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We were never again without our sheaf of evening papers, and Raffles ordered three morning ones, and I gave up mine in spite of its literary page. We became strategists. We knew exactly what Buller was to do on landing, and, still better, what the other Generals should have done. Our map was the best that could be bought, with flags that deserved a better fate than standing still.
Their fathers had seen the barricades of 1848 and 1830, their grandfathers before them the Reign of Terror and so on one might continue as far back as the Norman invasion. The little café on the rue du Pont Louis-Philippe serves as meeting place for all the prophets and strategists of the quarter, who have no words sufficient to express their disdain for the Kaiser's heavy artillery.
On February 27 Secretary Chase wrote that the time had come for dealing decisively with the "army in front of us," which he conceived to be already so weakened that "a victory over it is deprived of half its honor." Not many days after this writing, the civilian strategists, the President and his friends, seemed entitled to triumph.
If, for instance, a bold policy is to be enforced, and a large sum of money allotted for material and personnel, the strategists will be led to recommendations different from those to which they would be led if a cautious policy were to be pursued, and a small sum of money to be allotted.
It would have been in the reasonable sequence of events that the military genius which planned and carried out the great coup at Ichi-no-tani should have been available at the subsequent council of strategists in Kamakura, and it would have been natural that the younger brother should have repaired, as did his elder brother, Noriyori, to the headquarters of the clan's chief.
However, we did know, in a general way, our position with reference to important military landmarks, and the amateur strategists were busy at all times explaining the situation to frankly ignorant comrades, and outlining plans for definite action. "Now, if I was General French, I'd make 'Ulluch me main objective.
After the destructive work of the guns they sent forward a scouting party of a dozen or fifteen men to report on the extent of the damage. Following them came bombers and pioneers, and then a strong body of infantry. Theoretically, this system had merit, but it did not always work out as perfectly as the German strategists had planned.
A vendetta ensues a war of extermination by clan against clan. Now, the chief object of war, as all strategists agree, is to inflict the greatest loss upon the enemy with the least loss to one's own side. Hence we have hostilities without declaration of war; we have the ambush, the night attack, masked batteries, mines and submarines. Thus we murder hundreds asleep or unshriven. This is war.
Brave he certainly was: but his mind was always swayed by preconceived notions; he belonged to the school of "manoeuvre strategists," of whom the Duke of Brunswick was the leader; and he now began the campaign of 1805 with the fixed purpose of holding a commanding military position.
But possibly to a third defeat which would mean not merely the loss of the force at Ladysmith; it would mean that Sir Redvers Buller's Army in its turn would need succour, and that the plan, so much favoured by the strategists of the Army, of a march through the Free State would be hampered.
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