STRATEGY AND TACTICS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVI, Issue 1312, 17 October 1914, Page 4

STRATEGY AND TACTICS.

TERMS THAT ARE OFTEN MISAPPLIED. (By Lieut.-Colonel Alsager Pollock.) There are no terms in the English or any other language so frequently misapplied as those indicating the two great branches of the art of war. That such should be the case, however, is by no means strange, since never yet has the wit of man succeeded in constructing definitions explaining to the satisfaction of all and sundry the exact difference between strategy and tactics. Actually the two are so closely interwoven that to distinguish precisely the one from the other is probably impossible. Nevertheless, strategy being a science, and tactics an art, the desired differentiation ought not to be difficult — but it is.

“Strategy is the science of handling troops in the theatre of war, so that they shall as often as possible be where the enemy least desires or expects them. “Tactics is the art of handling troops on the battlefield so that they shall incur the minimum loss compatible with inflicting the maximum on their opponents.” Strategy is a constant influence (unless the so-called “strategist” in command is very incompetent), but the influence of tactics is only intermittent. That is to say, the manoeuvres of an army in the theatre of war are one and all ordered and executed in accordance with the original or modified plan of campaign ; but the battles resulting from those manoeuvres are merely tactical incidents of the strategical operations in progress. Albeit, every tactical effort has, or ought to have, a strategical object. A general whose “strategy” includes not the fighting o( decisive battles for his strategical ends need not hope to attain those ends ; nor need he who seeks success in battle from manoeuvres calculated merely to “dislodge” bis opponent expect to advantage materially the strategical or tactical prospects of his side. To manoeuvre an opponent out of position, with a loss of 5 per cent, of bis force at a cost of the same percentage of your own, is nothing ; but forcibly throw him out with a loss of 20 per cent., even though your own losses be as great, or grater, is real tactical business.

In the days of the Boer war, people in this country imagined that strategical omelets could be made without the breaking of tactical eggs ; the offensive in our own army was thus paralysed, and the war lasted three years instead of six months.

Let us hope that this lesson may not prove to have been given in vain ; a decisive victory, however costly, is in the end the cheapest form of success in war. An expenditure In battle of one-fourth of the men who actually died of disease owing to needlessly prolonged operations in South Africa would have sufficed to overcome all opposition within a very short space of time.