the personal character of the combatants plays such an important part,
both in the cabinet and in the field. We limit ourselves to pointing
this out, as it would be pedantry to attempt to reduce such influences
into classes. Including these, we may say that the number of possible
ways of reaching the object rises to infinity.

To avoid under-estimating these different short roads to one's
purpose, either estimating them only as rare exceptions, or holding the
difference which they cause in the conduct of War as insignificant, we
must bear in mind the diversity of political objects which may cause
a War--measure at a glance the distance which there is between a death
struggle for political existence and a War which a forced or tottering
alliance makes a matter of disagreeable duty. Between the two
innumerable gradations occur in practice. If we reject one of these
gradations in theory, we might with equal right reject the whole, which
would be tantamount to shutting the real world completely out of sight.

These are the circumstances in general connected with the aim which we
have to pursue in War; let us now turn to the means.

There is only one single means, it is the FIGHT. However diversified
this may be in form, however widely it may differ from a rough vent of
hatred and animosity in a hand-to-hand encounter, whatever number of
things may introduce themselves which are not actual fighting, still
it is always implied in the conception of War that all the effects
manifested have their roots in the combat.

That this must always be so in the greatest diversity and complication
of the reality is proved in a very simple manner. All that takes place
in War takes place through armed forces, but where the forces of