"so that each officer may pass the word to as few as
possible."

(15) Cf. "Anab." IV. vi. 6.

When an advanced guard is needed, I say for myself I highly approve of
secret pickets and outposts, if only because in supplying a guard to
protect your friends you are contriving an ambuscade to catch the
enemy. Also the outposts will be less exposed to a secret attack,
being themselves unseen, and yet a source of great alarm to the enemy;
since the bare knowledge that there are outposts somewhere, though
where precisely no man knows, will prevent the enemy from feeling
confident, and oblige him to mistrust every tenable position. An
exposed outpost, on the contrary, presents to the broad eye of day its
dangers and also its weaknesses. (16) Besides which, the holder of a
concealed outpost can always place a few exposed vedettes beyond his
hidden pickets, and so endeavour to decoy the enemy into an ambuscade.
Or he may play the part of trapper with effect by placing a second
exposed outpost in rear of the other; a device which may serve to take
in the unwary foeman quite as well as that before named.

(16) Lit. "makes plain its grounds of terror as of confidence."

Indeed I take it to be the mark of a really prudent general never to
run a risk of his own choosing, except where it is plain to him
beforehand, that he will get the better of his adversary. To play into
the enemy's hands may more fitly be described as treason to one's
fellow-combatants than true manliness. So, too, true generalship
consists in attacking where the enemy is weakest, even if the point be
some leagues distant. Severity of toil weighs nothing in the scale
against the danger of engaging a force superior to your own. (17)
Still, if on any occasion the enemy advance in any way to place
himself between fortified points that are friendly to you, let him be
never so superior in force, your game is to attack on whichever flank
you can best conceal your advance, or, still better, on both flanks
simultaneously; since, while one detachment is retiring after
delivering its attack, a charge pressed home from the opposite quarter
cannot fail to throw the enemy into confusion and to give safety to
your friends.

(17) N.B. Throughout this treatise the author has to meet the case of
a small force of cavalry acting on the defensive.

How excellent a thing it is to endeavour to ascertain an enemy's
position by means of spies and so forth, as in ancient