INTRODUCTORY
“The test is as true of cerebral power, as if a hundred thousand men lay dead upon the field; or a score of hulks were swinging blackened wrecks, after a game between two mighty admirals.”—Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes.
(Opening Address at Morphy Banquet, Boston, 1859.)
Men whose business it is to understand war and warfare often are amused by senseless comparisons made by writers who, as their writings show, are ignorant even of the rudiments of military art and science. Of course a certain license in expression of thought is not to be denied the layman; he cannot be expected to talk with the exactness of the man who knows. At the same time there is a limit beyond which the non-technical man passes at his peril, and this limit is reached when he poses as a critic and presumes to dogmatize on matters in regard to which he is uninformed.
The fanciful conjectures of such people, well are illustrated by the following editorial faux pas, perpetrated by a leading metropolitan daily, viz.:
“Everyone knows now that a future war between states having similar and substantially equal equipments will be a different affair from any war of the past; characterized by a different order of generalship and a radically novel application of the principles of strategy and tactics.”