|
Book Excerpts:
7 of the 20 items ON WAGING WAR
[Ts`ao Kung has the note: "He who
wishes to fight must first count the
cost," which prepares us for the
discovery that the subject of the
chapter is not what we might expect
from the title, but is primarily a
consideration of ways and means.]
1. Sun Tzu said: In the
operations of war, where there are
in the field a thousand swift
chariots, as many heavy chariots,
and a hundred thousand mail-clad
soldiers,
[The "swift chariots" were
lightly built and, according to
Chang Yu, used for the attack; the
"heavy chariots" were heavier,
and designed for purposes of
defense. Li Ch`uan, it is true,
says that the latter were light, but
this seems hardly probable.
It is interesting to note the
analogies between early Chinese
warfare and that of the Homeric
Greeks. In each case, the war-
chariot was the important factor,
forming as it did the nucleus
round which was grouped a certain
number of foot-soldiers. With
regard to the numbers given here, we
are informed that each swift
chariot was accompanied by 75
footmen, and each heavy chariot by
25 footmen, so that the whole army
would be divided up into a
thousand battalions, each consisting
of two chariots and a
hundred men.]
with provisions enough to carry
them a thousand LI,
[2.78 modern LI go to a mile. The
length may have varied
slightly since Sun Tzu's time.]
the expenditure at home and at
the front, including entertainment
of guests, small items such as glue
and paint, and sums spent on
chariots and armor, will reach the
total of a thousand ounces of silver
per day. Such is the cost of raising
an army of 100,000
men.
2. When you
engage in actual fighting, if
victory is long in coming, then
men's weapons will grow dull and
their ardor will be damped. If you
lay siege to a town, you will
exhaust your strength.
3. Again,
if the campaign is protracted, the
resources of the State will not be
equal to the strain.
4. Now,
when your weapons are dulled, your
ardor damped, your strength
exhausted and your treasure spent,
other chieftains will spring up to
take advantage of your extremity.
Then no man, however wise, will be
able to avert the consequences that
must ensue.
5. Thus,
though we have heard of stupid haste
in war, cleverness has never been
seen associated with long delays.
[This concise and difficult
sentence is not well explained
by any of the commentators. Ts`ao
Kung, Li Ch`uan, Meng Shih, Tu
Yu, Tu Mu and Mei Yao-ch`en have
notes to the effect that a
general, though naturally stupid,
may nevertheless conquer
through sheer force of rapidity. Ho
Shih says: "Haste may be
stupid, but at any rate it saves
expenditure of energy and
treasure; protracted operations may
be very clever, but they
bring calamity in their train." Wang
Hsi evades the difficulty
by remarking: "Lengthy operations
mean an army growing old,
wealth being expended, an empty
exchequer and distress among the
people; true cleverness insures
against the occurrence of such
calamities." Chang Yu says: "So long
as victory can be
attained, stupid haste is preferable
to clever dilatoriness."
Now Sun Tzu says nothing whatever,
except possibly by
implication, about ill-considered
haste being better than
ingenious but lengthy operations.
What he does say is something
much more guarded, namely that,
while speed may sometimes be
injudicious, tardiness can never be
anything but foolish -- if
only because it means impoverishment
to the nation. In
considering the point raised here by
Sun Tzu, the classic example
of Fabius Cunctator will inevitably
occur to the mind. That
general deliberately measured the
endurance of Rome against that
of Hannibals's isolated army,
because it seemed to him that the
latter was more likely to suffer
from a long campaign in a
strange country. But it is quite a
moot question whether his
tactics would have proved successful
in the long run. Their
reversal it is true, led to Cannae;
but this only establishes a
negative presumption in their
favor.]
6. There is no instance of a
country having benefited from
prolonged warfare.
7. It is
only one who is thoroughly
acquainted with the evils of war
that can thoroughly understand the
profitable way of carrying it on. |
