III. These principles also give us a theoretically correct ground for our own counter-preparations. We require to take the most dangerous war which is probable or possible, and make every imaginable preparation to carry out these principles therein.
In such a case how are we going to render it possible for our generals to win, and thus save the nation from the irreparable consequences and the huge war indemnity of £800,000,000 or so, which would follow defeat? How are we going to do it? How are we going to render it possible for our generals to employ the best strategy? The ideal of strategy, always to be aimed at, is the double superiority of numbers. How are we going to give our generals that? If we cannot do that, how are we going to give them even any superiority at all, so that they may be able to carry out the first principle of strategy? How? Or are we going to make NO adequate preparations for these three eventualities, and when one of them suddenly comes ask our generals to save us from the fate we have brought upon ourselves, by performing the impossible? It is in this way that a statesman should use these few great simple principles of strategy in order to attain his political object and safeguard the interests of the nation.
[CHAPTER X]
THE EXECUTION OF STRATEGY
Now, as Clausewitz teaches it, the theory of war is easy enough to understand. There is no reason—one might almost say no excuse—why every one, soldier or statesman, should not know it fairly well. The great leading principles of strategy are few and simple. There is no reason why every one, soldier and statesman, should not understand and know these few simple principles thoroughly, and have them at his finger ends ready to apply them to the consideration of any military question, past, present, or future. So far all is easy. But when it is a question of carrying out in actual war this easy theory, these simple strategical principles, then it is QUITE a different matter, then it is a matter of the very greatest difficulty. This is a difference which the mind always finds very hard to grasp, as witness the denunciations with which any failure in execution by a general, no matter how great the real difficulties with which he had to contend, is nearly always greeted. Observers rarely make allowances for these difficulties, very largely probably because they do not understand them. The present chapter is devoted to these difficulties of execution in war.
The Genius for War
In Clausewitz's great chapter on "the genius for war"[60] he sets forth the difficulties which confront a general, the character and genius, the driving and animating force, required to overcome the friction of war. It is impossible to abstract it adequately; I can only advise all to read it for themselves. But I will endeavour to give an idea of it.
After discussing the various sorts of courage required by a general, physical before danger and moral before responsibility, the strength of body and mind, the personal pride, the patriotism, the enthusiasm, etc., he comes to the unexpected.
"War," he says, "is the province of uncertainty. Three-fourths of those things upon which action in war must be calculated are hidden more or less in the clouds of great uncertainty. Here, then, above all other, a fine and penetrating mind is called for, to grope out the truth by the tact of its judgment." Mark this point, that three-fourths of the things that we as critics AFTER the event know, when all information of the situation has been collected and published, were unknown to the general who had to decide, or only dimly guessed at from a number of contradictory reports.