Alexander : a history of the origin and growth of the art of war from ...

656 ALEXANDER'S HELLENISM.knew nothing of it until Hannibal, by dire defeat, bad taughtthem that hard blows alone cannot stand against hard blowswell delivered.Greek civilization, to a certain degree, followed Alexander'sfootsteps, but it was not solely due to him. " You area man like all of us, Alexander," said the naked Indian," except that you abandon your home, like a meddlesomedestroyer, to invade the most distantregions, enduring hardshipyourself, and inflicting it on others." Alexander couldnever have erected a permanent kingdom on his theory ofcoalescing races by intermarriages and forced migrations.His Graeco-Persian empire was a mere dream. Alexanderwas never a Greek. He had but the Greek genius and intelligencegrafted on the ruder Macedonian nature ; and hebecame, to a marked extent, Asiaticized by his conquests.His life work, as cut out by himself, was to conquer, andthen to Hellenize Asia. He did the one, he could not accomplishthe other aim. He did not plant a true and permanentHellenism in a single country of Asia. Still, what he andhis successors did left a decided Hellenistic flavor throughoutPersia. Few of Alexander's cities have lived. Theywere rather fortified posts than self-sustaining marts. As astatesman, intellectual, far-seeing and broad, he yet conceivedand worked on an impossible theor}^ and the immediate resultof all his genius did not last a generation. What hemight have accomplished had he lived a longer liferemainsa mere subject of specidation.What has Alexander done for the art of war? WhenDemosthenes was asked what were the threemost importantqualities in an orator, he replied, " Action, action, action !In another sense this might weU be applied to the captain.No one can become a great captain without a mental andphysical activity which are almost abnormal ; and so soon as