For when Air Force cadets have to recognize “friend or foe” on being shown the silhouette of an aircraft for a split second, how does one describe the timidity of men who will neither say boldly that Christianity can only be practised by monks in monasteries, and clergymen in cathedrals, nor say that it is equally well available to those defending their country in its hour of need? Who will not say that religion is not only an essential prerequisite if there is to be integrity in civilian society, but also the guarantor that what is necessary in War is legitimate? Is there a single word that adequately encapsulates those who dither between these two attitudes of mind, which go to the very heart of what they are supposed to be professing?
Jung’s father was a Lutheran pastor, who lost his faith. But what could he do? He knew no other job. So he suffered in silence; it was too terrible to talk about. And of course it killed him. Clausewitz was made of sterner stuff. Eventually he resigned his commission in the Prussian Army, and took a commission from the Tsar in the Russian Army in time to take part in General Kutuzov’s victorious campaign to expel Napoleon from Russia. He negotiated the terms of General Yorck’s surrender, which brought a large Prussian force over to the Russian side. And thereafter took an active part in the war of liberation. Eventually he was readmitted to the Prussian Army, and played his part in that army’s crucial arrival on the field of Waterloo, in time to tip the scales of victory. His friend Gneisenau must get the credit that the Prussian Army retreated North West to join Wellington after their mauling at Ligny, rather than North East back towards home. And Gneisenau must also have participated in the decision after Waterloo to break all the rules of war, and march on Paris – because Napoleon was finished!
Clausewitz refused to serve his own country while the treaty was effective by which his country agreed to serve the enemy, Napoleon Bonaparte. And who knows what courage his integrity may have inspired in others? Fortune favours the brave; and if the clergy of the Church of England think they are exceptions to this remorseless general rule, I’m afraid they are wrong.
Genius, according to Clausewitz, creates the rules that govern the arts, and never breaks them; though he denied War was truly an art, even if it was not truly a science either. It was not a science for him, because he always rated the human factors, which are imponderable, as supreme. It was central to his thought that no theory, however realistic, matched reality. And that is my view too, both in natural science and in religion, that no theory is more than an approximation to the reality of life; which is why I find Clausewitz such a sympathetic character.