"Fog of War"

[Fred Shapiro]

On Mon, 11 Jun 2007, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

> 1915 Arno Dosch in _The World's Work_ (Feb.) 470: Under the "Fog of War"
> [title]...The "fog of war," as the London newspapers phrase it, hung so
> thick there was no telling what would happen in the next twenty-four
> hours....The fog of war did not lift in the morning, nor for several
> mornings. We knew there was a big battle on, but that was all we knew.
>
>  Thank you, Google Books!

Surely the first time anyone has ever thanked Google Books for a
periodicals hit!

Yes, everyone, I realized _fog of war_ is a paraphrase of Clausewitz (see
page 157 of Yale Book of Quotations).  My focus was on the English phrase.

Here's earlier:

1904 _Living Age_ 1 Oct. (American Periodical Series)  The future had been
masked in the mysteries of the fog of war.

Fred Shapiro


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Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
Associate Librarian for Collections and     YALE BOOK OF QUOTATIONS
   Access and Lecturer in Legal Research     Yale University Press
Yale Law School                             ISBN 0300107986
e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu               http://quotationdictionary.com
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