I am trying to chase down the full text of a quote.
I’m pretty sure it was the Duke of Wellington, as follows:
“[I have accounted for XX horses, YY boots and ZZ tins of beef. I cannot account for one jar of marmalade. I can either persist in training a cadre of accountants, or] I can drive the forces of Napoleon from Spain. I cannot do both”
I’ve googled, I’ve looked a Bartleby.com (Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations). I’ve looked at a bunch of lame quote pages and Brit histories.
On a similar note, Spanish General Gonzalo Fernández de Cordoba, the “Gran Capitan” who conquered the kingdom of Naples for Fernando, the Catholic King of Aragon, was peeved that he was called upon to render accounts of his expenses. Spanish folklore has it that he presented his exhorbitant and fantastic accounts as
maybe the king did not like having such a haughty general beause the great general ended his days like the othe man who gave Spain a kingdom, Columbus: he lost all power.
The expression “las cuentas del Gran Capitan” is used in Spain to denoted a bill, invoice or account which is ridiculously high.
Then there was Teddy Roosevelt. When he was president, he was meeting with someone, and his daughter Alice was in the room playing. The person he was meeting with, upset that she was being disruptive, asked, “Mr. President, can’t you control Alice?”
Which led him to answer, “I can be President or control Alice, but I can’t do both.”