study is found in the Archduke Charles's description of Southern
Germany.

The term _strategic_ is also applied to all communications which lead by
the most direct or advantageous route from one important point to
another, as well as from the strategic front of the army to all of its
objective points. It will be seen, then, that a theater of war is
crossed by a multitude of such lines, but that at any given time those
only which are concerned in the projected enterprise have any real
importance. This renders plain the distinction between the general line
of operations of a whole campaign, and these _strategic_ lines, which
are temporary and change with the operations of the army.

Besides territorial strategic lines, there are _strategic lines of
maneuvers_.

An army having Germany as its general field might adopt as its zone of
operations the space between the Alps and the Danube, or that between
the Danube and the Main, or that between the mountains of Franconia and
the sea. It would have upon its zone a single line of operations, or, at
most, a double concentric line, upon interior, or perhaps exterior,
directions,--while it would have successively perhaps twenty strategic
lines as its enterprises were developed: it would have at first one for
each wing which would join the general line of operations. If it
operated in the zone between the Danube and the Alps, it might adopt,
according to events, the strategic line leading from Ulm on Donauwerth
and Ratisbon, or that from Ulm to the Tyrol, or that which connects Ulm
with Nuremberg or Mayence.

It may, then, be assumed that the definitions applied to lines of
operations, as well as the maxims referring to them, are necessarily
applicable to strategic lines. These may be _concentric_, to inflict a
decisive blow, or _eccentric_, after victory. They are rarely _simple_,
since an army does not confine its march to a single road; but when they
are double or triple, or even quadruple, they should be _interior_ if
the forces be equal, or _exterior_ in the case of great numerical
superiority. The rigorous application of this rule may perhaps sometimes
be remitted in detaching a body on an exterior line, even when the
forces are equal, to attain an important result without running much
risk; but this is an affair of detachments, and does not refer to the
important masses.

Strategic lines cannot be interior when our efforts are directed against
one of the extremities of