5 footmen, and each heavy chariot by
25 footmen, so that the whole army would be divided up into a
thousand battalions, each consisting of two chariots and a
hundred men.]

with provisions enough to carry them a thousand LI,

[2.78 modern LI go to a mile. The length may have varied
slightly since Sun Tzu's time.]

the expenditure at home and at the front, including entertainment
of guests, small items such as glue and paint, and sums spent on
chariots and armor, will reach the total of a thousand ounces of
silver per day. Such is the cost of raising an army of 100,000
men.
2. When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long
in coming, then men's weapons will grow dull and their ardor will
be damped. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your
strength.
3. Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources of
the State will not be equal to the strain.
4. Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor damped,
your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other chieftains
will spring up to take advantage of your extremity. Then no man,
however wise, will be able to avert the consequences that must
ensue.
5. Thus, though we have heard of stupid haste in war,
cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays.

[This concise and difficult sentence is not well explained
by any of the commentators. Ts`ao Kung, Li Ch`uan, Meng Shih, Tu
Yu, Tu Mu and Mei Yao-ch`en have notes to the effect that a
general, though naturally stupid, may nevertheless conquer
through sheer force of rapidity. Ho Shih says: "Haste may be
stupid, but at any rate it saves expenditure of energy and
treasure; protracted operations may be very clever, but they
bring calamity in their train." Wang Hsi evades the difficulty
by remarking: "Lengthy operations mean an army growing old,
wealth being expended, an empty exchequer and distress among the
people; true cleverness insures against the occurrence of such
calamities." Chang Yu says: "So long as victory can be
attained, stupid haste is preferable to clever dilatoriness."
Now Sun Tzu says nothing whatever, except possibly by
implication, about ill-considered haste being better than
ingenious but lengthy operations. What he does say is something
much more guarded, namely that, while speed may sometimes be
injudicious, tardiness can never be anything but foolish -- if
only because it means impoverishm