[The Fourth Evening]
Coup Double.
I.
The next day I continued my discourse thus:—
“In the assault with its incessant alarms and perilous crises, in encountering the wiles and avoiding the snares of the enemy, those who use the sword find their ‘crowded hour of glorious life,’ the hour crowded with illusions and disenchantments, the rubs of fortune, the ups and downs of victory or defeat.
“What legions of cunning counsels and crafty wiles, from the deep-laid stratagem down to the sudden surprise, one finds marshalled in the text-books, and how unmanageable and superfluous they generally are. All that the Spartan mother said to her son when he was setting out for the wars was:—‘Be bold, be resolute, be cautious.’ Do not her words contain the whole? For all fighting, whether at long range or at close quarters, is very much alike, from schoolboys’ games to the most elaborate military operations; and all the advice of the world may be summed up in the eternal law of attack and defence, which is stated in these four words:—cunning, caution, energy, audacity.
“Deceive your enemy: seize the critical moment to attack him, that is the secret of fighting. Cultivate the mistrust which suspects the hidden snare, the caution which frustrates his plots, combined with the energy and audacity which surmount difficulties; try to encourage in your enemy a spirit of wanton confidence; turn a strong position which you cannot carry by a direct attack; threaten one point when you mean to concentrate your whole strength on another; draw your adversary by a show of weakness to attack you in your strongest position; keep your plans secret; mask your approaches; and then by the sudden impetuosity of your attack take him unawares, and if you cannot secure a victory, contrive a safe retreat. Such from the earliest times have been the methods of the greatest commanders.
“The tactics of the field of battle and the tactics of hand-to-hand fighting are identical, for the simple reason that skill, or strategy, or science, call it what you will, are but different names to express the same idea. These are the sage counsels; the rest belongs to inspiration, the inward monitor which in moments of danger warns us with tenfold insistence, and guides us right.