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ert to improve all opportunities of assailing the weak points of the enemy. This plan of war may be called the defensive-offensive, and may have strategical as well as tactical advantages.. It combines the advantages of both systems; for one who awaits his adversary upon a prepared field, with all his own resources in hand, surrounded by all the advantages of being on his own ground, can with hope of success take the initiative, and is fully able to judge when and where to strike. During the first three campaigns of the Seven Years' War Frederick was the assailant; in the remaining four his conduct was a perfect model of the defensive-offensive. He was, however, wonderfully aided in this by his adversaries, who allowed him all the time he desired, and many opportunities of taking the offensive with success. Wellington's course was mainly the same in Portugal, Spain, and Belgium, and it was the most suitable in his circumstances. It seems plain that one of the greatest talents of a general is to know how to use (it may be alternately) these two systems, and particularly to be able to take the initiative during the progress of a defensive war. ARTICLE XVII. Of the Theater of Operations. The theater of a war comprises all the territory upon which the parties may assail each other, whether it belong to themselves, their allies, or to weaker states who may be drawn into the war through fear or interest. When the war is also maritime, the theater may embrace both hemispheres,--as has happened in contests between France and England since the time of Louis XIV. The theater of a war may thus be undefined, and must, not be confounded with the theater of operations of one or the other army. The theater of a continental war between France and Austria may be confined to Italy, or may, in addition, comprise Germany if the German States take part therein. Armies may act in concert or separately: in the first case the whole theater of operations may be considered as a single field upon which strategy directs the armies for the attainment of a definite end. In the second case each army will have its own independent theater of operations. The _theater of operations_ of an army embraces all the territory it may desire to invade and all that it may be necessary to defend. If the army operates independently, it should not attempt any maneuver beyond its own theater, (though it should leave it if it be in danger of being su
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