Will he devise a better method of warfare than that whose motive is the concentration of a superior force upon the strategetic objective?
Will the processes of his prime logistic operations be preferable to those of men who won their victories before their battles were fought, by combining with their troops the topography of the country, and causing rivers and mountains to take the place of corps d’armee?
Will the general of the future renounce as obsolete and worthless that military organization founded centuries before the Christian Era, by the great Theban, Epaminondas, the father of scientific warfare; that system adopted by every captain of renown and which may be seen in its purity in the greater military establishments from the days of Rome to the present Imperial North German Confederation?
Will the general of the future renounce as obsolete and worthless that system of Minor Tactics utilized by every man who has made it his business to conquer the World? Will he propose to us something more perfect than the primary formation of forces depicted in Plate XIII of the Secret Strategical Instructions of Frederic II?
Will the general of the future renounce as obsolete and worthless those intricate, but mathematically exact, evolutions of the combined arms, which appertain to the Major Tactics of men who are remembered to this day for the battles that they won?
Will he invent processes more destructive than those whereby Epaminondas crushed at Leuctra and Mantinea the power of Sparta, and the women of Lacedaemon saw the smoke of an enemy’s camp fire for the first time in six hundred years?
Than those whereby Alexander, a youth of eighteen, won Greece for his father at Chaeronea and the World for himself at Issus and Arbela? Than those whereby Hannibal destroyed seriatim four Roman armies at Trebia, Thrasymenus, Cannae and Herdonea?
Will he find out processes more sudden and decisive than those whereby Caesar conquered Gaul and Pompey and the son of Mithridates, and which are fitly described only in his own language; “Veni, vidi, vici”?
What will the general of the future substitute for the three contiguous sides of the octagon whereby Tamerlane the Great with his 1,400,000 veterans at the Plains of Angora, enveloped the Emperor Bajazet and 900,000 Turks in the most gigantic battle of record?
Will he eclipse the pursuit of these latter by Mizra, the son of Tamerlane, who with the Hunnish light cavalry rode two hundred and thirty miles in five days and captured the Turkish capital, the Emperor Bajazet, his harem and the royal treasure?