“Keep your good cannon masked, and your bad guns on brave parade.”
“If the enemy doesn’t know your weakness, you are not weak.”
“It’s the man behind the gun more than the gun, and the man inside the fort more than the wall.”
Chinese literature is not without its stirring war songs, which breathe not only the pathos of the suffering of those at home, but the sacrificing patriotism of the ranks. The following is quoted from Confucius’ Odes, B. C. 551:
THE SOLDIER
I climbed the barren mountain,
And my gaze swept far and wide
For the red-lit eaves of my father’s home,
And I fancied that he sighed.
I climbed the grass-clad mountain,
And my gaze swept far and wide
For the rosy light of a little room,
Where I thought my mother sighed.
I climbed the topmost summit,
And my gaze swept far and wide
For the garden roof where my brother stood,
And I fancied that he sighed.
My brother serves as a soldier
With his comrades night and day,
But my brother is filial and may return,
Though the dead lie far away.
The following far older poem was written in 800 B. C. by Li Hua to commemorate a battle between the ancient Chinese tribe of Wei and the Northern Mongols: