l States, and a moment's consideration will show that in that
type of war the principle of the limited object can rarely if ever assert
itself in perfect precision. Clausewitz himself put it quite clearly.
Assuming a case where "the overthrow of the enemy"--that is, unlimited
war--is beyond our strength, he points out that we need not therefore
necessarily act on the defensive. Our action may still be positive and
offensive, but the object can be nothing more than "the conquest of part of
the enemy's country." Such a conquest he knew might so far weaken your
enemy or strengthen your own position as to enable you to secure a
satisfactory peace. The path of history is indeed strewn with such cases.
But he was careful to point out that such a form of war was open to the
gravest objections. Once you had occupied the territory you aimed at, your
offensive action was, as a rule, arrested. A defensive attitude had to be
assumed, and such an arrest of offensive action he had previously shown was
inherently vicious, if only for moral reasons. Added to this you might find
that in your effort to occupy the territorial object you had so
irretrievably separated your striking force from your home-defence force as
to be in no position to meet your enemy if he was able to retort by acting
on unlimited lines with a stroke at your heart. A case in point was the
Austerlitz campaign, where Austria's object was to wrest North Italy from
Napoleon's empire. She sent her main army under the Archduke Charles to
seize the territory she desired. Napoleon immediately struck at Vienna,
destroyed her home army, and occupied the capital before the Archduke could
turn to bar his way.

The argument is this: that, as all strategic attack tends to leave points
of your own uncovered, it always involves greater or less provision for
their defence. It is obvious, therefore, that if we are aiming at a limited
territorial object the proportion of defence required will tend to be much
greater than if we are directing our attack on the main forces of the
enemy. In unlimited war our attack will itself tend to defend everything
elsewhere, by forcing the enemy to concentrate against our attack. Whether
the limited form is justifiable or not therefore depends, as Clausewitz
points out, on the geographical position of the object.

So far British experience is with him, but he then goes on to say the more
closely the territory in question is an annex of our own the sa