fer is this
form of war, because then our offensive action will the more surely cover
our home country. As a case in point he cites Frederick the Great's opening
of the Seven Years' War with the occupation of Saxony--a piece of work
which materially strengthened Prussian defence. Of the British opening in
Canada he says nothing. His outlook was too exclusively continental for it
to occur to him to test his doctrine with a conspicuously successful case
in which the territory aimed at was distant from the home territory and in
no way covered it. Had he done so he must have seen how much stronger an
example of the strength of limited war was the case of Canada than the case
of Saxony. Moreover, he would have seen that the difficulties, which in
spite of his faith in his discovery accompanied his attempt to apply it,
arose from the fact that the examples he selected were not really examples
at all.

When he conceived the idea, the only kind of limited object he had in his
mind was, to use his own words, "some conquests on the frontiers of the
enemy's country," such as Silesia and Saxony for Frederick the Great,
Belgium in his own war plan, and Alsace-Lorraine in that of Moltke. Now it
is obvious that such objects are not truly limited, for two reasons. In the
first place, such territory is usually an organic part of your enemy's
country, or otherwise of so much importance to him that he will be willing
to use unlimited effort to retain it. In the second place, there will be no
strategical obstacle to his being able to use his whole force to that end.
To satisfy the full conception of a limited object, one of two conditions
is essential. Firstly, it must be not merely limited in area, but of really
limited political importance; and secondly, it must be so situated as to be
strategically isolated or to be capable of being reduced to practical
isolation by strategical operations. Unless this condition exists, it is in
the power of either belligerent, as Clausewitz himself saw, to pass to
unlimited war if he so desires, and, ignoring the territorial objective, to
strike at the heart of his enemy and force him to desist.

If, then, we only regard war between contiguous continental States, in
which the object is the conquest of territory on either of their frontiers,
we get no real generic difference between limited and unlimited war. The
line between them is in any case too shadowy or unstable to give a
classification of any sol