Sublime

«We shall be unable to turn natural advantage to account unless we make use of local guides.» Sun Tzu

Lincoln’s goal, in each of these instances, was to balance law against military necessity, in the expectation that the passage of time and the success of his armies would stabilize the equilibria. “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong,” he wrote in 1864. “I cannot remember when I did not so think, and feel. And yet, I have never understood tha

Fox Conner had long-recognized the importance of Allied “unity of action.”

Reforms that last are those that come naturally, and with less friction, when men's minds have become ripe for them. A life spent in sowing a few grains of fruitful thought is a life spent more effectively than in hasty action that produces a crop of weeds. That leads us to see the difference, truly a vital difference, between influence and power.

We learn from history that complete victory has never been completed by the result that the victors always anticipate—a good and lasting peace. For victory has always sown the seeds of a fresh war, because victory breeds among the vanquished a desire for vindication and vengeance and because victory raises fresh rivals.

Leaders, he seemed to be saying, must keep their feet on the ground. Clausewitz thinks similarly.

Lieutenant General Walter Krueger, Eisenhower’s new commander, was an amalgam of Fox Conner and Kenyon Joyce—a military intellectual who relished leading troops in the field. Universally regarded as “a soldier’s soldier,” Krueger was a combat infantryman at heart. He was also widely respected as one of the Army’s best educated and most perceptive o

“The hard decisions,” Ridgway added, “are not the ones you make in the heat of battle. Far harder to make are those involved in speaking your mind about some hare-brained scheme, which proposes to commit troops to action under conditions where failure is almost certain, and the only results will be the needless sacrifice of priceless lives.”

Theory versus practice. Training versus improvisation. Planning versus friction. Force versus policy. Situations versus sketches. Specialization versus generalization. Action versus inaction. Victory versus defeat. Love versus hate. Life versus death. Leading from within clouds versus keeping the ground in view. But no “versus” whatever between art