Policy in making use of war avoids all those rigorous conclusions which proceed from its nature; it troubles itself little about final possibilities, confining its attention to immediate probabilities. If much uncertainty in the whole action ensues therefrom, if it thereby becomes a sort of game, the policy of each cabinet places its confidence in the belief that in this game it will surpass its neighbour in skill and sharpsightedness.
Thus policy makes out of the all-overpowering element of war a mere instrument, changes the tremendous battle-sword, which should be lifted with both hands and the whole power of the body to strike once for all, into a light handy weapon, which is even sometimes nothing more than a rapier to exchange thrusts and feints and parries.
Thus the contradictions in which man, naturally timid, becomes involved by war, may be solved, if we choose to accept this as a solution.
If war belongs to policy, it will naturally take its character from thence. If policy is grand and powerful, so will also be the war, and this may be carried to the point at which war attains to its absolute form.
In this way of viewing the subject, therefore, we need not shut out of sight the absolute form of war, we rather keep it continually in view in the back ground.
Only through this kind of view, war recovers unity; only by it can we see all wars as things of one kind; and it is only through it that the judgment can obtain the true and perfect basis and point of view from which great plans may be traced out and determined upon.
It is true the political element does not sink deep into the details of war, Vedettes are not planted, patrols do not make their rounds from political considerations, but small as is its influence in this respect, it is great in the formation of a plan for a whole war, or a campaign, and often even for a battle.
For this reason we were in no hurry to establish this view at the commencement. While engaged with particulars, it would have given us little help; and, on the other hand, would have distracted our attention to a certain extent; in the plan of a war or campaign it is indispensable.
There is, upon the whole, nothing more important in life than to find out the right point of view from which things should be looked at and judged of, and then to keep to that point; for we can only apprehend the mass of events in their unity from one standpoint; and it is only the keeping to one point of view that guards us from inconsistency.
If, therefore, in drawing up a plan of a war it is not allowable to have a two-fold or three-fold point of view, from which things may be looked at, now with the eye of a soldier, then with that of an administrator, and then again with that of a politician, etc., then the next question is, whether policy is necessarily paramount, and everything else subordinate to it.