This is Jocco Podcast number 110 with Echo Charles and me, Jocco Willick. Good evening, echo.

Good evening. All sciences have principles and rules. War has none. The great captains who have

written of it give us none. Extreme cleverness is required to even understand them, and it is

impossible to base any judgment on the relations of the historians for they only speak of war as

their imaginations paint it. As for the great captains who have written of it, they have attempted

rather to be interesting than instructive, since the mechanics of war is dry and tedious.

Books dealing with it have small success, and their merit will not be recognized except after

the passage of time. Those writing historically of war have better luck. They are sought by all

the curious and kept in the all libraries. That is why we only have a confused idea of the discipline

of the Greeks and Romans. War is a science covered with shadows in whose obscurity one cannot move

within a shared step. Routine and prejudice, the natural result of ignorance, are its foundation

and support. Nothing is so disgraceful as slavishness to custom. This is both a result of ignorance

and a proof of it. Chevalier Foulard supposes all men to be brave at all times and does not realize

that the courage of the troops must be reborn daily. That nothing is so variable, and that the true

skill of a general consists of knowing how to guarantee it by his dispositions, his positions,

and those traits of genius that characterize great captains. Perhaps he reserved of this immense

discussion of this immense subject, and perhaps also escaped him. Nevertheless, it is of all the

elements of war the one that is most necessary to study. The same troops, who, if attacking,

would have been victorious, may be inevitably defeated in entrenchments. Few men have accounted

for it in a reasonable manner, for it lies in human hearts, and one should search for it there.

No one has written of this matter, which is of the most importance, the most learned,

and the most profound of the profession of war. And without a knowledge of the human heart,

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