For me strategy remains a closed book. Even the simplest
primary lessons of it, the A B C's of it, continue to impress me as
being stupid, but none the less unplumbable mysteries.
The physical aspects of campaigning I can in a way grasp. At least I
flatter myself that I can. A man would have to be deaf and dumb and
blind not to grasp them, did they reveal themselves before him as they
have revealed themselves before me. Indeed, if he preserved only the
faculty of scent unimpaired he might still be able to comprehend the
thing, since, as I have said before, war in its commoner phases is not
so much a sight as a great bad smell. As for the rudiments of the
system which dictates the movements of troops in large masses or in
small, which sacrifices thousands of men to take a town or hold a river
when that town and that river, physically considered, appear to be of no
consequence whatsoever, those elements I have not been able to sense,
even though I studied the matter most diligently.
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