It is only to clear from history that states rarely keep faith with each other, save in so far (and so long) as their promises seem to them to combine with their interests.

The only thing harder than getting a new idea into the military mind is to get an old one out.

The most consistently successful commanders, when faced by an enemy in a position that was strong naturally or materially, have hardly ever tackled it in a direct way. And when, under pressure of circumstances, they have risked a direct attack, the result has commonly been to blot their record with a failure.

The search for the truth for truth's sake is the mark of the historian.

War is always a matter of doing evil in the hope that good may come of it.

Direct pressure always tends to harden and consolidate the resistance of an opponent.

As has happened so often in history, victory had bred a complacency and fostered an orthodoxy which led to defeat in the next war.