Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: April 30, 2025
"A hard frost, my lord, but a beautiful day." "Won't you come near the fire?" The bishop knew that Mrs Proudie was on the road, and had an eye to the proper strategical position of his forces. Mrs Proudie would certainly take up her position in a certain chair from whence the light enabled her to rake her husband thoroughly.
The subject of battles is somewhat more complicated; for in the arrangements for these there are both strategical and tactical considerations to be taken into account and harmonized.
Still less will any one deny the value which the shrewdest and most successful leaders in war have placed upon the work of the classical strategical writers. The truth is that the mistrust of theory arises from a misconception of what it is that theory claims to do. It does not pretend to give the power of conduct in the field; it claims no more than to increase the effective power of conduct.
The defensive, then, has to be considered; but before we are in a position to do so with profit, we have to proceed with our analysis of the phrase, "Command of the Sea," and ascertain exactly what it is we mean by it in war. In the first place, "Command of the Sea" is not identical in its strategical conditions with the conquest of territory.
A mere glance at the map of Europe is sufficient to convince anyone that in a war between England and Germany it is a point of the first strategical importance. That our access to it should be hampered by the control of Holland over the Scheldt is one of the eccentricities of diplomacy which are unintelligible to the plain man.
Unpractical therefore as the distinction seems to be, it is impossible to dismiss it without inquiring why this was so, and it is in this inquiry that the practical results of the classification will be found to lie that is, it forces us to analyse the comparative advantages of offence and defence. A clear apprehension of their relative possibilities is the corner stone of strategical study.
Men read with an interest they had rarely taken in foreign affairs of the rapid and stupendous successes of the little soldiers of Nippon, the indomitable valor of the troops, the striking skill of their leaders, the breadth and completeness of their tactics, the training and discipline of the men, the rare hygienic condition of the camps, their impetuosity in attack, their persistence in pursuit; in short, the sudden advent of an army with all the requisites of a victorious career, as pitted against the ill-handled myriads of Russia, not wanting in brute courage, but sadly lacking in efficient leadership and strategical skill in their commanders.
If De Ruyter had followed, he could have been fought in a position from which there would have been no escape. The fault, in fact, was not strategical, but rather one of tactical judgment. Monk over-estimated the advantage of his surprise and the relative fighting values of the two fleets, and believed he saw his way to victory single-handed.
From a purely strategical point of view Belisarius was wrong to attack Sicily first and to carry the campaign from south to north; he should have attacked Ravenna first, and from the sea, and thus possessed himself of the key of Italy, and this especially as his base was Constantinople. But politically he was absolutely right.
Just now, however, the conditions existing in the Shenandoah Valley and along the upper Potomac demanded the special attention of General Grant, for, notwithstanding the successful march that Major-General David Hunter had made toward Lynchburg early in the summer, what he had first gained was subsequently lost by strategical mistakes, that culminated in disaster during the retreat he was obliged to make from the vicinity of Lynchburg to the Kanawha Valley.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking