officer concerned.

It is generally held that modern developments in military organisation and
transport will enable a great continental Power to ignore such threats.
Napoleon ignored them in the past, but only to verify the truth that in war
to ignore a threat is too often to create an opportunity. Such
opportunities may occur late or early. As both Lord Ligonier and Wolfe laid
it down for such operations, surprise is not necessarily to be looked for
at the beginning. We have usually had to create or wait for our
opportunity--too often because we were either not ready or not bold enough
to seize the first that occurred.

The cases in which such intervention has been most potent have been of two
classes. Firstly, there is the intrusion into a war plan which our enemy
has designed without allowing for our intervention, and to which he is
irrevocably committed by his opening movements. Secondly, there is
intervention to deprive the enemy of the fruits of victory. This form finds
its efficacy in the principle that unlimited wars are not always decided by
the destruction of armies. There usually remains the difficult work of
conquering the people afterwards with an exhausted army. The intrusion of a
small fresh force from the sea in such cases may suffice to turn the scale,
as it did in the Peninsula, and as, in the opinion of some high
authorities, it might have done in France in 1871.

Such a suggestion will appear to be almost heretical as sinning against the
principle which condemns a strategical reserve. We say that the whole
available force should be developed for the vital period of the struggle.
No one can be found to dispute it nowadays. It is too obviously true when
it is a question of a conflict between organised forces, but in the absence
of all proof we are entitled to doubt whether it is true for that