Edited by Adrian Liddell Hart
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Selections from the world’s greatest military writings.
0 - 690 - 00052-9
$ 10.95
Selections from the World’s Greatest Military Writings
Prepared by Sir Basil Liddell Hart Edited by Adrian Liddell Hart
“I know not whether more is to be dreaded from streets filled with soldiers accustomed to plunder or from garrets filled with scribblers accustomed to lie.”
—Samuel Johnson
The conflict between the Pen and the Sword has been a recurrent theme in the history of war. War leaders and generals and the rank and file have attacked treasonable critics and armchair strategists. Writers, in turn, have attacked stupid and bloodthirsty soldiers. ‘‘IVIen wearing rapiers are afraid of goose-quills,” Shakespeare commented; Napoleon observed that ‘‘four hostile newspapers were more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.”
The antithesis is not clear-cut, however. Many great war leaders have owed their positions more to the influence of their pens than to any accomplishments on the battlefield. Throughout history, generals have tried to enhance their reputations by the use of their pens while historians have sometimes lied in fear of the sword. This book is an exploration not only into war but into the minds and nature of those who have engaged in it, with sword and pen, in time past.
Continued on back flap)
BOSTON
PUBLIC
LIBRARY
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2017 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation
https://archive.org/details/swordpens00lidd_0
THE
SWORD
and
THE PEN
To the memory of my father
