Politics & Power Quote by J. F. C. Fuller

Fuller is doing something soldiers often do when they want to sound clinical while landing a political punch: he reduces whole systems to who gives the orders, then judges the sanity of the crowd versus the crown. The line is built on a neat, memorable symmetry: national armies fight nations; royal armies fight their like. It reads like taxonomy, but it’s really polemic. The parallel structure flatters the speaker as a realist and nudges the reader to accept his hidden premise: that modern mass politics is inherently irrational, while monarchical command is at least legible.

The phrase “mob, always demented” isn’t just contempt for civilians. It’s a fear of the new engine of 20th-century war: public opinion harnessed by parties, propaganda, and industrial-scale nationalism. Fuller served through the period when “the nation in arms” became a totalizing idea, culminating in the slaughter of World War I. In that setting, “national armies” don’t merely defend borders; they become instruments of collective emotion, moral crusade, and escalating demands that no single leader can easily restrain.

By contrast, “a king, generally sane” romanticizes older wars as limited affairs conducted by peers with shared codes. That’s the subtext: royal conflict as rule-bound, national conflict as existential. It’s also a convenient elision. Kings can be reckless; mobs can be correct. Fuller’s intent isn’t accuracy so much as diagnosis: once war answers to mass politics, it becomes harder to stop, harder to bound, and easier to justify as destiny.