d victory has most often resolved itself into superior
numbers pressing a flank and nothing more; though subsequently his
admiring countrymen acclaimed the victor as the inventor of a strategic
plan which was old before Alexander took the field, when the victor's
genius consisted in the use of opportunities that enabled him to strike
at the critical point with more men than his adversary. In flank of the
Southern Confederacy Sherman swung through the South; in flank the
Confederates aimed to bend back the Federal line at Kulp's Hill and
Little Round Top. By the flank Grant pressed Lee back to Appomattox.
Yalu, Liao Yang and Mukden were won in the Russo-Japanese war by
flanking movements which forced Kuropatkin to retire, though never
disastrously.

Pickett's charge at Gettysburg remains to the American the most futile
and glorious illustration of a charge against a frontal position, with
its endeavor to break the center. The center may waver, but it is the
flanks that go; though, of course, in all consistent operations of big
armies a necessary incident of any effort to press back the wings is
sufficient pressure on the front, simultaneously delivered, to hold all
the troops there in position and keep the enemy command in apprehension
of the disaster that must follow if the center were to break badly at
the same time that his flanks were being doubled back. The foregoing is
only the repetition of principles which cannot be changed by the length
of line and masses of troops and incredible volumes of artillery fire;
which makes the European war the more confusing to the average reader as
he receives his information in technical terms.

The same object that leads one line of men to try to flank another sent
the German Army through Belgium in order to strike the French Army in
flank. It succeeded in this purpose, but not in turning the French
flank; though by this operation, in violation of the territory of a
neutral nation, it made enemy territory the scene of future action. One
may discuss until he is blue in the face what would have happened if the
Germans had thrown their legions directly against the old French
frontier. Personally, in keeping with the idea that I expressed in "The
Last Shot," I think that they would never have gone through the Trouee
de Miracourt or past Verdun.

With a solid line of trenches from Switzerland to the North Sea, any
offensive must "break the center," as it were, in order to have room f