has no definite limits in any direction, while every system has the circumscribing nature of a synthesis, from which results an irreconcilable opposition between such a theory and practice.

7 Limitation to material objects

Writers on theory felt the difficulty of the subject soon enough, and thought themselves entitled to get rid of it by directing their maxims and systems only upon material things and a one-sided activity. Their aim was to reach results, as in the science for the preparation for war, entirely certain and positive, and therefore only to take into consideration that which could be made matter of calculation.

8 Superiority of numbers

The superiority in numbers being a material condition, it was chosen from amongst all the factors required to produce victory, because it could be brought under mathematical laws through combinations of time and space. It was thought possible to leave out of sight all other circumstances, by supposing them to be equal on each side, and therefore to neutralise one another. This would have been very well if it had been done to gain a preliminary knowledge of this one factor, according to its relations; but to make it a rule for ever to consider superiority of numbers as the sole law, to see the whole secret of the art of war in the formula, in a certain time, at a certain point, to bring up superior masses -- was a restriction overruled by the force of realities.

9 Victualling of troops

By one theoretical school an attempt was made to systematise another material element also, by making the subsistence of troops, according to a previously established organism of the army, the supreme legislator in the higher conduct of war. In this way certainly they arrived at definite figures, but at figures which rested on a number of arbitrary calculations, and which therefore could not stand the test of practical application.

10 Base

An ingenious author tried to concentrate in a single conception, that of a Base, a whole host of objects, amongst which sundry relations even with immaterial forces found their way in as well. The list comprised the subsistence of the troops, the keeping them complete in numbers and equipment, the security of communications with the home country, lastly, the security of retreat in case it became necessary; and, first of all, he proposed to substitute this conception of a base for all these things; then for the base itself to substitute its own length (extent); and, last of all, to substitute the angle formed by the army with this base: all this was done merely to obtain a pure geometrical result utterly useless. This last is, in fact, unavoidable, if we reflect that none of these substitutions could be made without violating truth and leaving out some of the things contained in the original conception. The idea of a base is a real necessity for strategy, and to have conceived it is meritorious; but to make such a use of it as we have depicted is completely inadmissible, and would not but lead to partial conclusions which have forced these theorists into a direction opposed to common sense, namely, to a belief in the decisive effect of the enveloping form of attack.

11 Interior lines

As a reaction against this false direction, another geometrical principle, that of the so-called interior lines, was then elevated to the throne. Although this principle rests on a sound foundation, on the truth that the combat is the only effectual means in war, still it is, just on account of its purely geometrical nature, nothing but another case of one-sided theory which can never gain ascendancy in the real world.

12 All these attempts are open to objection