Battle Studies | Page 9

puts it out in a compact phrase like a cartridge. His style has the rapidity and precision of the long-range arms which have dethroned the bayonet. He would have been a writer anywhere. He was a writer by nature. He was of that sacred phalanx of those who have a style all to themselves."
Barbey d'Aurevilly rebels against tedious technicalities. Carried away by the author's historical and philosophical faculties, he soars without difficulty to the plane of Ardant du Picq. In like manner, du Picq ranges easily from the most mediocre military operations to the analysis of the great functions of policy of government and the evolution of nations.
Who could have unraveled with greater finesse the causes of the insatiable desires of conquest by the new power which was so desirous of occupying the leading r?le on the world's stage? If our diplomats, our ministers and our generals had seized the warning of 1866, the date of the defeat of Austria, it is possible that we might have been spared our own defeats.
"Has an aristocracy any excuse for existing if it is not military? No. The Prussian aristocracy is essentially military. In its ranks it does accept officers of plebeian extraction, but only under condition that they permit themselves to be absorbed therein.
"Is not an aristocracy essentially proud? If it were not proud it would lack confidence. The Prussian aristocracy is, therefore, haughty; it desires domination by force and its desire to rule, to dominate more and more, is the essence of its existence. It rules by war; it wishes war; it must have war at the proper time. Its leaders have the good judgment to choose the right moment. This love of war is in the very fiber, the very makeup of its life as an aristocracy.
"Every nation that has an aristocracy, a military nobility, is organized in a military way. The Prussian officer is an accomplished gentleman and nobleman; by instruction or examination he is most capable; by education, most worthy. He is an officer and commands from two motives, the French officer from one alone.
"Prussia, in spite of all the veils concealing reality, is a military organization conducted by a military corporation. A nation, democratically constituted, is not organized from a military point of view. It is, therefore, as against the other, in a state of unpreparedness for war.
"A military nation and a warlike nation are not necessarily the same. The French are warlike from organization and instinct. They are every day becoming less and less military.
"In being the neighbor of a military nation, there is no security for a democratic nation; the two are born enemies; the one continually menaces the good influences, if not the very existence of the other. As long as Prussia is not democratic she is a menace to us.
"The future seems to belong to democracy, but, before this future is attained by Europe, who will say that victory and domination will not belong for a time to military organization? It will presently perish for the lack of sustenance of life, when having no more foreign enemies to vanquish, to watch, to fight for control, it will have no reason for existence."
In tracing a portrait so much resembling bellicose and conquering Prussia, the sharp eye of Ardant du Picq had recognized clearly the danger which immediately threatened us and which his deluded and trifling fellow citizens did not even suspect. The morning after Sadowa, not a single statesman or publicist had yet divined what the Colonel of the 10th Regiment of the Line had, at first sight, understood. Written before the catastrophes of Froeschwiller, Metz and Sedan, the fragment seems, in a retrospective way, an implacable accusation against those who deceived themselves about the Hohenzollern country by false liberalism or a softening of the brain.
Unswerved by popular ideas, by the artificial, by the trifles of treaties, by the chimera of theories, by the charlatanism of bulletins, by the nonsense of romantic fiction, by the sentimentalities of vain chivalry, Ardant du Picq, triumphant in history, is even more the incomparable master in the field of his laborious days and nights, the field of war itself. Never has a clearer vision fathomed the bloody mysteries of the formidable test of war. Here man appears as his naked self. He is a poor thing when he succumbs to unworthy deeds and panics. He is great under the impulse of voluntary sacrifice which transforms him under fire and for honor or the salvation of others makes him face death.
The sound and complete discussions of Ardant du Picq take up, in a poignant way, the setting of every military drama. They envelop in a circle of invariable phenomena the apparent irregularity of combat, determining the critical point in the outcome of the battle. Whatever be the conditions, time