Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Principles and Problems of Imperial Defence
In short, the conduct of war is, or should be, made a business transaction. The healths and lives of his men represent the capital of a general. He cannot reckon on unlimited funds: he must exercise economy, and utilise what he has to the best purpose. The force that can be provided by the country is limited, and it must be made to go as far as possible. Apathy in peace, and panic in war, are the dangers that have to be avoided; and of these the former is perhaps less dangerous than the latter, - panic, the child of forget fulness and the mother of waste, which calls ruinous prodigality into being to destroy what careful economy has painfully succeeded in building up, which endea vours in a week to make good the omissions of a decade, and sees the edifice reared by strenuous exertion crumble away when just completed and just ready for use.
We have recently witnessed a most salient example of what spasmodic effort can accomplish, and we have been surprised by the warlike vigour which the country has shown. Yet the army and its administration has met with the most severe criticism, because it was felt that the exertions made during the war exhibited energy rather than skill, and zeal rather than wisdom.
And now, no doubt, it is to. Be feared that when the skies have cleared, the uproar will die away. When the rains are over, many le rivers in South Africa disappear. Innumer of sand have waylaid and obstructed the thin trickle of the failing stream. Split into millions of tiny drops, the mighty volume of the great watercourse has finally become obliterated amid the infinity of the little particles; and you may walk across the dry sands of a river-bed incredulous that water can for years have ?owed there. Yet if you dig a little way below the surface you will perhaps find forms of aquatic life; it may be that there are even fish; just as amid inimical conditions spirit and vigour may survive. When the inevitable storms break in due season, a raging torrent will again appear rolling millions of gallons of water in wanton prodigality to the sea. It is possible to rescue those wasted waters, to dam and save, to cut channels judiciously and irrigate, - the generosity of one season being called to redress the parsimony of another; the same quantity of water making a whole countryside green, where now a narrow band of verdure alone marks the course of the wayward stream. Energy, imagination, and forethought, as well as water, are sometimes smothered and lost amid the illimitable little worries and obstructions of routine. Thousands will come forward at moments of national danger to swell the wild surges of unorganised force. Then the tumult, short-lived as it is violent, will sub side, leaving no permanent trace of its volume or even of its existence behind.
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