The Principles of War. With reference to the Campaigns of 1914-1917. (A Lecture delivered at the Senior Officers' School, Aldershot, March, 1918).

FULLER, J. F. C.

Published by Aldershot: Printed by Gale & Polden, 1918

About this Item

First and only edition, scarce, a single copy listed on WorldCat - author unidentified - at the Australian War Memorial, one other located in the Fuller papers at Rutgers. An important stage in the development of Fuller's conception of a science of war, and a highly desirable essay in the formulation of British military doctrine. In February 1916 Fuller anonymously published "The Principles of War with Reference to the Campaigns of 1914-1915" in the RUSI Journal, "The principles had their origins in [his 1914 paper] "Training Soldiers for War" and in his studies at Camberley and were to an absorbing and at times obsessive interest for him for the next ten years, representing as they did the tip of an iceberg in his thinking, an iceberg labelled Science of War" (Trythall p. 35). In the essay he attacked the FSR [Field Service Regulations] of 1909 for their omission of the principles of war, to leave them unidentified is to "compile a grammar without mentioning the alphabet" (quoted in Searle p. 7), going on to name them as, objective, offensive, mass, economy of forces, movement, surprise and security. He returned to the theme later in the war, delivering the lecture printed here several times at the Senior Officers' School following a request from the commandant in the Summer of 1917. "This rather more compact assessment repeated the same principles, although in a slightly different order. Following an exposition of his eight principles, he concluded by arguing that their application was a matter of common sense, and that, 'This war is no more an exceptional war than any war is exceptional to the one that preceded it'. The source for these ideas remains hard to document with any certainty, but it is obvious that in Book III of [Clausewitz's] On War 'economy of forces' and 'surprise' can be found as individual chapters, while offensive, mass, and security can also be identified throughout that book" (Searle, p.8). Fuller's core principles eventually made their way, if a little reordered and somewhat obscured, into the 1920 issue of FSR, with the author Brig.-Gen. Cecil Faber Aspinall very possibly having worked from this pamphlet (p. 10); and subsequently they were given full expression in his own The Foundations of the Science of War, "In a small way I am trying to do for war what Copernicus did for astronomy, Newton for physics, and Darwin for natural history" (quoted in Gat, p. 25n). Azar Gat, Fascist and Liberal Visions of War, 1998; Alaric Searle, "Inter-service Debate and the Origins of Strategic Culture: The 'Principles of War' in the British Armed Forces, 1919-1939", in War in History, 21(1), 2013; Anthony John Trythall, 'Boney Fuller'. The Intellectual General 1878-1966, 1977 Octavo, 24 pp. Wire-stitched in the original buff printed wrappers. Just a little rubbed, light pencil contemporary author identification to the front panel, staples rusted, pale toning to the text, very good.

Seller Inventory # 165984

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Principles of War. With reference to the Campaigns of 1914-1917. (A Lecture delivered at the Senior Officers' School, Aldershot, March, 1918).
• Publisher: Aldershot: Printed by Gale & Polden, 1918
• Edition: 1st Edition