Battle Studies | Page 9

materialistic abjectness of my time. The technique of
tactics and the science of war are beyond my province. I am not, like
the author, erudite on maneuvers and the battle field. But despite my
ignorance of things exclusively military, I have felt the truth of the
imperious demonstrations with which it is replete, as one feels the
presence of the sun behind a cloud. His book has over the reader that
moral ascendancy which is everything in war and which determines
success, according to the author. This ascendancy, like truth itself, is
the sort which cannot be questioned. Coming from the superior mind of
a leader who inspires faith it imposes obedience by its very strength.
Colonel Ardant du Picq was a military writer only, with a style of his
own. He has the Latin brevity and concentration. He retains his thought,
assembles it and always 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 rôle 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