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In reading war news you will often meet with the word strategy, which means the art of generalship, of moving and arranging great bodies of troops in order to put the enemy at a disadvantage, and so overcome him. I have given you some examples of strategy above.
Do you play draughts? When you do so, you and your opponent resemble the generals of two opposing armies. You think out every move of the game, and your object in making the move is to capture all your opponent's men, or to hem them in so that they cannot move without being taken. This is strategy, but the strategy of war is a far more puzzling business. In the game of draughts all the men are of the same value at the beginning, and you can only move them along certain fixed paths laid down by the rules. All the moves are open and above board, and if you and your opponent are equally skilful at the game, neither of you ought to be taken by surprise. The better strategist will win, or, if you are equally good, the game will end in a draw.
In the great game of war the opposing generals have to deal with men of flesh and blood, and not with wooden pieces. These men are bodies of infantry, cavalry, and artillery, which do different kinds of work on the battlefield, and move at different speeds. Before the general can make his first move—which may be the successful move or the fatal move—he must study the map of the country in which he is to operate, and must choose the line or lines of his advance, always taking care to have good and well-protected communications in his rear. Though he may fix on his plan of campaign beforehand, he must always be ready with another, to suit altered circumstances. Then he must calculate carefully the time which each "arm" will take to come into its required position, and in order to do this he must know the kinds of roads over which the men are to march, and the state they are in. And at the same time he must get all the information possible about the strength and movements of his enemy. He must form an idea of what the opposing general is aiming at, and must make arrangements to thwart him. He must make his moves as silently and secretly as possible, and whenever he can he must put his enemy on a false scent, so that he may fall upon him unawares. You can easily understand from this very imperfect account of a general's duty that he must be a man of great powers of mind and of much experience in war.
The commander-in-chief along with his staff settles the strategy, but the commanders of divisions, and battalions, and squadrons, and batteries must carry his plans into effect. The art of doing this is known as tactics. The way in which the battle line is formed at a particular place, the manner in which cavalry or artillery are used for a particular purpose, and generally the methods by which marches are conducted, camps are laid out, fortifications are made, and the actual fighting is done, come under the head of tactics. It has been well said that the art of strategy consists in getting two men to a place where only one man is ready to oppose them. The arrangements by which the two men would best attack the one man when they meet him, or by which the one man could resist the two, belong to the art of tactics.