meant. The superior efficacy belongs not to the MEANS but to the END,
and we are only comparing the effect of one realised purpose with the
other.

If we speak of the destruction of the enemy's armed force, we must
expressly point out that nothing obliges us to confine this idea to the
mere physical force; on the contrary, the moral is necessarily implied
as well, because both in fact are interwoven with each other, even in
the most minute details, and therefore cannot be separated. But it is
just in connection with the inevitable effect which has been referred
to, of a great act of destruction (a great victory) upon all other
decisions by arms, that this moral element is most fluid, if we may
use that expression, and therefore distributes itself the most easily
through all the parts.

Against the far superior worth which the destruction of the enemy's
armed force has over all other means stands the expense and risk of this
means, and it is only to avoid these that any other means are taken.
That these must be costly stands to reason, for the waste of our own
military forces must, ceteris paribus, always be greater the more our
aim is directed upon the destruction of the enemy's power.

The danger lies in this, that the greater efficacy which we seek recoils
on ourselves, and therefore has worse consequences in case we fail of
success.

Other methods are, therefore, less costly when they succeed, less
dangerous when they fail; but in this is necessarily lodged the
condition that they are only opposed to similar ones, that is, that the
enemy acts on the same principle; for if the enemy should choose the way