Those processes of Grand Manoeuvre, which produce an opportunity to victoriously engage in battle, are the most subtle and difficult known to the Strategetic Art.
_Successful application of these processes in practice depends wholly upon proper use of the MEANS at hand and the doing of the utmost that can be done in the TIME available._
Nothing can be more repugnant to high art in Strategetics than those crudities termed in the specious mouthings of pretentious mediocrity “waiting moves,” “delayed strokes,” “defensive-offensives,” “masterly inactivities,” and the like.
“Time past is gone and cannot be regained; time future is not and may never be; time present is” and with it Opportunity, which an instant later may be gone.
The gain of but “a foot of ground and a minute of time” would have saved the French army at Rosbach and have cost Frederic the Great one of his most lustrous victories and perhaps his army and his crown.
_In Strategetics there is but a single method whereby Opportunity may be availed of, and that is by so augmenting kindred advantages and so depreciating adverse advantages as to acquire for the kindred army that particular advantage of Strategetic means which in the given situation is the proper basis of the Strategetic movement next in sequence._
_The chief requisite for success when acting against an adverse army at Distance, is the advantage in MOBILITY._
The primary process is that of a Grand Manoeuvre against an adverse army acting in the formation by Grand Columns, and the object of such Grand Manoeuvre always is, by superior celerity of movement, to occupy:
1. The Strategic Center by the Kindred Column of Attack, thus intersecting the Route of Communication between the adverse main body and its Base of Operation; or to occupy:
2. The Logistic Center with the Kindred Columns of Support and of Manoeuvre, thus intersecting the Route of Communication between the adverse main body and its Chief Supporting Column and clearing the way for the advance of the Kindred Column of Support against the flank and rear of the adverse Main Body.
Obviously, the united Kindred Columns of Attack and of Support always will constitute an overwhelming superiority in Numbers as compared with the adverse main body.