nd are so intimately allied, that they are frequently
confounded, although they are decidedly distinct. Such are _fronts of
operations, strategic fronts, lines of defense_, and _strategic
positions_. It is proposed in this article to show the distinction
between them and to expose their relations to each other.

FRONTS OF OPERATIONS AND STRATEGIC FRONTS.

When the masses of an army are posted in a zone of operations, they
generally occupy strategic positions. The extent of the front occupied
toward the enemy is called the _strategic front_. The portion of the
theater of war from which an enemy can probably reach this front in two
or three marches is called the _front of operations_.

The resemblance between these two fronts has caused many military men to
confound them, sometimes under one name and sometimes under the other.

Rigorously speaking, however, the strategic front designates that formed
by the actual positions occupied by the masses of the army, while the
other embraces the space separating the two armies, and extends one or
two marches beyond each extremity of the strategic front, and includes
the ground upon which the armies will probably come in collision.

When the operations of a campaign are on the eve of commencing, one of
the armies will decide to await the attack of the other, and will
undertake to prepare a line of defense, which may be either that of the
strategic front or more to the rear. Hence the strategic front and line
of defense may coincide, as was the case in 1795 and 1796 upon the
Rhine, which was then a line of defense for both Austrians and French,
and at the same time their strategic front and front of operations. This
occasional coincidence of these lines doubtless leads persons to
confound them, while they are really very different. An army has not
necessarily a line of defense, as, for example, when it invades: when
its masses are concentrated in a single position, it has no strategic
front, but it is never without a front of operations.

The two following examples will illustrate the difference between the
different terms.

At the resumption of hostilities in 1813, Napoleon's front of operations
extended at first from Hamburg to Wittenberg; thence it ran along the
line of the allies toward Glogau and Breslau, (his right being at
Loewenberg,) and followed along the frontier of Bohemia to Dresden. His
forces were stationed on this grand front in four masses, whose
strategic