ATIONS and METHODS bring preparatory theories into the conduct of
War, in so far as disciplined troops are inoculated with them as active
principles. The whole body of instructions for formations, drill, and
field service are regulations and methods: in the drill instructions
the first predominate, in the field service instructions the latter.
To these things the real conduct of War attaches itself; it takes them
over, therefore, as given modes of proceeding, and as such they must
appear in the theory of the conduct of War.

But for those activities retaining freedom in the employment of these
forces there cannot be regulations, that is, definite instructions,
because they would do away with freedom of action. Methods, on the other
hand, as a general way of executing duties as they arise, calculated, as
we have said, on an average of probability, or as a dominating influence
of principles and rules carried through to application, may certainly
appear in the theory of the conduct of War, provided only they are
not represented as something different from what they are, not as the
absolute and necessary modes of action (systems), but as the best of
general forms which may be used as shorter ways in place of a particular
disposition for the occasion, at discretion.

But the frequent application of methods will be seen to be most
essential and unavoidable in the conduct of War, if we reflect how much
action proceeds on mere conjecture, or in complete uncertainty,
because one side is prevented from learning all the circumstances which
influence the dispositions of the other, or because, even if these
circumstances which influence the decisions of the one were really
known, there is not, owing to their extent and the dispositions they
would entail, sufficient time for the other to carry out all necessary
counteracting measures--that therefore measures in War must always
be calculated on a certain number of possibilities; if we reflect how
numberless are the trifling things belonging to any single event, and
which therefore should be taken into account along with it, and that
therefore there is no other means to suppose the one counteracted by
the other, and to base our arrangements only upon what is of a general
nature and probable; if we reflect lastly that, owing to the increasing
number of officers as we descend the scale of rank, less must be left
to the true discernment and ripe judgment of individuals the lower the
sphe