In War The Will Is Directed At

All Action Takes Place, So To Speak, In A Kind Of Twilight, Which Like A Fog Or Moonlight, Often Tends To Make Things Seem Grotesque And Larger Than They Really Are.

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.

Talent And Genius Operate Outside The Rules, And Theory Conflicts With Practice.

In 1793 Such A Force As No One Had Any Conception Of Made Its Appearance. War Had Again Suddenly Become An Affair Of The People, And That Of A People Numbering Thirty Millions, Every One Of Whom Regarded Himself As A Citizen Of The State... By This Participation Of The People In The War... A Whole Nation With Its Natural Weight Came Into The Scale.

The Deduction Of Effect From Cause Is Often Blocked By Some Insuperable Extrinsic Obstacle: The True Causes May Be Quite Unknown. Nowhere In Life Is This So Common As In War, Where The Facts Are Seldom Fully Known And The Underlying Motives Even Less So.