Art of War (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (39 page)

BOOK: Art of War (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

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Is it better to be loved than feared, or the reverse? The answer is that it is desirable to be both, but because it is difficult to join them together, it is much safer for a prince to be feared than loved, if he is to fall in one of the two.

Niccolò Machiavelli,
The Prince
(1532)

This is a certain road to victory.

44. If in training soldiers commands are habitually enforced, the army will be well-disciplined; if not, its discipline will be bad.

45. If a general shows confidence in his men but always insists on his orders being obeyed,

Tu Mu . . . says: “A general ought in time of peace to show kindly confidence in his men and also make his authority respected, so that when they come to face the enemy, orders may be executed and discipline maintained, because they all trust and look up to him.”

the gain will be mutual.

Chang Yü says: “The general has confidence in the men under his command, and the men are docile, having confidence in him. Thus the gain is mutual.” He quotes a pregnant sentence from Wei Liao Tzu . . . : “The art of giving orders is not to try to rectify minor blunders and not to be swayed by petty doubts.” Vacillation and fussiness are the surest means of sapping the confidence of an army.

X. TERRAIN

Living high up on a cliff monastery, surrounded by hostile armies in command of all the roads, Mao was compelled to revise all his thinking on revolutionary tactics and strategy. . . . [H]e had commanded small guerrilla battles where his own troops possessed swift mobility . . . [and] suffered dreadful losses. His next step was to acquire the good will of the villagers on the plains, the second was to employ them as his intelligence staff, and the third was to invite the provincial armies to attack, so that he could replenish his diminishing supply of ammunition. He said later that there was not a single machine gun among his troops at the beginning. . . . [They] were successful because they knew their terrain better, because they were trained for guerrilla warfare, and because they observed all the classic tenets of guerrilla warfare without ever forgetting their main objective: loot, elbowroom, secure footholds.

Robert Payne,
Mao Tse-tung
(1969)

Only about a third of the chapter, comprising paragraphs 1-13, deals with ground. . . . The “six calamities” are discussed in paragraphs 14-20, and the rest of the chapter is again a mere string of desultory remarks, though not less interesting, perhaps, on that account.