Battle Studies | Page 8

least of
serious service. This is a source of stupidity which would become most
dangerous in case of a serious conflict. Take shoe-makers and tailors
and make generals of them and they will not commit worse follies!
These blunders are made on a small as well as on a large scale.
Consequently, in the greatest number of regiments, the private is not
well trained; in Zaramba's regiment he is the worst; in Thadden's he
amounts to nothing; and to no more in Keller's, Erlach's, and Haager's.
Why? Because the officers are lazy and try to get out of a difficulty by
giving themselves the least trouble possible."
* * * * *
In default of exceptional generals who remold in some campaigns, with
a superb stroke, the damaged or untempered military metal, it is of
importance to supply it with the ideals of Ardant du Picq. Those who
are formed by his image, by his book, will never fall into error. His
book has not been written to please aesthetic preciseness, but with a

sincerity which knows no limit. It therefore contains irrefutable facts
and theories.
The solidity of these fragmentary pages defies time; the work
interrupted by the German shell is none the less erected for eternity.
The work has muscles, nerves and a soul. It has the transparent
concentration of reality. A thought may be expressed by a single word.
The terseness of the calcined phrase explains the interior fire of it all,
the magnificent conviction of the author. The distinctness of outline,
the most astounding brevity of touch, is such that the vision of the
future bursts forth from the resurrection of the past. The work contains,
indeed, substance and marrow of a prophetic experience.
Amidst the praise rendered to the scintillating beauties of this book,
there is perhaps, none more impressive than that of Barbey d'Aurevilly,
an illustrious literary man of a long and generous patrician lineage. His
comment, kindled with lyric enthusiasm, is illuminating. It far
surpasses the usual narrow conception of technical subjects. Confessing
his professional ignorance in matters of war, his sincere eulogy of the
eloquent amateur is therefore only the more irresistible.
"Never," writes Barbey d'Aurevilly, "has a man of action--of brutal
action in the eyes of universal prejudice--more magnificently glorified
the spirituality of war. Mechanics--abominable mechanics--takes
possession of the world, crushing it under its stupid and irresistible
wheels. By the action of newly discovered and improved appliances the
science of war assumes vast proportions as a means of destruction. Yet
here, amid the din of this upset modern world we find a brain
sufficiently master of its own thoughts as not to permit itself to be
dominated by these horrible discoveries which, we are told, would
make impossible Fredericks of Prussia and Napoleons and lower them
to the level of the private soldier! Colonel Ardant du Picq tells us
somewhere that he has never had entire faith in the huge battalions
which these two great men, themselves alone worth more than the
largest battalions, believed in. Well, to-day, this vigorous brain believes
no more in the mechanical or mathematical force which is going to
abolish these great battalions. A calculator without the least emotion,

who considers the mind of man the essential in war--because it is this
mind that makes war--he surely sees better than anybody else a
profound change in the exterior conditions of war which he must
consider. But the spiritual conditions which are produced in war have
not changed. Such, is the eternal mind of man raised to its highest
power by discipline. Such, is the Roman cement of this discipline that
makes of men indestructible walls. Such, is the cohesion, the solidarity
between men and their leaders. Such, is the moral influence of the
impulse which gives the certainty of victory.
"'To conquer is to advance,' de Maistre said one day, puzzled at this
phenomenon of victory. The author of "Etudes sur le Combat" says
more simply: 'To conquer is to be sure to overcome.' In fine, it is the
mind that wins battles, that will always win them, that always has won
them throughout the world's history. The spirituality, the moral quality
of war, has not changed since those times. Mechanics, modern arms, all
the artillery invented by man and his science, will not make an end to
this thing, so lightly considered at the moment and called the human
soul. Books like that of Ardant du Picq prevent it from being disdained.
If no other effect should be produced by this sublime book, this one
thing would justify it. But there will be others--do not doubt it--I wish
merely to point out the sublimity of this didactic book which, for me,
has wings like celestial poetry and which has carried me above and far
away from the