In 1968 my father agreed to prepare an anthology on war: "a selection of the great writing on military topics by Historians and Authorities of all nations from ancient times to the present day." At that time he was working on his History of the Second World War which he finished just before his death in 1970. At the publisher's request I took over this project.

I have made use not only of my father's proposed outline, indicating those writers whom he was considering for inclusion, but also of his military library as a whole—now in the possession of King's College, London University. This contains the marginal notes that he had made on many of the military classics, as well as the correspondence with historians and military men which he had conducted over fifty years on the theory and practice of war.

I have not, however, followed an academic pattern, but rather sought to preserve an open—if sometimes indirect—approach to the meaning of war. The project has been 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. . ..

"My mind was scarce opened when my father gave me the first lesson of tactic," wrote Guibert, the eighteenth-century pioneer of Napoleonic warfare. "On returning home we would resume our game. . . . We next formed two armies and each took command of one of them. Then in different types of country, represented at chance by the arrangement of the pasteboard plans, we made our armies manoeuvre; we made them execute marches; we made choice of positions; we formed in battle one against the other. We afterwards reasoned out between ourselves what we had done. My father encouraged my questions and even contrary opinions. The nights frequently passed in this occupation, so much did this study absorb us, so well did my teacher know how to make it interesting."

Some of my own earliest memories are of war games played in the garden on summer afternoons, like Sterne's Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim in Tristram Shandy, or in my father's study of an evening.

Introduction

I accompanied my father, too, on military maneuvers at home and abroad, which he was covering as a military correspondent for the Daily Telegraph and the London Times. The exercises were often confusing; the battles sometimes seemed to go on a long time, especially when it rained, as it often did. On one occasion I found myself on the battlefield of Waterloo, like Stendhal's Fabrizio. However, I did not succeed in attaching myself to Marshal Ney, the hero of the Moskowa, but to King Leopold of the Belgians who was watching his army maneuver from the top of the convenient Victory Monument. Such are the revolutions of fortune that I fell into a manure heap at the farm of La Haye Sainte on the same day—while the King was later to be damned by responsible statesmen and popular writers as one who had, even at this time, been plotting to destroy his allies.

Where do war games end? "For several years the bell of my flat would ring on Christmas Eve," relates von Kuhl,* the aide of Field Marshal von Schlieffen. "A courier would bring his Christmas present, a great military situation designed by him for the set task of working out an operational plan. He would have been very surprised if the solution had not been in his hands on the evening of Christmas day." Schlieffen's game may have meant a not so merry Christmas for his aide. For others the great plan, to which he devoted almost his entire life, was to mean death on the western front —though it would be unfair to put the whole blame on the former chief of the German general staff for what, anyhow, miscarried after his death.

"But war is no pastime," says Clausewitz. "It is a serious means for a serious object." I used to accompany my father to the house of Lloyd George, where he was assisting the statesman in preparing his war memoirs. While I sat silently in a corner, the great war leader went on talking about Haig and other British commanders in terms in which, at school, a teacher might refer—though considerably less eloquently—to particularly stupid and dishonest boys. Yet these were the men we were expected to revere, especially on Armistice Day.

When real war was supposed to come again, in 1939, I was in France. I recall the son of the Polish ambassador explaining to me on the beach one morning how the Polish cavalry would be in Berlin in a few days. I had learned enough to be sceptical. Before many months I was guarding a bridge at Totnes, in Devonshire, in the service of what were optimistically christened the Local Defense Volunteers. My father thought it was an important bridge and route. "It is worth recalling," he wrote discreetly in an article at the time, "that the last and only successful invasion of England in modern times was made at Torbay (in 1688). . . ."

Two hundred years before, the military writer, Henry Lloyd, dressed as a priest, had spied out the invasion possibilities of the area for Marshal Saxe. "There is but one narrow road," he wrote in The Military Rhapsody ,

* Gerhard Ritter, The Schlieffen Plan.

Introduction

“which goes from Dartmouth to Newton Bushell, near which the tide flows. A few miles from Dartmouth, a branch of it turns off to Totness, and several towns on the west, as Torbay, Paignton, etc., come into the main road, leading to Hall Down or to Plymouth."

Another year and I was playing other war games. By this time I was aware that such games were different when played out on a small ship's deck in a freezing ocean, into which one might at any moment be blown.

“Such a sweet felicity is that noble exercise/' as Bacon expresses it, “that he that hath tasted it thoroughly is distasteful for all other. And no marvel; for if the hunter takes such solace in the chase; if the matches and wagers of sport pass away with such satisfaction and delight; if the looker- on be affected with pleasure in the representation of a feigned tragedy, think what contentment a man receiveth, when they, that are equal to him in nature, from the height of insolency and fury are brought to the condition of a chased prey; when a victory is obtained, whereof the victories of games are but counterfeits and shadows; and when, in a lively tragedy, a man's enemies are sacrificed before his eyes to his fortune.''*

After a man's death some reassessment of his life's work usually takes place. This is not, however, the subject for an anthology. I have included two extracts from the works of my father—he had, in any event, intended to leave any such selection to a collaborator. As with others, I have chosen them, not because I happen to agree with what is said, but primarily because they seem to express well a view of war—and to represent the influence of the writer in his time.

It was through his detailed criticism of such contemporary battles as Passchendaele, addressed to a wide readership which shared, to some extent, his personal engagement, that he came to be seen as, in his way, a revolutionary—and in some quarters, as a prophet. Yet the strategy of indirect approach was essentially a traditional and, indeed, classical doctrine. Although the summarized extract that I have given is taken from one of his later works, elaborating on an earlier one, it should be seen in the context of a heritage, a view of war—and life—which goes back beyond the eighteenth-century values that he admired, to the Elizabethans and the Greeks.

He acknowledged more recent debts. If I have omitted from this anthology some of these, British and French particularly, which he himself was considering for inclusion, it is because I have judged it more appropriate to maintain a different perspective, and not because he would have wished to separate himself from those who had stimulated or helped him.

Sometimes the subject of war-writing becomes of incidental

*Francis Bacon, Essays.

Introduction

significance. Who is concerned at this stage about who won the Battle of Omdurman—or how? "They displayed the virtues of barbarism. They were brave and honest. The smallness of their intelligence excused the degradation of their habits. Yet their eulogy must be short for though their customs, language, and appearance vary, the history of all is a confused legend of strife and misery."*

Churchill lived long enough to see a native military government installed where he had warned that "the political supremacy of an army always leads to . . . the degradation of the peaceful inhabitants through oppression and want, to the ruin of commerce, the decay of learning, and the ultimate demoralization of the military order through overbearing pride and sensual indulgence." The River War is now of interest because it tells us something about the writer—and because it contributed to the development of Churchill's own reputation.

The Crimean War maintains a claim on our attention because Russell's Despatches, as the first war correspondent of the London Times , were instrumental in bringing about changes in public attitudes and the fall of the government responsible. And it was in the Crimean War, and in even obscurer campaigns, that Tolstoy derived the experience that was to be developed in War and Peace, bringing a view of war to the attention of millions who had scarcely heard of Austerlitz, let alone Sebastopol.

"The mechanical part of war is insipid and tedious in description," Marshal Saxe wrote, "of which the great captains being sensible, they have studied to be rather agreeable than instructive in their writings upon the subject; the few books which treat of war as an art are but small in esteem. . . ." Saxe's own Reveries (which Carlyle described as a "strange military farrago dictated, as I should think, under the influence of opium") may be considered an exception.

"Great commanders." my father wrote, "have mostly been dull writers. Besides lacking literary skill in describing their actions, they have tended to be cloudy about the way their minds worked. In relating what they did, they have told posterity little about how and why." Napoleon may make us wonder how a man who commanded such awe from a generation of military historians could dictate so much which is banal.

In those works on war which treat of strategy and tactics, a broad division can be made between the intellectual, material, and moral aspects—though most writers have made the point, with varying emphasis, that these are interrelated. "Every theory," wrote Clausewitz, becomes infinitely more difficult from the moment it touches on the province of moral quantities."

*Winston Churchill, The River War.

Introduction

On the intellectual aspect, the science of war, one would scarcely look to novelists and other imaginative writers for expositions. Some authorities have, indeed, been inclined to the view that one should not look beyond the ranks of professional military instructors. Yet, despite the ever-increasing sophistication of military organization—or, perhaps, on account of it —fictional military expositions are no longer unfashionable in conditions that focus attention on subversive or irregular warfare. As St. Just once remarked, while rallying the Revolutionary armies, " les malheureux sont la puissance de la terre."

However, I am conscious that these selections, as a whole, may not do justice to the professional contribution, whether in the field or in the classroom. 'The most eminent military thinkers," writes Professor Michael Howard, "sometimes do no more than codify and clarify conclusions which arise so naturally from the circumstances of the time that they occur simultaneously to those obscurer but more influential figures who write training manuals and teach in service colleges. And sometimes strategic doctrines may be widely held which cannot be attributed to any specific thinkers, but represent simply the consensus of opinion among a large number of professionals who had undergone a formative common experience."*

This is not the place, I think, to try (if that is possible) to determine the comparative influence of military commanders or writers on the conduct of war throughout the ages—or their particular influence on each other. Neither the inclusion of a writer nor the placing of an extract next to another should be treated in this sense. Writers—and commanders—acknowledge a debt for various reasons, or omit to do so. An extensive pattern can be traced in this respect, but whether it proves much more than that "great" thinkers and even "great" men of action, with such notable exceptions as Jenghiz Khan, are usually well read, is open to doubt. Military history, when superficially studied, will furnish arguments in support of any theory or opinion.

"In reply to your query with reference to the integration of the Inchon Campaign with Wolfe's Quebec operation," General MacArthur wrote to my father in 1959, "so much time has elapsed since then that I would hesitate to attempt a categorical reply. That I have read and studied your account in Great Captains Unveiled t is unquestionable. . . . The most indispensable attribute of the great Captain is imagination." Wolfe, we know, was a well read general; "I had it from Xenophon," he explained at Louisbourg—while Xenophon had discussed matters with Socrates, who gave him the benefit of his own military experience.

"There has been no illustrious captain who did not possess taste and a

^Michael Howard, Studies in War and Peace.

|B. H. Liddell Hart, Great Captains Unveiled.

Introduction

feeling for the heritage ot the human mind/' de Gaulle wrote. * "At the root of Alexander's victories one will always find Aristotle." What does this signify? That de Gaulle was an intellectual soldier who already saw himself as a great captain—almost certainly. That Alexander was stimulated by Aristotle's teaching, very likely. That Aristotle's teaching had any particular bearing on the battle of Arbela, rather improbable. One might as well suggest that the Battle of Waterloo was won by the headmaster of Eton.

It could be claimed, with greater justification, that the most influential book on the conduct, as well as on the occurrence of war has been the Holy Bible. It has been testified that the Old Testament contains useful military information, especially for those who, as circumstances frequently demand, are required to campaign in the area. Lloyd George provided Allenby with a biblical commentary, remarking that he would find it more helpful than any war office manual.

It must remain a matter of opinion whether the wider military influence of the Word of the Lord has been more than a general inspiration. "I can say this of Naseby," said Cromwell after the victory, "that when I saw the enemy drawn up and march in gallant order towards us, and we a company of poor ignorant men, to seek how to order out battle ... I could (riding alone about my business) but smile out to God in praises, in assurance of victory, because God would, by things that are not, bring to naught the things that are."

Lenin's theoretical military views, it has been officially reiterated, are the foundation of the military science of the Soviet Union. So, too, in China and elsewhere with the writings of Chairman Mao. Yet how relevant are they to the strategical and tactical problems of waging war?

"The more I see of war," Wavell wrote to my father in 1942 when, as Supreme Commander in the Southwest Pacific, he was trying to stem the Japanese advance, "the less I think that general principles of strategy count as compared with administrative problems and the gaining of intelligence. The main principles of strategy, e.g. to attack the other fellow in the flank or rear in preference to the front, to surprise him by any means in one's power and to attack his morale before you attack him physically are really things that every savage schoolboy knows. But it is often outside the power of the general to act as he would have liked owing to lack of adequate resources and I think that military history very seldom brings this out, in fact it is almost impossible that it should do so without a detailed study which is often unavailable. For instance, if Hannibal had another twenty elephants, it might have altered his whole strategy against Italy."

Yet is is undeniable that the intellectual aspect of war, expressed in the principles of strategy and their development, can exert a strong attraction. In one of his earlier books my father referred to the long passage in The

* Charles de Gaulle, The Army of the Future.

Introduction

Guermantes Way, not long published, in which Proust describes and analyzes the attraction of this art. In The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, T. E. Lawrence likewise relates his "real" battle to an intellectual strategy—and also provides an interplay with other aesthetic attractions.

The material aspect of war has produced a literature often useful at the time but scarcely memorable. The capabilities of Hannibal's elephants, like the details of the crossbow, are of remote interest. The technical propaganda for—or against—more recent weapon systems becomes as rapidly obsolete as the objects themselves, as anyone who has worked in this field must be aware.

One of the problems which has so far defeated even the detached and informed writer on modern war is, I think, to bring out the essential bearing of complex armament and "logistics" on the conduct of war. Speer's description, published after twenty years in prison as a war criminal, of his time as Minister of Armaments in the greatest war machine then created, brings out the amateurishness with which these aspects were related both to strategical and moral considerations in the supreme direction of total, or what Clausewitz had conceived to be "absolute" war.

"One can only wonder," he says, "at the recklessness and frivolity with which Hitler appointed me to one of those three or four ministries on which the existence of his state depended. Never in my life had I anything to do with military weapons. . .

The moral aspect of war is that which predominantly engages our attention, whether this be the treatment of the laws and ethics of war or of the morale of soldiers and civilians at different levels. War, after all, is not a game. Why do men fight—and sometimes not fight? What was their responsibility? And, in the event, what was to be the determining factor when, as Tolstoy describes in War and Peace, "that moment of moral vacillation had come which decides the fate of battles"?

"The soundest strategy," says Lenin, "is to postpone operations until the disintegration of the enemy renders the delivery of the mortal blow both possible and easy."

It is on the moral aspect of war that "intellectual" writers on strategy have, like commanders in retrospect, found it most difficult to avoid being trite. Personal experience of war has, however, often saved such writers from the fatuities in which civilians have indulged.

Such a professional military strategist as Field Marshal Von der Goltz comments that "the possession of a horse furnishes a man in the hour of his greatest danger with the means of saving himself and it cannot be expected of him that he should not avail of it."f Perhaps he had in mind Frederick the Great's flight at the Battle of Mollwitz.

* Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich.

t Colmar Von der Goltz, The Nation in Arms.

Introduction

Most strategists and historians are still inhibited from discussing, in comparative detail and in a particular context of experience, the operation of those moral factors in war whose crucial influence they theoretically acknowledge. Can one seriously question the resolution of one's own commanders and troops, of those of one's allies, or even, perhaps, those of the enemy, whatever may be said about errors of judgment or deficiencies of resource? However, between the Clausewitzian and Tolstoyan poles, there is a moderate or limited view of war, well expressed strategically by Marshal Saxe and more recently satirized by Waugh: “The allies had lately much impeded their advance by the destruction of Monte Cassino, but the price of this sacrilege was being paid by the infantry of the front line. It did not trouble the peace-loving and unambitious officers who were glad to settle in Bari."*

Dealing with lawbreakers who have committed violence, I sometimes wonder at the confidence with which society decides that to kill in some circumstances and not to kill in other circumstances are alike reprehensible—or, in the psychiatric view, abnormal. A number of interesting studies have been made of aggression and war from a psychological point of view. It must be admitted that the lives not only of the “great captains" but of those who have devoted themselves to writing about war offer clinical evidence; a rather high proportion have not only lost their heads, possibly an occupational risk, but have, at some stage, gone off their heads.

A psychiatrist, complementing a strategical study of Churchill by my father, concludes that “his inspirational quality owed its dynamic force to the romantic world of phantasy in which he had his true being.“t

It may be that the readiness to wage war, at all levels and in all situations, is largely a matter of duty—but this only begs the question. None of the lengthy accounts by his fellow generals, explaining why they would have been more successful if only they had not been let down, is more revealing than that of Field Marshal Keitel, composed—when he knew he was to be hanged—somewhat unprofessionally at Nuremburg and necessarily brief. “The officer's profession is not a liberal profession: a soldier's cardinal virtue is obedience, in other words the very opposite of criticism . . .the so-called 'manic' intellectual does not make a suitable officer while, on the other hand, the one-sided education of the professional soldier described above results in a lack of ability to make a stand against theses which are not part of his real territory.'']:

* Evelyn Waugh, Unconditional Surrender. t Anthony Storr, Churchill: Four Faces and the Man. X.Memoirs of Field Marshall Keitel.

Introduction

Has the pen been any better than the sword in resolving the moral dilemmas of war? "Among the calamities of war/' Dr. Johnson wrote, "may be justly numbered the diminution of the love of truth by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages. A peace will equally leave the warrior and the relater of wars destitute of employment; and 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."*

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. "Men wearing rapiers are afraid of goose-quills," Shakespeare commented; Napoleon observed that "four hostile newspapers were more to be feared than a thousand bayonets."

Yet the antithesis is not clear-cut. 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 or those of their associates and, if Procopius is to be believed, historians have lied in fear of the sword. The sword has frequently been used to destroy the pen and its users; the latter have just as often expedited the work of destruction. There is nothing new in the martial use of the pen—and the printing press.

Trotsky was hunted down and killed with an ice pick while he was writing. In his History of the Russian Revolution he had described how he himself had used the pen to destroy. The sword was used by him in an apparently confused and incidental fashion (though the battles are prominently depicted in the "official" version, from which virtually every mention of Trotsky has been wiped out).

"Who can ascertain the truth about a cannon shot fired in the thick of night from a mutinous ship at a Czars palace where the last government of the possessing classes is going out like an oil-less lamp? But just the same," Trotsky concludes, "the historian will make no mistake if he says that on October 25th not only was the electric current shut off in the government printing plant but an important page was turned in the history of mankind."

The pen has frequently been used as a weapon in war—against one's own warriors. Swift's Conduct of the Allies includes an analysis of Britain's historic strategy, but Swift was not writing an academic thesis. He was employed for an immediate purpose in that war.

"While it lasted," Sir Walter Scott comments "it was impossible to dismiss Marlborough without the most awful responsibility, and the only alternative which remained was to render the war unpopular. With this

* Samuel Johnson, The Idler, 1758.

Introduction

view Swift's Conduct of the Allies was published and produced the deepest sensation upon the public mind."* Smollett commented: "That hero who had retrieved the glory of British arms . . . and, as it were, chained victory to his chariot wheels was, in a few weeks, dwindled into an object of contempt and derision."

Moreover, it has been common for great writers on war, as well as many lesser ones, to show marked inconsistency and ambivalence toward their subject. Strategists and historians have changed their opinions in particular instances. About war as a whole, writers have exemplified the contradictions both in their successive works and in their lives. "But what can war but endless war still breed?"t asks Milton, who had indefatigably defended until the last a military regime which put the Irish and its other enemies to the sword.

In Don Juan Byron sets out to satirize war, choosing to ridicule Suvorov's campaign against the Turks. "How horrible an example of human nature is this man," wrote Keats, "who has no pleasure left him but to gloat over and jeer at the most awful incidents of life . . . and yet it will fascinate thousands by the very diabolical outrage of their sympathies." Byron, who had already celebrated the struggle of ancient Greece against the Persians, was soon to die, trying to organize, not very successfully, a campaign against these same Turks.

I recall the disruption between my father and some of his literary friends who had been fervent preachers against war, and in some cases conscientious objectors, when, after Russia entered World War II they began to write with like fervor—and with utter disregard for the strategical problems—in favor of immediately opening a second front. I also recall the dismay when, during the Blockade of Berlin, in 1948,1 was assigned to look after the arrangements for the visit of Bertrand Russell, and it was discovered that the philosopher had chosen this time and place to call for the threat, at least, of a preventive nuclear war.

"The arms race became inevitable unless drastic measures were taken to avoid it," he was to write in his Autobiography. "That is why, in late 1948, I suggested that the remedy might be the threat of immediate war by the United States. . . ." He admits that he had hotly denied that he ever made such a suggestion and remarks that it is shameful to deny one's own words.

"To conclude, therefore," Bacon writes to Prince Charles in 1624, "howsoever some schoolmen, otherwise reverend men, yet fitter to guide penknives than swords, seem precisely to stand upon it ... a just fear will be a just cause of a preventive war; but especially if it be part of the case, that there be a nation that is manifestly detected to aspire to monarchy and new conquests; then other states, assuredly, cannot be justly accused for

* Sir Walter Scott, ed.. Works of Jonathan Swift.

t John Milton, To the Lord General Fairfax.

Introduction

not staying the first blow, or for not accepting Polyphemus's courtesy, to be the last that shall be eaten up/'*

Soldiers have, naturally, sought to diminish the force of war criticism by emphasizing the value of personal experience of war. Frederick the Great made Guichard, a military historian, stand to attention with a full pack for several hours. "You will agree that you can only judge of certain things by comparison. Our friends, the authors, decide things in their study and it is well to correct their ideas by practice. . . . Our Captain will no longer pass judgment, if he ever writes again, so lightly as he did, after the experience he has been put through, which seemed . . . to sadden him somewhat."

Had Grotius been a commander," Gustavus Adolphus remarked, "he would have seen that his precepts could not be carried out.

Naturally, too, those military writers who have had some war experience tend to support this view. "The Captain of the Hampshire Grenadiers," Gibbon concludes in his Autobiography, "has not been useless to the historian of the Roman Empire." Polybius maintained that it was impossible to write well on the operations of war if a man had no experience of actual service.

Moreover, the oversimplified antithesis between the Sword and the Pen obscures the truth that some of the most effective pen-pushing has been carried out, not in public exposition of the art of war but in the service of the war "machine." War is fashioned by the materials of written instruction. And in modern war, or preparation for war, most generals themselves are likely to spend much of their careers skillfully pushing a pen in performance of their duties.

Arthur Bryant observes in his biography of Pepys that "more than any other man he evolved the gentle art of bureaucratic defence and offence," and that "when it came to the niceties of battle by administrative correspondence he was their master every time."T

Pepys wrote: "I am loath it should be thought possible that any degree of friendship or other consideration whatever could prevail with me to mislead his Majesty, by one word of mine, to the granting of a thing so extraordinary, so irregular and unjustified by any practice past, and unlikely to be ever imitated in time to come, as this which you have thus contended for of having two of the top flags of England exposed to sea in view of the two greatest rivals of England for Sea Dominion and Glory (I mean the Dutch and French) with no better provision for supporting the honour thereof than six ships, and two of them such as carry not above 190 men and 54 guns between them. And this, too, obtained through mere force of importunity by one who but in September last charged Captain Priestman with turning the King's flag into ridicule in putting up but an unusual swallow-tailed pendant. . . ."

* Sir Francis Bacon, On War with Spain.

t Sir Arthur Bryant, Samuel Pepys , Saviour of the Navy.

Introduction

Finally, some of the most notable writing on war has been concerned with the constitutional problems of military power. In modern democracies, as much as in ancient Greece, men are concerned with organizing their defense forces in a way which will not threaten their own society.

Is there a dimension in which the various and contradictory ways in which war has been treated by word and pen, and the ambivalence shown by their use may be reconciled?

Melville had been one of those who, in his earlier works such as White- Jacket , had written against war and the abuses which he himself had experienced in a "man-o-war." In his last short allegorical work, Billy Budd, he is "prompted by the sight of the star inserted in the Victory's quarterdeck designating the spot where the Great Sailor fell," to muse on the resolution of truth and myth, careful strategy and dramatic art in war.

"If under the presentiment of the most magnificent of all victories, to be crowned by his own glorious death, a sort of priestly motive led him to dress his person in the jewelled vouchers of his own shining deeds; if thus to have adorned himself for the altar and the sacrifice were indeed vainglory, then affectation and fustian is each more heroic line in the great epics and dramas, since in such lines the poet but embodies in verse those exaltations of sentiment that a nature like Nelson s, the opportunity being given, vitalizes into acts."

This anthology, then, is an exploration of various interpretations of war. Inevitably, many selections suffer out of their context. They may, however, be better appreciated when they are set against those of their contemporaries. In this context, too, the obscurer view has its value; Private Wheeler tells us something about Wellington s "grand strategy."

Circumstances have dictated a possibly undue preponderance of writing from the Western and, in particular, from the English-speaking world. This project was surely not conceived under the impression that we had more than our national share of military or literary genius—though it may be that the English have got themselves involved in an undue number of wars. One may speculate, too, on the nature of a political or social climate favorable to the literary expression of an interest in war—in poetry or polemic.

Numerous accounts of World War II, from those who played some part in it, are still emerging. There has been a massive bombardment—and many resounding claims. "I hear that my generals are selling their Lives dearly," Churchill is said to have commented in old age. He was hardly in a position to complain. "In fifty years time your name will be a household word," Field Marshal Viscount Allenby of Megiddo remarked to Colonel T.

Introduction

E. Lawrence after World War I. "To find out about Allenby, they will have to go to the War Museum." He was not far wrong.

Thucydides, himself an unsuccessful admiral, commented that "many badly conceived enterprises have had the luck to be successful because the enemy has shown an even smaller degree of intelligence." However, a few hundred years later Josephus, an ex-general with no mean powers of self- congratulation, explained in the introduction to his History of the Jewish War, the importance of giving the enemy his due. "Yet the writers I have in mind claim to be writing history, though besides getting all their facts wrong they seem to miss the target altogether. For they wish to establish the greatness of the Romans while all the time disparaging and deriding the actions of the Jews. But I do not see how men can prove themselves great by overcoming feeble opponents." Such advice may have fostered a mutual admiration society.

If, when it comes to World War II, it is difficult to maintain a sense of historical proportion, it may also be invidious—and premature—to consider the influence on war of postwar writing on the nuclear deterrent and other matters. As Plato said, "only the dead have seen the end of the war." And only the dead, perhaps, should be wisely included in an anthology of war.

Editorial Note

In reproducing writing from many sources I have kept closely to the text, even where it would seem that the author has slipped in language or in reference. With translations, especially from the ancient classics, and with regard to technical terms, there may be arguments about the correct rendering. In general I have used the standard translations, where available; these have influenced people in the past, though modern scholarship may, in some cases, have improved on them. With old English I have modernized the spelling, though not the style or, I trust, the sense.