The Art of War by Sun Tzu (elon musk reading list TXT) 📕

the previous paragraph, however, would lead one rather to expect something like this: “If a general is always confident that his orders will be carried out,” etc. Hence I am tempted to think that he may have written 令素信行者. But this is perhaps too conjectural. ↩

Chang Yü says: 上以信使民民以信服上是上下相得也 “The general has confidence in the men under his command, and the men are docile, having confidence in him. Thus the gain is mutual.” He quotes a pregnant sentence from Wei Liao Tzǔ, ch. 4: 令之之法小過無更小疑無中 “The art of giving orders is not to try to rectify minor blunders and not to be swayed by petty doubts.” Vacillation and fussiness are the surest means of sapping the confidence of an army. Capt. Calthrop winds up the chapter with a final mistranslation of a more than usually heinous description: “Orders are always obeyed, if general and soldiers are in sympathy.” Besides inventing the latter half of the sentence, he has managed to invert protasis and apodosis. ↩

Only about a third of the chapter, up to “These six are the principles⁠ ⁠…”, deals with 地形, the subject being more fully treated in ch. XI. The “six calamities” are discussed in the next paragraphs (up to “These are six ways of courting defeat⁠ ⁠…”) and the rest of the chapter is again a mere string of desultory remarks, though not less interesting, perhaps on that account. ↩

Mei Yao-chʽên says: 道路交達 “plentifully provided with roads and means of communication.” ↩

Mei Yao-chʽên says: 網羅之地往必掛綴 “Net-like country, venturing into which you become entangled.” ↩

Tu Yu explains 支 as 久. This meaning is still retained in modern phrases such as 支托, 支演 “stave off,” “delay.” I do not know why Capt. Calthrop calls 支地 “suspended ground,” unless he is confusing it with 挂地. ↩

The root idea in 隘 is narrowness; in 險, steepness. ↩

It is hardly necessary to point out the faultiness of this classification. A strange lack of logical perception is shown in the Chinaman’s unquestioning of glaring cross-divisions such as the above. ↩

Generally speaking, 平陸 “level country” is meant. Cf. note 444 on IX: 處易. ↩

The Tʽung Tien reads 居通地. ↩

See chapter IX, “Camp in high places, facing the sun.” The Tʽung Tien reads 先據其地. ↩

A curious use of 利 as a verb, if our text is right. The general meaning is doubtless, as Tu Yu says, 無使敵絕己糧道 “not to allow the enemy to cut your communications.” Tu Mu, who was not a soldier and can hardly have had any practical experience of fighting, goes more into detail and speaks of protecting the line of communications by a wall (壘), or enclosing it by embankments on each side (作甬道)! In view of Napoleon’s dictum, “the secret of war lies in the communications,”782 we could wish that Sun Tzǔ had done more than skirt the edge of this important subject here and in chapter I (“By Method and discipline⁠ ⁠…”) and chapter VII (“We may take it then that an army⁠ ⁠…”). Col. Henderson says: “The line of supply may be said to be said to be as vital to the existence of an army as the heart to the life of a human being. Just as the duelist who finds his adversary’s point menacing him with certain death, and his own guard astray, is compelled to conform to his adversary’s movements, and to content himself with warding off his thrusts, so the commander whose communications are suddenly threatened finds himself in a false position, and he will be fortunate if he has not to change all his plans, to split up his force into more or less isolated detachments, and to fight with inferior numbers on ground which he has not had time to prepare, and where defeat will not be an ordinary failure, but will entail the ruin or the surrender of his whole army.”783 ↩

Omitted by Capt. Calthrop. ↩

Capt. Calthrop is wrong in translating 返 “retreat from it.” ↩

不利 (an example of litotes) is paraphrased by Mei Yao-chʽên as 必受制 “you will receive a check.” ↩

俱不便久相持也 “Each side finds it inconvenient to move, and the situation remains at a deadlock” (Tu Yu). ↩

Tu Yu says 佯背我去 “turning their backs on us and pretending to flee.” But this is only one of the lures which might induce us to quit our position. Here again 利 is used as a verb, but this time in a different sense: “to hold out an advantage.” ↩

Mei Yao-chʽên paraphrases the passage in a curious jingle, the scheme of rhymes being abcbdd: 各居所險, 先出必敗, 利而誘我, 我不可愛, 僞去引敵, 半出而擊. ↩

Capt. Calthrop says: “Defiles, make haste to occupy.” But this is a conditional clause, answering to 若敵先居之 in the next paragraph. ↩

Because then, as Tu Yu observes, 皆制在我然後出奇以制敵 “the initiative will lie with us, and by making sudden and unexpected attacks we shall have the enemy at our mercy.” The commentators make a great