ior in the field, will avoid action throughout, and by
such a plan can actually win the campaign in the end. Historical instances
of this, though rare, exist. And there have even been campaigns where,
after a great action disastrous to one side, that side has yet been able
to keep up a broken resistance sufficiently lengthy and exhausting to
baulk the conqueror of his political object in the end.

In a word, it is the business of the serious student in military history
to reverse the popular and dramatic conception of war, to neglect the
brilliance and local interest of a battle for the larger view of the whole
operations; and, again, to remember that these operations are not an end
in themselves, but are only designed to serve the political plan of the
government which has commanded them.

* * * * *

Judged in this true light, we may establish the following conclusions
with regard to the battle of Waterloo.

First, the battle of Waterloo was a decisive action, the result of which
was a complete military success for the Allies in the campaign they had
undertaken, and a complete military defeat for Napoleon, who had opposed
them.

This complete military success of the Allies' campaign was, again,
equivalent to a success in their immediate political object, which was the
overthrow of Napoleon's personal power, the re-establishment of the
Bourbons upon the French throne, and the restoration of those traditions
and ideals of government which had been common to Europe before the
outbreak of the French Revolution twenty-four years before.

Had the effect of this battle and that campaign been permanent, one could
speak of their success as complete; but when we discuss that largest issue
of all, to wit, whether the short campaign which Waterloo so decisively
concluded really effected its object, considering that that object was the
permanent destruction of the revolutionary effort and the permanent
re-establishment of the old state of affairs in Europe, we are compelled
to arrive at a very different conclusion: a conclusion which will vary
with the varying judgment of men, and one which cannot be final, because
the drama is not yet played out; but a conclusion which, in the eyes of
all, singularly modifies the effect of the campaign of Waterloo.

It is obvious, at the first glance we take of European history during,
say, the lifetime of a man who should have been a boy in Waterloo year,
tha