as well. The list comprised the
subsistence of the troops, the keeping them complete in numbers and
equipment, the security of communications with the home country, lastly,
the security of retreat in case it became necessary; and, first of
all, he proposed to substitute this conception of a base for all these
things; then for the base itself to substitute its own length (extent);
and, last of all, to substitute the angle formed by the army with this
base: all this was done to obtain a pure geometrical result utterly
useless. This last is, in fact, unavoidable, if we reflect that none of
these substitutions could be made without violating truth and leaving
out some of the things contained in the original conception. The idea
of a base is a real necessity for strategy, and to have conceived it
is meritorious; but to make such a use of it as we have depicted is
completely inadmissible, and could not but lead to partial conclusions
which have forced these theorists into a direction opposed to common
sense, namely, to a belief in the decisive effect of the enveloping form
of attack.

11. INTERIOR LINES.

As a reaction against this false direction, another geometrical
principle, that of the so-called interior lines, was then elevated to
the throne. Although this principle rests on a sound foundation, on the
truth that the combat is the only effectual means in War, still it is,
just on account of its purely geometrical nature, nothing but another
case of one-sided theory which can never gain ascendency in the real
world.

12. ALL THESE ATTEMPTS ARE OPEN TO OBJECTION.

All these attempts at theory are only to be considered in their
analytical part as progress in the province of truth, but in their
synthetical part, in their precepts and rules, they are quite
unserviceable.

They strive after determinate quantities, whilst in War all is
undetermined, and the calculation has always to be made with varying
quantities.

They direct the attention only upon material forces, while the whole
military action is penetrated throughout by intelligent forces and their
effects.

They only pay regard to activity on one side, whilst War is a constant
state of reciprocal action, the effects of which are mutual.

13. AS A RULE THEY EXCLUDE GENIUS.

All that was not attainable by such miserable philosophy, the offspring
of partial views, lay outside the precincts of science--and was the
field of genius, which RAISES ITSELF ABOVE