Cleverness can grasp; it is only
character that can hold. The Duke of Wellington was not a clever man; he
was a man of simple and honourable mind, with an infinite capacity for
patience, persistence, and endurance, so that neither unexpected
reverses abroad nor a flood of idle criticism at home could shake him or
change him. So he bore a chief part in laying low the last great tyranny
that desolated Europe.
None of our great wars was won by cleverness; they were all won by
resolution and perseverance. In all of them we were near to despair and
did not despair. In all of them we won through to victory in the end.
But in none of them did victory come in the expected shape. The worst of
making elaborate plans of victory, and programmes of all that is to
follow victory, is that the mixed event is sure to defeat those plans.
Not every war finds its decision in a single great battle. Think of our
war with Spain in the sixteenth century. Spain was then the greatest of
European Powers. She had larger armies than we could raise; she had
more than our wealth, and more than our shipping.
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