It would seem, therefore, that these operations were distinguished not so much by the nature of the object as by the fact that we devoted to them, not the whole of our military strength, but only a certain part of it which was known as our “disposal force.”  Consequently, they appear to call for some such special classification, and to fall naturally into the category which Clausewitz called “War limited by contingent.”

It was a nature of war well enough known in another form on the Continent.  During the eighteenth century there had been a large number of cases of war actually limited by contingent—­that is, cases where a country not having a vital interest in the object made war by furnishing the chief belligerent with an auxiliary force of a stipulated strength.

It was in the sixth chapter of his last book that Clausewitz intended to deal with this anomalous form of hostility.  His untimely death, however, has left us with no more than a fragment, in which he confesses that such cases are “embarrassing to his theory.”  If, he adds, the auxiliary force were placed unreservedly at the disposal of the chief belligerent, the problem would be simple enough.  It would then, in effect, be the same thing as unlimited war with the aid of a subsidised force.  But in fact, as he observes, this seldom happened, for the contingent was always more or less controlled in accordance with the special political aims of the Government which furnished it.  Consequently, the only conclusion he succeeded in reaching was that it was a form of war that had to be taken into account, and that it was a form of limited war that appeared to differ essentially from war limited by object.  We are left, in fact, with an impression that there must be two kinds of limited war.

But if we pursue his historical method and examine the cases in which this nature of war was successful, and those in which it was unsuccessful, we shall find that wherever success is taken as an index of its legitimate employment, the practical distinction between the two kinds of limited war tends to disappear.  The indications are that where the essential factors which justify the use of war limited by object are present in war limited by contingent, then that form of war tends to succeed, but not otherwise.  We are brought, in fact, to this proposition, that the distinction “Limited by contingent” is not one that is inherent in war, and is quite out of line with the theory in hand—­that, in reality, it is not a form of war, but a method which may be employed either for limited or unlimited war.  In other words, war limited by contingent, if it is to be regarded as a legitimate form of war at all, must take frankly the one shape or the other.  Either the contingent must act as an organic unit of the force making unlimited war without any reservations whatever, or else it should be given a definite territorial object, with an independent organisation and an independent limited function.