Page:On Guerrilla Warfare (United States Marine Corps translation).djvu/54

Yu Chi Chan (Guerrilla Warfare) war are, however, similar in that they both employ the same military methods.

National guerrilla warfare, though historically of the same consistency, has employed varying implements as times, peoples, and conditions differ. The guerrilla aspects of the Opium War, those of the fighting in Manchuria since the Mukden incident, and those employed in China today are all slightly different. The guerrilla warfare conducted by the Moroccans against the French and the Spanish was not exactly similar to that which we conduct today in China. These differences express the characteristics of different peoples in different periods. Although there is a general similarity in the quality of all these struggles, there are dissimilarities in form. This fact we must recognize. Clausewitz wrote, in On War: "Wars in every period have independent forms and independent conditions, and, therefore, every period must have its independent theory of war." Lenin, in On Guerrilla Warfare, said: "As regards the form of fighting, it is unconditionally requisite that history be investigated in order to discover the conditions of environment, the state of economic progress, and the political ideas that obtained, the national characteristics, customs, and degree of civilization." Again: "It is necessary to be completely unsympathetic to abstract formulas and rules and to study with sympathy the conditions of the actual fighting, for these will change in accordance with the political and economic situations and the realization of the people’s aspirations. These progressive changes in conditions create new methods."

If, in today's struggle, we fail to apply the historical