Although Our Intellect Always Longs

War Is Politics By Other Means.

Timidity Is The Root Of Prudence In The Majority Of Men.

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.

If We Consider The Actual Basis Of This Information [i.e., Intelligence], How Unreliable And Transient It Is, We Soon Realize That War Is A Flimsy Structure That Can Easily Collapse And Bury Us In Its Ruins. ... Many Intelligence Reports In War Are Contradictory; Even More Are False, And Most Are Uncertain. This Is True Of All Intelligence But Even More So In The Heat Of Battle, Where Such Reports Tend To Contradict And Cancel Each Other Out. In Short, Most Intelligence Is False, And The Effect Of Fear Is To Multiply Lies And Inaccuracies.

Close Combat, Man To Man, Is Plainly To Be Regarded As The Real Basis Of Combat.