"Generals are always fighting the last war"

[Stephen Goranson]

I thought the Maginot Line was somewhere described as preparing a defense
against the previous war.

Anyway, Washington Post Nov 10, 1936 p. XII, Grim Signposts (The Future Made
Visible at Madrid) by Barnet Nover begins:

Almost a score of years before the Allies were deadlocked on the
western front,
a Polish banker, Ivan Bloch, in his great work, "The War of the Future,"
foresaw with uncanny accuracy the coming of trench fighting. But the war
offices and the general staffs paid no attention to his predictions. As
always,
they were preparing for the last war. Or, as Capt. Liddell Hart sardonically
declares, "for the war before the last."

Stephen Goranson
http://www.duke.edu/~goranson

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