CONFUCIUS ON THE CONDUCT OF WAR.
[To TILE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—In your article on "The Teachings of Trafalgar" in last
week's issue you quote a saying of Confucius in regard to the conduct of war. There is another, which forms Section 30 of the thirteenth chapter of his "Discourses and Sayings." As translated by Ku Hung-Ming it runs : "To allow a people to go to battle without first instructing them, is to betray them." Also in the tenth seetion of the seventh chapter, on being asked whom he would have with him if he were in command of an army, he replied :—
" I would not have him who is ready to seize a live tiger with his bare arms or jump into the sea without fear of death. The man I would have with me would be a man who is conscious of the difficulties of any task set before him, and who, only after mature deliberation, proceeds to accomplish it."
Burwell, near Cambridge.
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