The Importance of Moral Component in War

Despite European efforts to avoid Revolutionary People's Wars, writers and analysts began to consider the idea of a war. Colmar Fonda-Golts predicted a life or death struggle in 1883. Carl von Klausovitz had long recognised the nature of war to be escalatory, absolute, and extreme. The search for a moral edge, particularly among states that fear the future, has reappeared in the 20th and 21st centuries. Confronted with a powerful and indeed more numerous enemy in 1914, the French re-emphasised the moral component as offering the decisive edge in modern war.