ABSTRACT
Louis XIV understood the art of government as have few princes either before or since, and this was the case above all in the first half of his reign, when his spirit was still young and fresh. In his memoirs of the year 1666, he lays down for every branch of the adminstration, and more especially for the conduct of military affairs, the following essential rules: 'Resolutions ought to be prompt, discipline exact, commands absolute, obedience punctual'. The essentials thus enumerated by the Roi Soleil are equally applicable, mutatis mutandis, to the various aggregates of modern political life, for these are in a perpetual condition of latent warfare. The modern party is a fighting organization in the political sense of the term, and must as such conform to the laws of tactics. Now the first article of these laws is facility of mobilization.
