The present essay is concerned with the Clausewitz’s arguments devoted to the relationships between the civil authorities and the military command. While starting with the known assumption made by the author of the treaty On the War, according to which the war is the continuation of policy which is only pursued with the use of different measures, the author of the present essay tries to show to what extent this assumption was timely at the moment of the writing of the treaty and what may be its significance in more universal sense. The author of the essay exploits the examples that draw upon the Prussian tradition, he exploits the concent of Preussentum as well as historical exemplifications based on the Frederician reforms, activities of K. Stein and K.A. Hardenberg, and eventually the conflict between
O. Bismarck and H. Moltke during the Prusso‐Austrian and French‐Prussian wars. The author tries to show the major factors formative of the policy conceived of in that way and the gradual fiasco of this policy in the history of the Second and Third Reich. What does not escape from the range of vision of the author is the philosophical and political layer of Clausewitz’s treaty. He emphasizes that it is that layer and not the military one that preserved its relevance to today.
Starting from 1960s there has begun the process of studying and interpreting afresh the Clausewitz’s treaty. As a result various messages addressed to the present time were identified in the treaty in question.  Of  course  the  present  essay  is  only  the  contribution  to  the  aforementioned research. We must accept the fact that in Polish literature, despite republishing the inter‐war edition of the treaty On the War and despite several fairly precious translations of this work, the interest taken in it seems to be relatively small.