Every Campaign, whether upon the surface of the Earth or upon the
Chess-board is decided and usually is terminated by a Grand Battle.
Those movements of opposing Grand Columns, whereby such decisive
conflict is brought about under circumstances which ensure victory, by
reason of superior advantages in Strategetic Means, are termed Grand
Manoeuvres; and a proper series of Grand Manoeuvres, combined with their
corresponding feints, strategems, ambuscades and minor battles, the whole
terminated by a resulting Grand Battle, is termed a Grand Operation.
Those processes of Grand Manoeuvre, which produce an opportunity to
victoriously engage in battle, are the most subtle and difficult known to
the Strategetic Art.
_Successful application of these processes in practice depends wholly
upon proper use of the MEANS at hand and the doing of the utmost that can
be done in the TIME available._
Nothing can be more repugnant to high art in Strategetics than those
crudities termed in the specious mouthings of pretentious mediocrity
“waiting moves,” “delayed strokes,” “defensive-offensives,” “masterly
inactivities,” and the like.
“Time past is gone and cannot be regained; time future is not and may
never be; time present is” and with it Opportunity, which an instant
later may be gone.
The gain of but “a foot of ground and a minute of time” would have saved
the French army at Rosbach and have cost Frederic the Great one of his
most lustrous victories and perhaps his army and his crown.