Paris

by Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart

THE ORIGINS OF THE FALSE OBJECTIVE

How arose this “blinkered” conception that the national goal in war could be attained only by mass destruction, and how did it gain so firm a hold on military thought? The decisive influence was exerted not by Napoleon himself, though his practical example of the beneficent results of “absolute war” was its inspiration, but by his great German expositor, Carl von Clausewitz. He it was who, in the years succeeding Waterloo, analysed, codified, and deified the Napoleonic method.

Clausewitz has been the master at whose feet have sat for a century the military students of Europe. From him, the German Army in particular drew the inspiration by which they evolved their stupendous, if fundamentally unsound, structure of “the nation in arms.” It achieved its triumph in 1870 and, as a result, all the Powers hurried to imitate the model, and to revive with ever greater intensity the Napoleonic tradition, until finally the gigantic edifice was put to an extended test in the years 1914–1918—with the result that in its fall it has brought low not only Germany, but, with it, the rest of Europe.

Thus, because of the unsoundness of their foundations, Clausewitz’s theories have ended by bringing his Fatherland into a more impotent and impoverished state even than when it was under the iron heel of Napoleon. Clausewitz’s was truly “a house built on sand.”

Yet, despite his main miscalculations, he had a wider understanding of the objects of war than most of his disciples. Clausewitz did at least recognize the existence of other objectives besides the armed forces. He enumerated three general objects—the military power, the country, and the will of the enemy. But his vital mistake was to place “the will” last in his list, instead of first and embracing all the others, and to maintain that the destruction of the enemy’s main armies was the best way to ensure the remaining objects. Similarly, the other most famous military teacher of the century before the Great War, Marshal Foch, admitted the existence and wisdom, under certain conditions, of other means, but, as with Clausewitz, the reservations were forgotten, and his disciples remembered only his assertion that “the true theory” of war was “that of the absolute war which Napoleon had taught Europe.”

This was but human nature, for the followers of any great teacher demand a single watchword, however narrow. The idea of preserving a broad and balanced point of view is anathema to the mass, who crave for a slogan and detest the complexities of independent thought. It is not surprising that military thought in recent generations, in its blind worship of the idol of “absolute war,” has poured scorn on the objectives of Napoleon’s predecessors—curiously forgetting that they at least gained the purpose of their policy, whereas his ended in ruin. One and all spoke and wrote with contempt of these eighteenth-century strategists, though they included such men as Marshal Saxe, whose writings bear the impress of a mind perhaps more original and unbiased by traditional prejudices than any in military history.

Here is how Foch, in his Principes de Guerre, contrasts the exponents of the rival theories: “Marshal de Saxe, albeit a man of undeniable ability, said: ‘I am not in favour of giving battle.... I am even convinced that a clever general can wage war his whole life without being compelled to do so.’ Entering Saxony in 1806, Napoleon writes to Marshal Soult: ‘There is nothing I desire so much as a great battle.’ The one wants to avoid battle his whole life; the other demands it at the first opportunity.”

So that even a man of the intellectual calibre of Marshal Foch thinks solely of the tangible proofs of military victory, with never a reflection as to which of these two men best fulfilled ultimately the national objective of an honourable, secure, and prosperous future.

We see him greeting with approval the dictum of Clausewitz: “Blood is the price of victory. You must either resort to it or give up waging war. All reasons of humanity which you might advance will only expose you to being beaten by a less sentimental adversary.”

In the latter sentence we see the recurring delusion of the traditional military mind that the opposition to the Napoleonic theory must necessarily be dictated by mere sentimentalism. It disregards the possibility that it may be due to a far-sighted political economy, which does not lose sight of the post-war years. A prosperous and secure peace is a better monument of victory than a pyramid of skulls.

There are signs, however, that Marshal Foch, in contrast to his intellectual compeers, has gained from recent experience a wider conception of the aims of war and the true objective of military policy. In a statement since the War on the subject of air-power, he gave the weighty and illuminating judgment that “The potentialities of aircraft attack on a large scale are almost incalculable, but it is clear that such attack, owing to its crushing moral effect on a nation, may impress public opinion to the point of disarming the Government and thus become decisive.” Here is a dramatic and far-reaching break with the “armed forces” objective. Perhaps also his connection with the Ruhr policy is evidence of a grasp of the possibilities not only of war without bloodshed, but war without hostilities—the objective, more effective than the enemy’s military power, being control of the rival’s industrial resources.

“Saul is numbered with the prophets!” The champion and embodiment of the Napoleonic doctrine appears to have cast it overboard. We see an indisputable recognition that two other objectives exist—one moral, the other economic.

If the conversion comes a little late, when we are enjoying the happy and prosperous peace procured for us by the method of “absolute war” so eloquently preached in pre-war years by this august teacher, it may at least acquit us of lèse-majesté in suggesting, that by their blind worship of the Napoleonic idol, our recent military guides not only narrowed and distorted their whole conception of war, but led us into the morass—financial, commercial, and moral—wherein the nations of Europe in greater or less degree are now engulfed—as was France after Napoleon.

When the high priest of the orthodox faith begins to have doubts, the moment is ripe for those who do not hold that the advent of Napoleon was the Year One of military history, who are disciples of earlier Great Captains, to endeavour, in all humility, to propound a wider and more scientific conception of war and its true objective.

Thus, should the millennium of Universal Peace fail to arrive, and nations still continue to settle by an appeal to force questions which vitally affect their policy, it may be that they will learn to wage war in a manner less injurious to the interwoven fabric of modern civilization, and incidentally to their own prosperity and ultimate security, than proved the case in the Great War of 1914–1918. Security—yes, because the greater the injury inflicted, the deeper are the sores of the body politic, and in these the toxins of revenge fester.

But to achieve this more scientific and economic military policy it is necessary that public opinion should be awakened not only to the results but also to the false foundations of the present theory of war.

The saying that “the onlooker sees most of the game” is as true of the broader aspects of war as of anything else, and in the unfettered common sense of the intelligent citizen, and its reaction on those entrusted with the military weapons, lies the quickest chance of deliverance from this dogma—for military authority holds with Bishop Warburton that “orthodoxy is my doxy—heterodoxy is another man’s doxy.”

Soldiers who refuse to bow in adoration of Napoleon and Clausewitz, his prophet, are condemned as heretics, and the repression of the “Protestants” has been made possible by the apathy of the public towards military questions. Men of the Anglo-Saxon race are not willing to hand over their religious or political conscience into the keeping of “authority,” yet by their lack of interest in military questions they do in fact relinquish any check on a policy which affects the security of their lives and livelihoods to an even greater extent. For, when war bursts upon the nation, it is the ordinary citizens who pay the toll either with their lives or from their pockets. Only by taking an active interest in the broad aspects of national defence, and so regaining control of their military conscience, can they avoid being driven like sheep to the shearer and slaughterhouse, as in the last war.