KING PHILIP, it will be remembered, received his military education in the school of EPAMINONDAS, who, as is well known, revolutionised the Higher Thought of every Higher Command by the discovery and application of a single tactical fact—namely, that the chances of A being able to give B a stronger push than B can give him are in direct ratio to the numerical superiority of A over B. It follows, then, that, faced with a sufficient superiority, B must retire, and the initiative then rests with the side that possesses it.
In pursuance of this tactical ideal EPAMINONDAS argued that the old method of winning battles, which was that A should exercise superior force against every point of B's line (or body), required that A should be bigger than B, buskin for buskin and brisket for brisket. But since it is sufficient, while "refusing" the rest of one's own body (or line), to bring an overwhelming force to bear on the point of a person's jaw, in order to discomfit him, so in a battle a numerically inferior A, by concentrating on a vital point of numerically superior B, can gain a local numerical superiority which will enable him to rout B utterly. (This is always supposing that B is not doing the same thing himself on the other wing, in which case each army would miss the other altogether—a condition of things into which the military art does not care to follow them).
Hence the phalanx or "preponderating mass formation." The Macedonian development of this depends (to reduce the matter to the simple algebraical formula to which all military problems are susceptible) on the fact that if x equals the greatest efficiency of an army, and the rooted square of stability to the nth rank equals the phalanx, then the rooted square of stability to the nth rank equals x minus the tangential curve of velocity of mobility. This should be plain even to the amateur student of tactics. Blending almost a military expert's appreciation of this cardinal doctrine with his natural selfishness as a leader of cavalry, PHILIP has given to this, the mobile arm, much of the striking power of the original phalanx. This is now placed in the centre, its business being mainly to force a salient in the enemy's line, the two resultant enclaves of which can then be shattered (at their re-entrants) by the cavalry squadrons, hurled forward on both phalanks. It should be noted, as a brilliant example of PHILIP'S staff work, that in the Macedonian Army, for the avoidance of confusion in the field, "phalanks" is now spelt "flanks."
To the intelligent student who has followed me thus far in these articles it should not be necessary to explain again the terms "enclave," "salient," and "re-entrant." "Tactical" is a term used when one is not using the term "strategical," and vice versâ.
"In the words of Bacon, it should be 'read, marked, learned and inwardly digested.'"—Financial Paper.
Our gay contemporary does not tell us whether it was before or after completing the works usually attributed to SHAKSPEARE that BACON compiled the Book of Common Prayer.