Savage Peoples Are Ruled By

Everything In War Is Very Simple, But The Simplest Thing Is Difficult. The Difficulties Accumulate And End By Producing A Kind Of Friction That Is Inconceivable Unless One Has Experienced War. ... Countless Minor Incidents - The Kind You Can Never Really Foresee - Combine To Lower The General Level Of Performance, So That One Always Falls Short Of The Intended Goal.

War Is Politics By Other Means.

After We Have Thought Out Everything Carefully In Advance And Have Sought And Found Without Prejudice The Most Plausible Plan, We Must Not Be Ready To Abandon It At The Slightest Provocation. Should This Certainty Be Lacking, We Must Tell Ourselves That Nothing Is Accomplished In Warfare Without Daring; That The Nature Of War Certainly Does Not Let Us See At All Times Where We Are Going; That What Is Probable Will Always Be Probable Though At The Moment It May Not Seem So; And Finally, That We Cannot Be Readily Ruined By A Single Error, If We Have Made Reasonable Preparations.

The Invention Of Gunpowder And The Constant Improvement Of Firearms Are Enough In Themselves To Show That The Advance Of Civilization Has Done Nothing Practical To Alter Or Deflect The Impulse To Destroy The Enemy, Which Is Central To The Very Idea Of War.

What We Should Admire Is The Acute Fulfillment Of The Unspoken Assumptions, The Smooth Harmony Of The Whole Activity, Which Only Become Evident In The Final Success.