B. H. Liddell Hart Quotes (1895-1970)

“Clausewitz's principle of force without limit and without calculation of cost fits, and is only fit for, a hate-maddened mob. It is the negation of statesmanship—and of intelligent strategy, which seeks to serve the ends of policy.”

“Unless our field force could arrive on the scene during this opening phase—and it is difficult to see how it could, since it has to cross the sea—our assistance might be more profitably given in the form of a proportionately larger contribution in air strength.”

“If one weighs his [Carl von Clausewitz] influence and his emphasis, one might describe him historically as the Mahdi of mass and mutual massacre. For he was the source of the doctrine of "absolute war", the fight to a finish theory which, beginning with the argument that "war is only a continuation of state policy by other means", ended by making policy the slave of strategy.”

“At present one clear factor in the problem is that the offensive is as much at an advantage in the air as it is at a disadvantage on land. This comparison, in conjunction with our present deficiencies, has suggested that the offensive role of an expeditionary force might be entrusted to the Air Force. Apart from its greater promise of effect, it could be conducted from our own shores or from bases more easy to secure and more remote from the enemy than the zone an army requires; and it would avoid many of the complications involved, and evolving, when we land an army on the Continent. The Army could then be left to fulfil its Imperial garrison and police duties, with the possible addition of covering the oversea bases of our Expeditionary Air Force.”

“The new risks to such a force under modern military conditions have also to be weighed. The risks that were incurred in 1914, in landing a field force of 100,000 men in a foreign land, were much less than would be run to-day—when it may have greater distances to cover, and when both railways and roads will lie under the menace of air attack. Broken communications are bad enough when an army is in its own territory, or one where it has complete control. In face of air attack it is impossible to ignore the risk of a field force being stranded with no prospect either of reaching the front or of maintaining itself. In such a plight it could do little for the defence of British interests and it would be more nuisance than a help to any ally... Before the idea of intervention by land is accepted as politically indispensable, there should be full acknowledgement of its unstable military foundations. It should also be made clear to any nation looking to British aid, whether under the old Locarno Treaty or under its possible successor, first, that they may get more value from increased air assistance, which would naturally become effective sooner, in place of a field force; secondly, that the dispatch of a field force cannot imply a willingness to reinforce it without limit, and to expend the massed man-power of this nation, fully engaged as it must be by sea and and in the air, and in factory and farm, in another four years' process of exploring by trial and error a problem which can be, and could have been, examined scientifically.”