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No state should believe its fate, that is, its entire existence, to be dependent upon one battle, let it be even the most decisive. If it is beaten, the calling forth fresh power, and the natural weakening which every offensive undergoes with time, may bring about a turn of fortune, or assistance may come from abroad. No such urgent haste to die is needed yet; and as by instinct the drowning man catches at a straw, so in the natural course of the moral world a people should try the last means of deliverance when it sees itself hurried along to the brink of an abyss. However small and weak a state may be in comparison to its enemy, if it foregoes a last supreme effort,
we must say there is no longer any soul left in it. This does not exclude the possibility of saving itself
from complete destruction by the purchase of peace at a sacrifice; but neither does such an aim on its
part do away with the utility of fresh measures for defence; they will neither make peace more difficult
nor more onerous, but easier and better. They are still more necessary if there is an expectation of
assistance from those who are interested in maintaining our political existence. Any government, therefore,
which, after the loss of a great battle, only thinks how it may speedily place the nation in the lap of peace,
and unmanned by the feeling of great hopes disappointed, no longer feels in itself the courage or the
desire to stimulate to the utmost every element of force, completely stultifies itself in such case through
weakness, and shows itself unworthy of victory, and, perhaps, just on that account, was incapable of
gaining one. |
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