It pays to know the enemy - not least because at some time you may have the opportunity to turn him into a friend.

War - an act of violence whose object is to constrain the enemy, to accomplish our will.

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. when there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.