must be offensive, and we should at
least open with a true offensive movement; whereas if our object be
negative our general plan will be preventive, and we may bide our time for
our counter-attack. To this extent our action must always tend to the
offensive. For counter-attack is the soul of defence. Defence is not a
passive attitude, for that is the negation of war. Rightly conceived, it is
an attitude of alert expectation. We wait for the moment when the enemy
shall expose himself to a counter-stroke, the success of which will so far
cripple him as to render us relatively strong enough to pass to the
offensive ourselves.

From these considerations it will appear that, real and logical as the
classification is, to give it the designation "offensive and defensive" is
objectionable from every point of view. To begin with, it does not
emphasise what the real and logical distinction is. It suggests that the
basis of the classification is not so much a difference of object as a
difference in the means employed to achieve the object. Consequently we
find ourselves continually struggling with the false assumption that
positive war means using attack, and negative war being content with
defence.

That is confusing enough, but a second objection to the designation is far
more serious and more fertile of error. For the classification "offensive
and defensive" implies that offensive and defensive are mutually exclusive
ideas, whereas the truth is, and it is a fundamental truth of war, that
they are mutually complementary. All war and every form of it must be both
offensive and defensive. No matter how clear our positive aim nor how high
our offensive spirit, we cannot develop an aggressive line of strategy to
the full without the support of the defensive on all but the main lines of
operation. In tactics it is the same. The most convinced devotee of attack
admits the spade as well as the rifle. And even when it comes to men and
material, we know that without a certain amount of protection neither
ships, guns, nor men can develop their utmost energy and endurance in
striking power. There is never, in fact, a clean choice between attack and
defence. In aggressive operations the question always is, how far must
defence enter into the methods we employ in order to enable us to do the
utmost within our resources to break or paralyse the strength of the enemy.
So also with defence. Even in its most legitimate use, it must always be