John Monash Quotes

"Feed your troops on victory," is a maxim which does not appear in any text-book, but it is nevertheless true.

The nation that wishes to defend its land and its honour must spare no effort, refuse no sacrifice to make itself so formidable that no enemy will dare to assail it. A may be an instrument for the preservation of peace, but an efficient Army is a far more potent one.

This achievement is, above everything else, an illustration, which should become classic, of the maxim that in war the moral is to the material as three to one.

I had formed the theory that the true rôle of the Infantry was not to expend itself upon heroic physical effort, nor to wither away under merciless machine-gun fire, nor to impale itself on hostile bayonets, nor to tear itself to pieces in hostile entanglements — (I am thinking of Pozières and Stormy Trench and Bullecourt, and other bloody fields) — but, on the contrary, to advance under the maximum possible protection of the maximum possible array of mechanical resources, in the form of guns, machine guns, tanks, mortars and aeroplanes; to advance with as little impediment as possible; to be relieved as far as possible of the obligation to fight their way forward; to march, resolutely, regardless of the din and tumult of battle, to the appointed goal; and there to hold and defend the territory gained; and to gather in the form of prisoners, guns and stores, the fruits of victory.