He had thought his wars over. Now he realized peace had been merely a lull.

Before a war military science seems a real science, like astronomy; but after a war it seems more like astrology.

One reason we think the past was more violent than reality is because historians like to discuss wars, not peace.

"War," says Machiavel, "ought to be the only study of a prince;" and by a prince he means every sort of state, however constituted. "He ought," says this great political doctor, "to consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes ability to execute military plans." A meditation on the conduct of political societies made old Hobbes imagine that war was the state of nature.

It's one thing to study war
and another to live the warrior's life.

- Telamon of Arcadia, mercenary of the fifth century B.C.

Relearning and more difficult than learning.

Here they found real war, but they were not ready for it. They were used to easy victories. This deprived them of flexibility on the one hand, of tenacity on the other. For them, war was merely maneuvers. They have neither cavalry nor skiers, their tanks cannot pass over the snow.

The truth is, no study is possible on the battlefield. One does there simply what one can in order to apply what one knows. Therefore, in order to do even a little, one has already to know a great deal, and to know it well.

Perhaps wars weren't won anymore. Maybe they went on forever. Maybe it was another Hundred Years' War.

He says, you have to study and learn so that you can make up your own mind about history and everything else but you can’t make up an empty mind. Stock your mind, stock your mind. You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace.

Wars were not made by young men, he thought, yet they had to fight them.

"You've lived through a lot of wars, I said.
"Yes."
Do they ever make more sense?
"No.

Most people muddled through events and only in retrospect realized their significance.

Wars, for us, are either inevitable, or created. Whatever they are, they should not wholly vitiate art. What art needs is greater men, and what politics needs is better men.
(Something About a Soldier (1940))