In this kind of struggle for loyalties, military operations and political action are inseparable. In a more real sense than ever before, one is making war and peace simultaneously. The guerrilla organization is a civil administration as much as a fighting mechanism. It acquires increasing political responsibilities with its increasing military success until ultimately its leaders emerge from hiding as fully-fledged Heads of State and take their place among the great ones of the world. The established regime, on the other side, is concerned to keep operations within the category of policing, the maintenance of law and order, and to preserve the image of legitimate power which gains it the support of the uncommitted part of the population. In this struggle schools and hospitals are weapons, as important as military units. Defeat is acknowledged, not when one side or the other recognises that the destruction of its armed forces is inescapable, but when it abandons all hope of winning the sympathy of the population over to its side. In such a struggle it must be admitted that a foreign power fights indigenous guerrillas under disadvantages so great that even the most overwhelming preponderance in military force and weapons may be insufficient to make up for them. In such wars, as in those of an earlier age, military operations are therefore only one tool of national policy, and not necessarily the most important. They have to be coordinated with others by a master hand.
EXCLUSIVE The Entente World War I Battlefields Download Full
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