oppose.

The ultimate consequences of defeat no man can foretell. The only way to
avert them is to ensure victory; and, again following out the principles
of Clausewitz, victory can only be ensured by the creation in peace of
an organisation which will bring every available man, horse, and gun (or
ship and gun, if the war be on the sea) in the shortest possible time,
and with the utmost possible momentum, upon the decisive field of
action--which in turn leads to the final doctrine formulated by Von der
Goltz in excuse for the action of the late President Kruger in 1899:

"The Statesman who, knowing his instrument to be ready, and seeing War
inevitable, hesitates to strike first is guilty of a crime against his
country."

It is because this sequence of cause and effect is absolutely unknown to
our Members of Parliament, elected by popular representation, that
all our efforts to ensure a lasting peace by securing efficiency with
economy in our National Defences have been rendered nugatory.

This estimate of the influence of Clausewitz's sentiments on
contemporary thought in Continental Europe may appear exaggerated to
those who have not familiarised themselves with M. Gustav de Bon's
exposition of the laws governing the formation and conduct of crowds I
do not wish for one minute to be understood as asserting that Clausewitz
has been conscientiously studied and understood in any Army, not even
in the Prussian, but his work has been the ultimate foundation on which
every drill regulation in Europe, except our own, has been reared. It is
this ceaseless repetition of his fundamental ideas to which one-half of
the male population of every Continental Nation has been subjected