War Itself
In Clausewitz's way of looking at war itself I assign at once the first place to his doctrine, "The destruction of the enemy's military force is the leading principle of war, and for the whole chapter of positive action the direct way to the aim."[29] This dictum, repeated in many different forms, underlies his whole conception of war. All the old theoretical ideas about threatening by manœuvring, conquering by manœuvring, forcing the enemy to retreat by manœuvring, and so forth, in which his predecessors entangled strategy, and from which even the Archduke Charles and Jomini had not completely freed themselves, he brushes aside by "our assertion is that ONLY great tactical results can lead to great strategical results."[30] Thus he leads and concentrates our thoughts in strategy on the central idea of victory in battle, and frees us once for all from the obscuring veil of lines and angles and geometrical forms by which other writers have hidden that truth. "Philanthropists may easily imagine that there is a skilful method of overcoming and disarming an adversary without causing great bloodshed, and that this is the proper tendency of the art of war. However plausible this may appear, it is an error which must be extirpated, for, in such dangerous things as war, the errors which spring from a spirit of benevolence are just the worst."[31] For "he who uses force unsparingly without reference to the quantity of bloodshed, must obtain the superiority if his adversary does not act likewise." And the "worst of all errors in wars" is still the idea of war too commonly held by civilians in this country, as witness the outcries which greeted every loss during the South African war, which shows how much Clausewitz is needed as a tonic to brace their minds to the reality.
"War is an act of violence which in its application knows NO bounds." "Let us not hear of generals who conquer without bloodshed; if a bloody slaughter be a horrible sight, then that is a ground for paying more respect to war (for avoiding unnecessary war), but not for making the sword we wear blunt and blunter by degrees from feelings of humanity, till some one steps in with a sword that is sharp, and lops off the arm from our body."