Some time ago, when asked to give a lecture at Aldershot to the officers of the 2nd Division on Clausewitz, it struck me that it would be very interesting, anxious as we all were then to know the causes of the wonderful Japanese efficiency and success, if I could obtain a pronouncement from General Meckel how far he had been influenced in his teaching by Clausewitz. My friend Herr von Donat did me the favour to write to General von Caemmerer and ask him if he could procure me such a pronouncement which I might publish. General Meckel, whose death both Japan and Germany have since had to mourn, most kindly consented, and I esteem it a great honour to be allowed to quote part of his letter. He said: "I, like every other German officer, have, consciously or unconsciously, instructed in the spirit of Clausewitz. Clausewitz is the _founder_ of that theory of war which resulted from the Napoleonic. I maintain that _every one_ who nowadays either makes or teaches war in a modern sense, bases himself upon Clausewitz, even if he is not conscious of it." This opinion of General Meckel, to whose training of the Japanese General Staff the success of the Japanese armies must be largely attributed, is most interesting. It is not possible to give a stronger or more up-to-date example of the magnitude of the influence of Clausewitz. In this connection I should like to make a short quotation from "The War in the Far East," by the _Times_ military correspondent. In his short but suggestive chapter on "Clausewitz in Manchuria" he says: "But as all save one of the great battles in Manchuria have been waged by the Japanese in close accordance with the spirit and almost the letter of Clausewitz's doctrine, and as the same battles have been fought by the Russians in absolute disregard of them (though his works had been translated into Russian by General Dragomiroff long before the war), it is certainly worth showing how reading and reflection may profit one army, and how the neglect of this respectable practice may ruin another." "Clausewitz in Manchuria"! That brings us up to date. It is a far cry for his influence to have reached, and triumphed. REFLECTIONS