o far as the elements in a separate form present
themselves for consideration in practice. The range and effect of
different weapons is very important to tactics; their construction,
although these effects result from it, is a matter of indifference;
for the conduct of War is not making powder and cannon out of a given
quantity of charcoal, sulphur, and saltpetre, of copper and tin: the
given quantities for the conduct of War are arms in a finished state and
their effects. Strategy makes use of maps without troubling itself about
triangulations; it does not inquire how the country is subdivided into
departments and provinces, and how the people are educated and governed,
in order to attain the best military results; but it takes things as it
finds them in the community of European States, and observes where very
different conditions have a notable influence on War.

39. GREAT SIMPLIFICATION OF THE KNOWLEDGE REQUIRED.

That in this manner the number of subjects for theory is much
simplified, and the knowledge requisite for the conduct of War much
reduced, is easy to perceive. The very great mass of knowledge and
appliances of skill which minister to the action of War in general, and
which are necessary before an army fully equipped can take the field,
unite in a few great results before they are able to reach, in actual
War, the final goal of their activity; just as the streams of a country
unite themselves in rivers before they fall into the sea. Only those
activities emptying themselves directly into the sea of War have to be
studied by him who is to conduct its operations.

40. THIS EXPLAINS THE RAPID GROWTH OF GREAT GENERALS, AND WHY A GENERAL
IS NOT A MAN OF LEARNING.

This result of our considerations is in fact so necessary, any other
would have made us distrustful of their accuracy. Only thus is explained
how so often men have made their appearance with great success in War,
and indeed in the higher ranks even in supreme Command, whose pursuits
had been previously of a totally different nature; indeed how, as a
rule, the most distinguished Generals have never risen from the very
learned or really erudite class of officers, but have been mostly men
who, from the circumstances of their position, could not have attained
to any great amount of knowledge. On that account those who have
considered it necessary or even beneficial to commence the education
of a future General by instruction in all details have alw