The enemy's Army, before it is sensibly weakened, may retreat to the opposite side of the country, or even quite outside of it.

In this case, therefore, the greater part or the whole of the country is conquered.
But this object of War in the abstract, this final means of attaining the political object in which all others are combined, the DISARMING THE ENEMY, is rarely attained in practice and is not a condition necessary to peace.

Therefore it can in no wise be set up in theory as a law.
There are innumerable instances of treaties in which peace has been settled before either party could be looked upon as disarmed; indeed, even before the balance of power had undergone any sensible alteration.
Nay, further, if we look at the case in the concrete, then we must say that in a whole class of cases, the idea of a complete defeat of the enemy would be a mere imaginative flight, especially when the enemy is considerably superior.
The reason why the object deduced from the conception of War is not adapted in general to real War lies in the difference between the two, which is discussed in the preceding chapter.

If it was as pure theory gives it, then a War between two States of very unequal military strength would appear an absurdity; therefore impossible.

At most, the inequality between the physical forces might be such that it could be balanced by the moral forces, and that would not go far with our present social condition in Europe.