrison and arrest the enemy only a certain length of time. When that time has elapsed and the defences of the place are destroyed, the garrison may lay down their arms. All civilized nations have been of one opinion in this re- spect, and the only dispute has been as to the greater or less degree of resistance which the governor should offer before capitulating. Yet there are generals Villars is of the number--who hold that a governor ought never to surrender, but that in the last extremity he should blow up the fortifications and take advantage of the night to cut his way through the besieging army. In case you cannot blow up the fortifications, you can at any rate sally out with your garrison and save your men. Commanders who have pursued this course have rejoined their army with three-fourths of their garrison.

46.) The keys of a fortified place are ample compensation for permiffing the garrison to retire unmolested, whenever the latter evince a determination to die rather than accept less favorable terms. It is always better, therefore, to grant an honorable capitulation to a garrison which has resisted vigorously than to run the risk of an attempt to storm.

47.) The infantry, cavalry and artillery cannot dispense with each other. They ought not be quartered in such a manner as always to be able to support each other in case of surprise.

48.) Infantry formed in line should be in two ranks only, for the musket cannot otherwise be used with equal effect. It is admitted that the fire of the third rank is very imperfect and even injurious to that of the first two.

But though the great body of the infantry should be drawn up, as has just been said, in two ranks, the absence of a regular third rank should be supplied by supernumeraries composed of one soldier out of nine or one every two yards.

49.) The practice of mingling companies of horse and foot together is bad; it produces nothing but trouble. The cavalry is deprived of its capacity for rapidity of motion; it is cramped in all the movements; it loses its impulse.

The infantry, too, is exposed; for, at the first movement of the cavalry, it remains without support. The best mode of protecting cavalry is to suport its flank.

50.) Charges of cavalry are equally serviceable in the beginning, the middle and the end of a battle. They should be executed whenever they can be made on the flanks of the infantry, particularly when the latter is engaged in front.

51.) It is a function of the cavalry to follow up the victory and prevent the beaten enemy from rallying.

52.) Artillery is more necessary to cavalry than to infantry, because cavalry does not fire and can fight only in close conflict. It is to supply this deficiency that horse-artillery has been resorted to. Cavalry, therefore, should always be accompanied by cannon, whether attacking, resting in position or rallying.

53.) The principal part of the artillery should be with the divisions of infantry and of cavalry, whether marching or in position, and the rest should be placed in reserve. Each piece should have with it three hundred charges of powder and ball, besides the contents of the ammunition box. That is about the quantity consumed in two battles.

54.) Batteries should be placed in the most advantageous positions and as far in advance of the lines of infantry and cavalry as is possible without endangering the guns. It is desirable that the batteries should have a command over the field equal to the full height of the platform. They must not be masked on the right or left, but should be at liberty to direct their fire towards every point.

55.) A general should avoid putting his army into quarters of refreshment, so long as he has the opportunity of collecting magazines of provisions and forage, and thus supplying the wants of his soldiers.

56.) A good general, good officers, commissioned and noncommissioned, good organization, good instruction and strict discipline make good troops independently of the cause for which they are fighting. But enthusiasm, love of country and the desire of contributing to the national glory may also animate young troops with advantage.

57.) It is very difficult for a nation to create an army when it has not already a body of officers and non-commissioned officers to serve as a nucleus, and a system of military oranization.

58.) The first quality of a soldier is constancy in enduring fatigue and hardship. Courage is only the second. Poverty, privation and want are the school of the good soldier.

59.) There are five things which a soldier ought never to be without: his musket, his cartridge-box, his knapsack, his provisions for at least four days and his pioneer hatchet. Reduce his knapsack, if you deem it necessary to do so, to the smallest size, but let the soldier always have it with him.

60.) You should by all means encourage the soldiers to continue in the service. This you can easily do by testifying great esteem for old sol diers. The pay should also be increased in proportion to the years of service. There is great injustice in giving no higher pay to a veteran than to a recruit.

61.) It is not by harangues at the moment of engaging that soldiers are rendered brave. Veterans hardly listen to them and recruits forget them at the first discharge of a cannon. If speeches and arguments are at any time useful, it is during the course of the campaign by counteracting false reports and causes of discontent, maintaining a proper spirit in the camp and furnishing subjects of conversation in the bivouacs. These several objects may be attained by the printed orders of the day.

62.) Tents are injurious to health. It is much better for the soldier to bivouack, because he can sleep with his feet to the fire, which quickly dries the ground on which he lies. A few boards or a little straw shelter him from the wind.

Tents, however, are necessary for the leaders, who have to write and consult the map. They should be given therefore to the superior officers, who should be ordered never to lodge in a house.

Tents attract the observation of the enemy's staff and make known your numbers and the position you occupy. But of an army bivouacking in two or three lines, nothing is perceived at a distance except the smoke, which the enemy confounds with the mist of the atmosphere. He cannot count the fires.

63.) The information obtained from prisoners ought to be estimated at its proper value. A soldier seldom looks beyond his own company and an officer can, at most, give account of the position or movements of the division to which his regiment belongs. A general, therefore, should not allow himself to be confirmed in his conjectures as to the enemy's position, by attaching any weight to the statements of prisoners, except when they coincide with the reports of the advance guards.

64.) Nothing is more important in war than unity in command. When, therefore, you are carrying on hostilities against a single power only, you should have but one army acting on one line and led by one commander.

65.) The effect of discussions, making a show of talent, and calling councils of war will be what the effect of these things has been in every age: they will end in the adoption of the most pusillanimous or (if the expression be preferred) the most prudent measures, which in war are almost uniformly the worst that can be adopted. True wisdom, so far as a general is concerned, consists in energetic determination.

66.) There are certain things in war of which the commander alone comprehends the importance. Nothing but his superior firmness and ability can subdue and surmount all difficulties.

67.) To authorize generals and officers to lay down their arms by virtue of a special capitulation under any other circumstances than when they constitute the garrison of a fortified place, would unquestionably be attended with dangerous consequences. To open this door to cowards, to men wanting in energy or even to misguided brave men, is to destroy the military spirit of a nation. An extraordinary situation requires extraordinary resolution. The more obstinate the resistance of an armed body, the more chances it will have of being succored or of forcing a passage. How many things apparently impossible have nevertheless been performed by resolute men who had no alternative but death!

68.) No sovereign, no people, no general can be secure, if officers are permitted to capitulate on the field and lay down their arms by virtue of an agreement favorable to them selves and to the troops under their command, but opposed to the interests of the remainder of the army. To withdraw from peril themselves, and thus render the position of their comrades more dangerous, is manifestly an act of baseness. Such conduct ought to be proscribed, pronounced infamous and punishable with death. The generals, officers and soldiers who in a battle have saved their lives by capitulating, ought to be decimated. He and who those who obey him, are alike traitors, and deserve capital punishment.

69.) There is but one honorable way of being made a prisoner of war; that is by being taken separately and when you can no longer make use of your arms. Then there are no conditions__for there can be none, consistently with honor__but you are compelled to surrender by absolute necessity.

70.) The conduct of a general in a conquered country is encompassed with difficulties. If he is severe, he exasperates and increases the number of his enemies; if he is mild, he inspires hopes which, since they cannot be realized, cause the abuses and vexations unavoidably incident to war only to stand out in bolder relief. A conqueror should know how to employ by turns severity, justice and leniency suppressing or preventing disturbances.

71.) Nothing can excuse a general who avails himself of the knowledge he has acquired in the service of his country to give up its bulwarks to a foreign nation. That is a crime abhorrent to the principles of religion, morality and honor.

72.) A general-in-chief cannot exonerate himself from responsibility for his faults by pleading an order of his sovereign or the minister, when the individual from whom it proceeds is at a distance from the field of operations, and but partially, or not at all, acquainted with the actual condition of things. Hence it follows that every general-in-chief who undertakes toexecute a plan which he knows to be bad, is culpable. He should communicate his reasons, insist on a change of plan and finally resign his commission rather than become the instrument of his army's ruin.

Every general-in-chief who, in consequence of orders from his superiors, gives battle with the certainty of defeat, is equally culpable.

In this latter case, he should refuse to obey; for an order requires passive obedience only when it is issued by a superior who is present at the seat of war. As the superior is then familiar with the state of affairs, he can listen to objections and make the necessary explanations to the officer who is to execute the command.

But suppose a general-in-chief were to re ceive from his sovereign an order to give battle with the injunction to yield the victory to his adversary and permit himself to be beaten. Would he be bound to obey? No! If the general comprehended the utility of so strange an or- der, he ought to execute it; but, if not, he should refuse to obey.

73.) The first qualification of a general-in-chief is to possess a cool head, so that things may appear to him in their true proportions and as they really are. He should not suffer himself to be unduly affected by good or bad news.

The impressions which are made upon his mind successively or simultaneously in the course of a day, should be so classified in his memory that each shall occupy its proper place; for sound reasoning and judgment result from first examining each of these varied impressions by itself, and then comparing them all with one another.

There are some men who, from their physical and moral constitution, deck everything in the colors of imagination. With whatever knowledge, talents, courage or other good qualities these may be endowed, nature has not fitted them for the command of armies and the direction of the reat operations of war.

74.) To be familiar with the geography and topography of the country; to be skillful in making a reconnaissance; to be attentive to the despatch of orders; to be capable of exhibiting with simplicity the most complicated movements of an army__these are the qualifications that should distinguish the officer called to the station of chief of the staff.

75.) A general of artillery should be acquainted with all the operations of the army, as he is obliged to supply the different divisions of which it is composed with arms and ammunition. His communications with the artillery officers at the advanced posts should keep him informed of all the movements of the troops, and the management of his great park must be regulated by this information.

76.) To reconnoiter rapidly defiles and fords; to obtain guides that can be relied upon; to interrogate the clergyman and the postmaster; to establish speedily an understanding with the inhabitants; to send out spies; to seize the letters in the mails, to translate and make an abstract of their contents; in short, to answer all the inquiries of the general-in-chief on his arrival with the whole army such are the duties which come within the sphere of a good general of an advanced post.

77.) Commanders-in-chief are to be guided by their own experience or genius. Tactics, evolutions and the science of the engineer and the artillery officer may be learned from treatises, but generalship is acquired only by experience and the study of the campaigns of all great captains. Gustavus Adolphus, Turenne and Frederic, as also Alexander, Hannibal and Caesar have all acted on the same principles. To keep your forces united, to be vulnerable at no point, to bear down with rapidity upon important points these are the principles which insure victory.

It is by the fear which the reputation of your arms inspires that you maintain the fidelity of your allies and the obedience of conquered nations.

78.) Read over and over again the campaigns of Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Gustavus,Turenne, Eugene and Frederic. Make them your models. This is the only way to become a great general and to master the secrets of the art of war. With your own genius enlightened by this study, you will reject all maxims opposed to those of these great commanders.

79.) The first principle of a general-in-chief is to calculate what he must do, to see if he has all the means to surmount the obstacles with which the enemy can oppose him and, when he has made his decision, to do everything to overcome them.

80.) The art of a general of the advance guard or of the rear guard is, without compromising himself, to contain the enemy, to delay him and to force him to take three or four hours to advance a mile. Tactics supplies the only means to attain such great results. It is more necessary for the cavalry than for the infantry, for an advance guard or for a rear guard, than for any other position.

81.) It is exceptional and difficult to find all the qualities of a great general combined in one man. What is most desirable and distinguishes the exceptional man, is the balance of intelligence and ability with character or courage. If courage is predominant, the general will hazard far beyond his conceptions; and on the contrary, he will not dare to accomplish his conceptions if his character or his courage are below his intelligence..

82.) With a great general there is never a continuity of great actions which can be attributed to chance and good luck; they always are the result of calculation and genius.

83.) A general-in-chief should never allow any rest either to the conquerors or to the conquered.

84.) An irresolute general who acts without principles and without plan, even though he lead an army numerically superior to that of the enemy, almost always finds himself inferior to the latter on the field of battle. Fumblings, the mezzo termine (the middle course) lose all in war.

85.) A general of engineers who must conceive, propose and direct all the fortifications of an army, needs good judgment and a practical mind above all.

86.) A cavalry general should be a master of practical science, know the value of seconds, despise life and not trust to chance.

87.) A general in the power of the enemy has no more orders to give: whoever obeys him is a criminal.

88.) The heavy cavalry should be with the advance guard, with the rear guard and on the wings and in reserve to support the light cavalry.

89.) To wish to hold the cavalry in reserve for the end of the battle, is to have no idea of the power of combined cavalry and infantry charges either for attack or for defense.

90.) The power of cavalry is in its impulsion. But it is not only its velocity that insures success: it is order, formation and proper employment of reserves.

91.) The cavalry should compose a quarter of the army in Flanders or Germany; in the Pyrenees or in the Alps, a twentieth; in Italy or in Spain, a sixth.

92.) In a battle like in a siege, skill consists in converging a mass of fire on a single point: once the combat is opened, the commander who is adroit will suddenly and unexpectedly open fire with a surprising mass of artillery on one of these points, and is sure to seize it.

93.) The better the infantry is, the more it should be used carefully and supported with good batteries.

Good infantry is, without doubt, the sinew of an army; but if it is forced to fight for a long time against a very superior artillery, it will become demoralized and will be destroyed. It is possible that a general who is more skillful and a better maneuverer than his adversary, having better infantry, will gain success during a part of the campaign although his artillery park is very inferior; but, on a decisive day in a general action, he will feel his inferiority in artillery cruelly.

94.) A good army of 35,000 men should in a few days, especially when supported by a fortress or a large river, make its camp unassailable by an army double in force.

95.) War is composed of nothing but accidents, and, although holding to general principles, a general should never lose sight of everything to enable him to profit from these accidents; that is the mark of genius.

In war there is but one favourable moment; the great art is to seize it.

96.) A general who retains fresh troops for the day after a battle is almost always beaten. He should, if helpful, throw in his last man, because on the day after a complete success there are no more obstacles in front of him; prestige alone will insure new triumphs to the conqueror.

97.) The rules of fighting require that a part of an army should avoid fighting alone against an entire army that has already been successful.

98.) When a general has laid siege to a place by surprise and has gained a few days on his adversary, he should profit from this by covering himself with lines of circumvallation; from this moment he will have improved his position and will have acquired a new element of power and a new degree of force in the general framework of affairs.

99.) In war the commander of a fortress is not a judge of events; he should defend the fortress to the last; he deserves death if he surrenders it a moment before he is forced to.

100.) Agreements to surrender made by surrounded bodies, either during a battle or during an active campaign, are contracts with all the advantageous clauses in favor of the individuals who contract them, and all the onerous clauses against the prince and the other soldiers of the army. To avoid peril oneself, while making the position of the rest more dangerous, is an act of cowardice.

101.) Defensive war does not exclude attacking, just as offensive war does not exclude defending, although its aim may be to force the frontier and invade the enemy's country.

102.) The art of war indicates that it is necessary to turn or envelop a wing without separating the army.

103.) When they are thoroughly understood, field fortifications are always useful and never injurious.

104.) An army can march anywhere and at any time of the year, wherever two men can place their feet.

105.) Conditions of the ground should not alone decide the organization for combat, which should be determined from consideration of all circumstances.

106.) Flank marches should be avoided; and when they must be undertaken, they should be as short as possible and made with the greatest speed.

107.) Nothing can be designed better to disorganize and destroy an army than pillage.

108.) Praise from enemies is suspicious; it cannot flatter an honorable man unless it is given after the cessation of hostilities.

109.) Prisoners of war do not belong to the power for which they have fought; they all are under the safeguard of honor and generosity of the nation that has disarmed them.

110.) Conquered provinces should be maintained in obedience to the conquerors by moral means, such as the responsibility of local governments and the method of organization and administration. Hostages are among the most powerful means; but to be effective, they should be many and chosen from the preponderant elements, and the people must be convinced that immediate death of the hostages will follow violation of their pledges.

111.) The geographical conditions of a country, life in plains or mountains, education or discipline, have more influence than climate on the character of the troops.

112.) All great captains have done great things only by conforming to the rules and naturalprinciples of the art; that is to say, by the wisdom of their combinations, the reasoned balance of means with consequences, and efforts with obstacles. They have succeeded only by thus conforming, whatever may have been the audacity of their enterprises and the extent of their success. They have never ceased to make war a veritable science. It is only under this title that they are our great models, and it is only in imitating them that one can hope to approach them.

113.) The first law of naval tactics should be that as soon as the admiral has given the signal that he is going to attack, each captain should make the necessary movements to attack an enemy ship, take part in the combat and support his neighbors.

114.) War on land, in general, consumes more men than naval warfare; it is more dangerous. The sailor in a fleet fights but once during a campaign; the ground soldier fights every day. The sailor, whatever may be the fatigues and dangers of the sea, suffers much less than the soldier. He is never hungry nor thirsty; he always has a place to sleep, his kitchen, his hospital and his pharmacy. There are fewer sick in the English and French fleets, where discipline maintains cleanliness and experience has discovered all the means of preserving health, than in armies. Besides the perils of battle, the sailor risks those of tempests; but seamanship has so much diminished the latter that it cannot be compared with those on land, such as popular uprisings, partial assassinations and surprises by hostile light troops.

115.) An admiral commanding a fleet and a general commanding an army are men who need different qualities. One is born with the qualities proper to command an army, while the necessary qualities to command a fleet are acquired only by experience. The art of war on land is an art of genius, of inspiration. On the sea everything is definite and a matter of experience. The admiral needs only one science, navigation. The general needs all or a talent equal to all, that of profiting by all experience and all knowledge. An admiral needs to divine nothing; he knows where his enemy is and he knows his strength. A general never knows anything with certainty, never sees his enemy clearly and never knows positively where he is.

When armies meet, the least accident of the terrain, the smallest wood, hides a portion of the army. The most experienced eye cannot state whether he sees the entire enemy army or only three quarters of it. It is by the eyes of the mind, by reasoning over the whole, by a species of inspiration that the general sees, knows and judges. The admiral needs only an experienced glance; nothing of the enemy force is hidden from him. What makes the general's function difficult is the necessity of nourishing so many men and animals; if he permits himself to be guided by administrators, he will never budge and his expeditions will fail. The admiral is never bothered since he carries everything with him. An admiral has neither reconnaissances to make, terrain to examine nor fields of battle to study. Indian Ocean, American Ocean or North Sea it is always a liquid plain. The most skillful will have no advantage over the least, except for his knowledge of prevailing winds in such and such coastal waters, by foresight of those which should prevail or by atmospheric signs: qualities which are acquired by experience and by experience only.

The general never knows the field of battle on which he may operate. His understanding is that of inspiration; he has no positive information; data to reach a knowledge of localities are so contingent on events that almost nothing is learned by experience. It is a faculty to understand immediately the relations of the terrain according to the nature of different countries; it is, finally, a gift, called a coup d'oeil militaire (the ability to take in the military situation at a glance) which great generals have received from nature. However the observations that can be made from topographic maps and the facility which education and habit give in reading maps, can be of some assistance.

An admiral depends more on the captains of his ships than a general on his generals. The latter has the opportunity to take direct command of the troops himself, to move to any point and to repair false movements. An admiral can influence personally only the men on the vessel on which he finds himself; smoke prevents signals from being seen and winds change or vary over the space occupied by his line. It is thus of all professions that in which subalterns should use the largest initiative.


- Napoleon's Maxims, taken from http://www.pattonhq.com/militaryworks/napoleonmaxims.html

Friday, May 25, 2007

The Warp Spasm

The first warp-spasm seized Cúchulainn, and made him into a monstrous thing,
hideous and shapeless, unheard of.

His shanks and his joints, every knuckle and angle and organ from head to foot,
shook like a tree in the flood or a reed in the stream.
His body made a furious twist inside his skin,
so that his feet and shins and knees switched to the rear
and his heels and calves switched to the front.

The balled sinews of his calves switched to the front of his shins,
each big knot the size of a warrior's bunched fist.
On his head the temple-sinews stretched to the nape of his neck,
each mighty, immense, measureless knob as big as the head of a month-old child.

His face and features became a red bowl;
he sucked one eye so deep into his head that a wild crane could not probe it onto his cheek out of the depths of his skull;
the other eye fell out along his cheek.

His mouth weirdly distorted:
his cheek peeled back from his jaws until the gullet appeared;
his lungs and liver flapped in his mouth and throat;
his lower jaw struck the upper a lion-killing blow,
and fiery flakes large as a ram's fleece reached his mouth from his throat.

His heart boomed loud in his breast like the baying of a watch-dog at its feed
or the sound of a lion among bears.
Malignant mists and spurts of fire flickered red in the vaporous clouds
that rose boiling above his head,
so fierce was his fury.

The hero-halo rose out of his brow,
long and broad as a warrior's whetstone,
long as a snout,
and he went mad rattling his shields, urging on his charioteer
and harassing the hosts.

Then, tall and thick,
steady and strong,
high as the mast of a noble ship,
rose up from the dead center of his skull
a straight spout of black blood,
darkly and magically smoking.

In that style, then,
he drove out to find his enemies
and did his thunder-feat
and killed a hundred,
then two hundred,
then three hundred,
then four hundred,
then five hundred...


- From The Tain, translated Thomas Kinsella, from the Irish epic Táin Bó Cuailnge

Thursday, May 24, 2007

Valerie

I don't know who you are. Please believe. There is no way I can convince you that this is not one of their tricks, but i don't care. I am me, and I don't know who you are but I love you.

I have a pencil. A little one they did not find. I am a woman. I hid it inside me. Perhaps I won't be able to write again, so this is a long letter about my life. It is the only autobioography I will ever write and oh God I'm writing it on toilet paper.

I was born in Nottingham in 1957, and it rained a lot. I passed my Eleven Plus and went to Girl's Grammar. I wanted to be an actress. I met my first girlfriend at school. Her name was Sara. She was fourteen and I was fifteen but we were both in Miss Watson's class. Her wrists, Her wrists were beautiful. I sat in Biology class, staring at the pickled rabbit foetus in its jar, listening while Mr Hird said it was an adolescent phase that people outgrew. Sara did. I didn't. In 1976 I stopped pretending and took a girl called Christine home to meet my parents. A week later I moved to London, enrolling at drama college. My mother said I broke her heart... but it was my integrity that was important. Is that so selfish? It seels for so little, but it's all we have left in this place. It's the very last inch of us... but within that inch we are free.

London: I was happy in London. In 1981 I played Dandini in Cinderella. My first rep work. The world was strange and rustling and busy, with invisible crowds begind the hot lights and all that breathless glamour. It was exciting and it was lonely. At nights I'd go to Galewais [?] or one of the other clubs, but I was stand-offish and didn't mix easily. I saw a lot of the scene, but I never felt comfortable: there. So many of them just wanted to be gay. It was their life, their ambition, all they talked about. And I wanted more than that.

Work improved. I got small film roles, then bigger ones. In 1986 I starred in 'The Salt Flats'. It pulled in the awards but not the crowds. I met Ruth while working on that. We loved each other. We lived together, and on Valentine's Day she sent me roses, and oh God, we had so much. Those were the best three years of my life.

In 1988 there was the war, and after that there were no more roses. Not for anybody.

In 1992, after the take-over, they started rounding up the gays. They took Ruth while she was out looking for food. Why are they so frightened of us? They burned her with cigarette ends and made them give her my name. She signed a statement saying I'd seduced her. I didn't blame her. God, I loved her. I didn't blame her.

But she did. She killed herself in her cell. She couldn't live with betraying me, with giving up that last inch. Oh Ruth.

They came for me. They told me that all my films would be burned. They shaved off my hair. They held my head down a toilet bowl and told jokes about lesbians. They brought me here and gave me drugs. I can't feel my tongue anymore. I can't speak.

The other gay woman here, Rita, died two weeks ago. I imagine I'll die quite soon. It is strange that my life should end in such a terrible place, but for three years I had roses and I apologised to nobody. I shall die here. Every inch of me shall perish... except one. An inch. It's small and it's fragile and it's the only thing in the world that's worth having. We must never lose it, or sell it, or give it away. We must never let them take it from us.

I don't know who you are, or whether you're a man or a woman. I may never see you. I will never hug you or cry with you or get drunk with you. But I love you. I hope that you escape this place. I hope that the world turns and that things get better, and that one day people have roses again. I wish I could kiss you.

Valerie.



- from 'Valerie', V for Vendetta, 2.11, Alan Moore and David Lloyd

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Hills like White Elephants

The hills across the valley of the Ebro were long and white. On this side there was no shade and no trees and the station was between two lines of rails in the sun. Close against the side of the station there was the warm shadow of the building and a curtain, made of strings of bamboo beads, hung across the open door into the bar, to keep out flies. The American and the girl with him sat at a table in the shade, outside the building. It was very hot and the express from Barcelona would come in forty minutes. It stopped at this junction for two minutes and went to Madrid.
'What should we drink?' the girl asked. She had taken off her hat and put it on the table.

'It's pretty hot,' the man said.

'Let's drink beer.'

'Dos cervezas,' the man said into the curtain.

'Big ones?' a woman asked from the doorway.

'Yes. Two big ones.'

The woman brought two glasses of beer and two felt pads. She put the felt pads and the beer glass on the table and looked at the man and the girl. The girl was looking off at the line of hills. They were white in the sun and the country was brown and dry.

'They look like white elephants,' she said.

'I've never seen one,' the man drank his beer.

'No, you wouldn't have.'

'I might have,' the man said. 'Just because you say I wouldn't have doesn't prove anything.'

The girl looked at the bead curtain. 'They've painted something on it,' she said. 'What does it say?'

'Anis del Toro. It's a drink.'

'Could we try it?'

The man called 'Listen' through the curtain. The woman came out from the bar.

'Four reales.' 'We want two Anis del Toro.'

'With water?'

'Do you want it with water?'

'I don't know,' the girl said. 'Is it good with water?'

'It's all right.'

'You want them with water?' asked the woman.

'Yes, with water.'

'It tastes like liquorice,' the girl said and put the glass down.

'That's the way with everything.'

'Yes,' said the girl. 'Everything tastes of liquorice. Especially all the things you've waited so long for, like absinthe.'

'Oh, cut it out.'

'You started it,' the girl said. 'I was being amused. I was having a fine time.'

'Well, let's try and have a fine time.'

'All right. I was trying. I said the mountains looked like white elephants. Wasn't that bright?'

'That was bright.'

'I wanted to try this new drink. That's all we do, isn't it - look at things and try new drinks?'

'I guess so.'

The girl looked across at the hills.

'They're lovely hills,' she said. 'They don't really look like white elephants. I just meant the colouring of their skin through the trees.'

'Should we have another drink?'

'All right.'

The warm wind blew the bead curtain against the table.

'The beer's nice and cool,' the man said.

'It's lovely,' the girl said.

'It's really an awfully simple operation, Jig,' the man said. 'It's not really an operation at all.'

The girl looked at the ground the table legs rested on.

'I know you wouldn't mind it, Jig. It's really not anything. It's just to let the air in.'

The girl did not say anything.

'I'll go with you and I'll stay with you all the time. They just let the air in and then it's all perfectly natural.'

'Then what will we do afterwards?'

'We'll be fine afterwards. Just like we were before.'

'What makes you think so?'

'That's the only thing that bothers us. It's the only thing that's made us unhappy.'

The girl looked at the bead curtain, put her hand out and took hold of two of the strings of beads.

'And you think then we'll be all right and be happy.'

'I know we will. Yon don't have to be afraid. I've known lots of people that have done it.'

'So have I,' said the girl. 'And afterwards they were all so happy.'

'Well,' the man said, 'if you don't want to you don't have to. I wouldn't have you do it if you didn't want to. But I know it's perfectly simple.'

'And you really want to?'

'I think it's the best thing to do. But I don't want you to do it if you don't really want to.'

'And if I do it you'll be happy and things will be like they were and you'll love me?'

'I love you now. You know I love you.'

'I know. But if I do it, then it will be nice again if I say things are like white elephants, and you'll like it?'

'I'll love it. I love it now but I just can't think about it. You know how I get when I worry.'

'If I do it you won't ever worry?'

'I won't worry about that because it's perfectly simple.'

'Then I'll do it. Because I don't care about me.'

'What do you mean?'

'I don't care about me.'

'Well, I care about you.'

'Oh, yes. But I don't care about me. And I'll do it and then everything will be fine.'

'I don't want you to do it if you feel that way.'

The girl stood up and walked to the end of the station. Across, on the other side, were fields of grain and trees along the banks of the Ebro. Far away, beyond the river, were mountains. The shadow of a cloud moved across the field of grain and she saw the river through the trees.

'And we could have all this,' she said. 'And we could have everything and every day we make it more impossible.'

'What did you say?'

'I said we could have everything.'

'No, we can't.'

'We can have the whole world.'

'No, we can't.'

'We can go everywhere.'

'No, we can't. It isn't ours any more.'

'It's ours.'

'No, it isn't. And once they take it away, you never get it back.'

'But they haven't taken it away.'

'We'll wait and see.'

'Come on back in the shade,' he said. 'You mustn't feel that way.'

'I don't feel any way,' the girl said. 'I just know things.'

'I don't want you to do anything that you don't want to do -'

'Nor that isn't good for me,' she said. 'I know. Could we have another beer?'

'All right. But you've got to realize - '

'I realize,' the girl said. 'Can't we maybe stop talking?'

They sat down at the table and the girl looked across at the hills on the dry side of the valley and the man looked at her and at the table.

'You've got to realize,' he said, ' that I don't want you to do it if you don't want to. I'm perfectly willing to go through with it if it means anything to you.'

'Doesn't it mean anything to you? We could get along.'

'Of course it does. But I don't want anybody but you. I don't want anyone else. And I know it's perfectly simple.'

'Yes, you know it's perfectly simple.'

'It's all right for you to say that, but I do know it.'

'Would you do something for me now?'

'I'd do anything for you.'

'Would you please please please please please please please stop talking?'

He did not say anything but looked at the bags against the wall of the station. There were labels on them from all the hotels where they had spent nights.

'But I don't want you to,' he said, 'I don't care anything about it.'

'I'll scream,' the girl siad.

The woman came out through the curtains with two glasses of beer and put them down on the damp felt pads. 'The train comes in five minutes,' she said.

'What did she say?' asked the girl.

'That the train is coming in five minutes.'

The girl smiled brightly at the woman, to thank her.

'I'd better take the bags over to the other side of the station,' the man said. She smiled at him.

'All right. Then come back and we'll finish the beer.'

He picked up the two heavy bags and carried them around the station to the other tracks. He looked up the tracks but could not see the train. Coming back, he walked through the bar-room, where people waiting for the train were drinking. He drank an Anis at the bar and looked at the people. They were all waiting reasonably for the train. He went out through the bead curtain. She was sitting at the table and smiled at him.

'Do you feel better?' he asked.

'I feel fine,' she said. 'There's nothing wrong with me. I feel fine.'



Ernest Hemingway, 'Hills like White Elephants', 1927.