Herbert Henry Asquith Quotes

War means fighting. The business of the soldier is to fight. ... To move swiftly, strike vigorously, and secure all the fruits of victory is the secret of successful war.

General Longstreet,when once in a fight, was a most brilliant soldier; but he was the hardest man to move I had in my army.

Generals who save troops for the next day are always beaten.

It is certainly of great importance for a general to keep his plans secret; and Frederick the Great was right when he said that if his night-cap knew what was in his head he would throw it into the fire. That kind of secrecy was practicable in Frederick's time when his whole army was kept closely about him; but when maneuvers of the vastness of Napoleon's are executed, and war is waged as in our day, what concert of action can be expected from generals who are utterly ignorant of what is going on around them?

When he utilizes combined energy, his fighting men become as it were like unto rolling logs or stones. For it is the nature of a log or stone to remain motionless on level ground, and to move when on a slope; if four-cornered, to come to a standstill, but if round-shaped to go rolling down.

It is the rule in war, if our forces are ten to the enemy's one, to surround him; if five to one, to attack him; if twice as numerous, to divide our army into two.

To know in war how to recognize an opportunity and seize it is better than anything else.

There is only one tactical principle which is not subject to change. It is to use the means at hand to inflict the maximum amount of wound, death, and destruction on the enemy in the minimum amount of time.

Lee's army will be your objective point. Wherever Lee goes, there you will go also.

I have every confidence in the ultimate success of our joint cause; but success in modern war requires something more than courage and a willingness to die: it requires careful preparation.

The American way of war is to build an army, then another, then a third, while building fleets. If the war is still on at that point we smash.

There are a lot of people who say that bombing cannot win the war. My reply to that is that it has never been tried. . . and we shall see.

There is nothing more common than to find considerations of supply affecting the strategic lines of a campaign and a war.

In war, practice dissimulation and you will succeed.

To a surrounded enemy, you must leave a way of escape.

An army should always be so distributed that its parts can aid each other and combine to produce the maximum possible concentration of force at one place, while the minimum force necessary is used elsewhere to prepare the success of the concentration.

There has been a good deal of comment — some of it quite outlandish — about what our postwar requirements might be in Iraq. Some of the higher end predictions we have been hearing recently, such as the notion that it will take several hundred thousand U.S. troops to provide stability in post- Iraq, are wildly off the mark. It is hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam's security forces and his army — hard to imagine.

The only hope of a short war is to prepare for a long one.

We were lavish of blood in those days, and it was thought to be a grand thing to charge a battery or an earth-work lined with infantry.

If we do not learn to regard a war, and the separate campaigns of which it is composed, as a chain of linked engagements each leading to the next, but instead succumb to the idea that the capture of certain geographical points or the seizure of undefended provinces are of value in themselves, we are liable to regard them as windfall profits.

The success of our surprise attack on Pearl Harbor will prove to be the Waterloo of the war to follow. For this reason the Imperial Navy is massing the cream of its strength in ships and planes to assure success.

The true lesson of the Vietnam War is: certainty of purpose and ruthlessness of execution win wars.

If America cannot win a war in a week, it begins negotiating with itself.

The art of war is to gain time when your strength is inferior.

It is imperative to contest all factions for complete victory, so the army is not garrisoned and the profit can be total. This is the law of strategic siege.