The origins and adaptation of principles of war into the doctrine of certain western powers has been shrouded in doubt and confused by widely-held misconceptions. By examining the military thought, as expressed in books and articles on the theory of war, in lectures delivered at prominent schools of war, and in official publications of France, Germany, Great Britain and the United States, the varying concepts of principles of war held by these nations can be Viewed, and the forces which influenced their development can be, in some cases identified, and in others suggested. The prevailing modern view of principles of war, that they are few in number and can be easily expressed, originated in the Napoleonic era, but until the revision of service manuals in the post-World War I era, the principles were rarely expressed as definite lists of aphorisms. This format has become widely accepted in Great Britain and the United States and to a lesser degree in France, but the origins of the concept have been generally misunderstood--especially since World War II. Some commentators have traced the origins of the modern principles to Ferdinand Foch, some to Clausewitz and some to J. F. C. Fuller. A good case can be made for Fuller, but still severe difficulties in discovering the origins exist. Part of the difficulty resulted from the recollections of Fuller, whose role in the origins has been overstated in his memoirs and in other of his many publications. Part of the difficulty resulted from the fact that the origins of concepts are often elusive and from the fact that concepts often become widely accepted before they are articulated in written form. The first nation to officially adopt a definitive list of principles of war was Great Britain. They appeared in the Field Service Regulations (Provisional) of 1920. A list, clearly influenced by the official British list, appeared in United States Training Regulations in the following year. The British principles were brought to the United States' doctrine via the lectures of a faculty member at the United States General Staff College. This transition was especially significant, for the concept of principles espoused by Fuller and the British was explicitly rejected in the immediate post-World War I period in France and Germany where Fuller and other British authors were widely studied and emulated. But even in France and Germany a trend toward the more definitive identification of principles of war has been evident since World War. The history of the origins and adaptation of the modern concepts of principles of war would be incomplete without an attempt to reveal at least some of the forces which encouraged the trend toward the more definitive statement of principles. The mass armies of the twentieth century created the need for a doctrine of war which could be readily inculcated into the mind of the mobilized citizen-soldiers. Science and technology, which were intimately connected to many of the activities of war, affected the way men thought about their tasks, and ideas about the conduct of war tended toward the simple and definitive expression found in the language of science. Military history, encouraged in the curricula of nearly all modern military schools, found justification in the belief that the study of the past would reveal and reinforce the true principles of war as demonstrated by the greatest captains of the past. The schools themselves were instrumental forces in the trend, for the teacher's first task has been to simplify the complexities of war for the benefit of the student. The principles of war ideally fulfilled this requirement. Many individuals contributed to the modern expression and acceptance of principles of war, but of far greater influence was the great variety of impersonal forces that created different concepts of principles in the four nations examined in this study. In spite of common experiences, and the borrowing and sharing of ideas among the western powers on the conduct of war, its principles have assumed chameleon-like characteristics.

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