The Great Illusion: A Study of the Relation of Military Power to National AdvantageG.P. Putnam's sons, 1913 - 371 pages |
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Popular passages
Page 91 - We do not admire the man of timid peace. We admire the man who embodies victorious effort ; the man who never wrongs his neighbor ; who is prompt to help a friend ; but who has those virile qualities necessary to win in the stern strife of actual life.
Page 60 - Krieges, by SR Steinmetz, is a good example. War, according to this author, is an ordeal instituted by God, who weighs the nations in its balance. It is the essential form of the state, and the only function in which peoples can employ all their powers at once and convergently. No victory is possible save as the resultant of a totality of virtues, no defeat for which some vice or weakness is not responsible. Fidelity, cohesiveness, tenacity, heroism, conscience, education, inventiveness, economy,...
Page 65 - The weakness of so much merely negative criticism is evident — pacificism makes no converts from the military party. The military party denies neither the bestiality nor the horror, nor the expense ; it only says that these things tell but half the story. It only says that war is worth them ; that, taking human nature as a whole, its wars are its best protection against its weaker and more cowardly self, and that mankind cannot afford to adopt a peace-economy.
Page 91 - China has already found, that in this world the nation that has trained itself to a career of unwarlike and isolated ease is bound in the end to go down before other nations which have not lost the manly and adventurous qualities.
Page 119 - Burke's country in like manner. I assaulted a castle ' where the garrison surrendered. I put them to the ' misericordia of my soldiers. They were all slain. Thence ' I went on, sparing none which came in my way, which ' cruelty did so amaze their followers that they could ' not tell where to bestow themselves.
Page 65 - Militarism is the great preserver of our ideals of hardihood, and human life with no use for hardihood would be contemptible. Without risks or prizes for the darer, history would be insipid indeed ; and there is a type of military character which every one feels that the race should never cease to breed, for every one is sensitive to its superiority.
Page 13 - Therefore, a prudent ruler ought not to keep faith when by so doing it would be against his interest, and when the reasons which made him bind himself no longer exist. If men were all good, this precept would not be a good one; but as they are bad, and would not observe their faith with you, so you are not bound to keep faith with them.
Page 64 - We despise a nation just as we despise a man who submits to insult. What is true of a man ought to be true of a nation."* " We must play a great part in the world, and especially . . . perform those deeds of blood, of valour, which above everything else bring national renown.
Page 127 - If you rub it in, both at home and abroad, that you are ready for instant war with every unit of your strength in the first line, and intend to be first in, and hit your enemy in the belly, and kick him when he is down, and boil your prisoners in oil (if you take any !), and torture his women and children, then people will keep clear of you.
Page 115 - ... bounding forward, checking, sinking limply to the ground. Now under the black flag in a ring of bodies stood only three men, facing the three thousand of the Third Brigade. They folded their arms about the staff and gazed steadily forward. Two fell. The last Dervish stood up and filled his chest; he shouted the name of his God and hurled his spear. Then he stood quite still, waiting. It took him full; he quivered, gave at the knees, and toppled with his head on his arms and his face towards the...