[CHAPTER III]
THE WRITINGS OF CLAUSEWITZ

The writings of Clausewitz are contained in nine volumes, published after his death in 1831, but his fame rests chiefly on his three volumes "On War," which have been translated by Colonel J. J. Graham (the last edition edited by Colonel F. N. Maude, and published by Messrs. Kegan Paul, London). Clausewitz calls them "a collection of materials," "a mass of conceptions not brought into form," and states that he intended to revise, and throw the whole into more complete shape.

We must lament that he did not live to complete his revision. But, on the other hand, it is perhaps possible that this unfinished state is really an advantage, for it leaves us free to apply his great maxims and principles and mode of thought to the ever-varying conditions of the present and future, unhampered by too complete a crystallization of his ideas written before more modern conditions of railways, telegraphs, and rapid long-ranging arms of precision, etc., arose. It is perhaps this unfinished state which renders Clausewitz so essentially in touch with, and a part of, the onward movement and evolution of military thought. For his great aim was "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," without preconception or favour, as far as he could go​—​essentially "a realist" of war​—​and what better aim can we set before ourselves?

As Sir Arthur Helps has so well put it in his "Friends in Council," every man needs a sort of central stem for his reading and culture. I wish here to say why I think that Clausewitz is admirably adapted to form such a main stem in the military culture of British officers.

In the first place there is a lofty sort of tone about his writings which one gradually realizes as one reads them, and which I will not attempt to describe further than by saying that they stamp themselves as the writings of a gentleman of fine character.

In the second place it is a book which "any fellow" can read, for there is nothing to "put one off," nothing abstruse or mathematical or formal, no formulæ or lines and angles and technical terms, such as in other writers, Jomini, Hamley, etc. Clausewitz is free from all such pedantries, which for my part, and I dare say for the part of many others, often "put one off" a book, and made one instinctively feel that there was something wrong, something unpractical about it, which rendered it hardly worth the sacrifice of time involved in its study. There is in Clausewitz nothing of that kind at all. All those lines and angles and formulæ he dismisses in a few pages as of little practical importance.

In the third place Clausewitz only goes in for experience and the practical facts of war. As he somewhat poetically puts it, "The flowers of Speculation require to be cut down low near the ground of Experience, their proper soil."[1] He is the great apostle of human nature and character as being everything in war. "All war supposes human weakness, and against that it is directed."[2] I believe that the British officer will find himself in sympathy with the great thinker on war, who asserts that "Of all military virtues Energy in the conduct of Operations has always conduced most to glory and success of arms."[3]

In the fourth place, to the practical mind will appeal his denunciation of all elaborate plans, because Time is required for all elaborate combinations, and Time is just the one thing that an active enemy will not give us,​—​and his consequent deduction that all plans must be of the simplest possible form. His famous sentence, "In war all things are simple, but the simple are difficult,"[4] gives the key to his writings, for to overcome those simple yet great difficulties he regards as the art of war, which can only be done by the military virtues of perseverance, energy, and boldness.