The nature of war never changes "war," after all, "is an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will," as Karl von Clausewitz stated over a century and a half ago in his book On War.Įarly instances in which 'war never changes' something else In Korea, the hope for peace often took a cruel turn, as Robert McGinn of Huntington, W.Va., recalls.Īnd from Journal of International Affairs, volume 51 (1997) : Those who fight them always pray it will end. It isn't all idealism.įrom American Legion magazine, volumes 138–139 (1995), we have this variant: The men who fought from Seoul to the Naktong, who held at Masan, drove through Inchon, blasted a path from Chosin to Hungnam, fought for the same national principles that guided us at Saratoga, at Algiers, at Manila Bay and San Juan Hill, Château-Thierry, Normandy, Leyte. But don't you realize that it really demands a great deal of art?"įrom Walter Karig, Battle Report: The War in Korea, volume 6 (1960), we have this longer-winded version of the expression:īut the means of warfare change from conflict to conflict while the meaning of war never changes: at least, not for Americans. War hasn't changed since men have existed. But he says guardedly: " War never changes in its essence it only changes in its means." Again: "No. In these interviews, Foch discusses the immutability of strategic principles. It only becomes more bloody and brutal.Įarly instances of similar but slightly longer expressionsįrom " Story of War Told in Field Marshal Haig's Reports," in the New York Tribune (March 14, 1920): In the topsy-turvy situation surrounding neutrality, however, war remained the same grim reality. on Present Neutrality Law (1939):Īs often as not, our effort to promote peace by maintaining neutrality aided the aggressor and contributed to the calamity of the victim. Congress, House Foreign Affairs Committee, American Neutrality Policy: Hearings. cites in a comment beneath Jack Graveney's answer as appearing in a book published a year later, Practical Warfare: Chapters on Armies and Navies in Action (1915).Īnd from U.S. It is evidently the same quotation that site participant P. This quotation is attributed the head waiter in an unnamed restaurant in an unspecified locale in France, speaking during the first few months of what proved to be a long and monstrous First World War. Yet it is not the weapons, but the men who handle them, who win victories." "The great Napoleon won his victories because the Grand Army could outmarch the enemy. The earlier of those two matches is from " The Day's Work of a Soldier," in The World's Work: Second War Manual: The Conduct of the War (1914): Two sources in the Google Books database contain the phrase "War never changes" as a standalone sentence.
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