It was said by Napoleon that tactics change every ten years, according, of course, to the progress of technicalities, etc. Weapons indeed change, but there is one thing that never changes, and that is human nature. The most important thing in tactics, the man behind the gun, never alters; in his heart and feelings, his strength and weakness, he is always much the same. Therefore, Clausewitz's tactical deductions, founded on the immense and varied data supplied by the desperate and long-continued fighting of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, permeated as they are by his all-pervading psychological or moral view, can never lose their value to us. It is true, no doubt, that our rifles of to-day can be used with effect at a distance ten times as great as the old smooth bores of Clausewitz's day, our shrapnel five times as far as his cannon, and that cover and ground play a far more important part now than then, and so on. All these things, of course, considerably modify the tactics of Clausewitz. Not so much, however, as some text-books would lead us to suppose, which always seem to assume clear ground and clear weather. For, after all, how many combats are fought on ground where there is a very restricted field of fire (_vide_ Herbert's "Defence of Plevna," etc.), or at night? How many battles are fought during rain, or snow, or mist, or fog, which destroys all long range? Compare the tremendous fighting with "bullets, bayonets, swords, hand-grenades, and even fists," of Nogi's attempt to cut the Russian line of retreat at Mukden, with the hand-to-hand fighting of Eylau, Friedland, Borodino, or with the desperate efforts of the French in 1812 to open their line of retreat through Maro-Jaroslawitz, where all day the masses of troops fought hand-to-hand in the streets, "the town was taken and retaken seven times, and the rival nations fought with the bayonet in the midst of the burning houses" (Alison). When it comes to push of pike, as in all great decisions between equally resolute adversaries it is bound to do, the difference between the fighting of Clausewitz's day and ours is but small. The most recent instances of all, the hand-to-hand fighting in Manchuria, take us back to the Napoleonic struggles. Therefore, despite the eighty years that have intervened, the writings of Clausewitz are still valuable from a tactical point of view, always considering of course the difference in weapons, because of the human heart in battle. His ideas on tactics have largely filtered through his German pupils into our textbooks, minus the psychological or moral note, so that it is not necessary to go at length into the subject, or give a number of extracts. It would be wearisome. I will, however, give a few passages at haphazard as illustrations. FLANK ATTACKS