fic world, only people out of common life,
such as he meets with every day in the street. And yet the author cannot
make up his mind to become a hair's breadth more mathematical than the
subject seems to him to require, and he is not alarmed at the surprise
which the reader may show.

In War more than anywhere else in the world things happen differently to
what we had expected, and look differently when near, to what they
did at a distance. With what serenity the architect can watch his work
gradually rising and growing into his plan. The doctor although much
more at the mercy of mysterious agencies and chances than the architect,
still knows enough of the forms and effects of his means. In War, on
the other hand, the Commander of an immense whole finds himself in a
constant whirlpool of false and true information, of mistakes
committed through fear, through negligence, through precipitation,
of contraventions of his authority, either from mistaken or correct
motives, from ill will, true or false sense of duty, indolence or
exhaustion, of accidents which no mortal could have foreseen. In short,
he is the victim of a hundred thousand impressions, of which the most
have an intimidating, the fewest an encouraging tendency. By long
experience in War, the tact is acquired of readily appreciating the
value of these incidents; high courage and stability of character stand
proof against them, as the rock resists the beating of the waves. He who
would yield to these impressions would never carry out an undertaking,
and on that account PERSEVERANCE in the proposed object, as long as
there is no decided reason against it, is a most necessary counterpoise.
Further, there is hardly any celebrated enterprise in War which was not
achieved by endless exertion, pains, and privations; and as here the
weakness of the physical and moral man is ever disposed to yield, only
an immense force of will, which manifests itself in perseverance admired
by present and future generations, can conduct to our goal.

CHAPTER VIII. SUPERIORITY OF NUMBERS

THIS is in tactics, as well as in Strategy, the most general principle
of victory, and shall be examined by us first in its generality, for
which we may be permitted the following exposition:

Strategy fixes the point where, the time when, and the numerical force
with which the battle is to be fought. By this triple determination it
has therefore a very essential influence on the issue of the com