"Tactical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... considerable forces in the immediate vicinity to exploit successes. It was reckoned that the enemy could not reinforce his front under forty-eight hours. Everything depended in the first instance on successful surprise, and in the second on securing within forty-eight hours the important tactical points within the salient. The difficulties of surprise, which were many and serious, were most successfully overcome, but the enterprise failed eventually because the key points were ...
— A Short History of the 6th Division - Aug. 1914-March 1919 • Thomas Owen Marden
... after a demurrer to the indictment was overruled, a jury was impaneled and witnesses sworn, the discharge of the jury to permit the defendant to be arraigned did not bar a trial before a new jury.[27] The withdrawal of charges after a trial by a general court martial had begun, because the tactical situation brought about by the rapid advance of the army made continuance of the trial impracticable, did not bar a trial before a second court martial.[28] An accused is not put in jeopardy by preliminary examination ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... advanced against them, two or three companies of infantry moving forward to drive them from the summit, while our main column passed through the canon into the upper Yakima Valley led by my dragoons, who were not allowed to charge into the gorge, as the celerity of such a movement might cause the tactical combination ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... Operational Command, Admiral Danish Fleet, Island Command Greenland, Tactical Air ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... then the night came with the sound of rumbling wheels and marching men. Dick surmised that Lee was leaving the peninsula, and, crossing the Potomac in to Virginia, and that therefore tactical victory would rest with the Northern side. The noises continued all night long, but McClellan made no advance, nor did he do so the next day, while the whole Confederate army was crossing the Potomac, ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... form of field exercise of the company, battalion, and larger units, consists of the APPLICATION OF TACTICAL PRINCIPLES to assumed situations, employing in the execution the appropriate formations and movements of ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... few badly-armed individuals performing marvels of valour, and the leaders, although ignorant men, manifesting an intelligence and tactical skill that puts trained armies to shame. Could not the tendencies of criminals be used for the good of their country? The qualities developed in primitive races by constant warfare against the forces of nature are characteristic ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... needed to state the rights demanded in terms of the social interests they involved rather than in the abstract ethic they implied. But the demands which underlay the thought of men like Price and Priestley was as much the offspring of experience as Burke's own doctrine. They made, indeed, the tactical mistake of seeking to give an unripe philosophic form to a political strategy wherein, clearly enough, Burke was their master. But no one can read the answers of Paine and Mackintosh, who both were careful to avoid the panoply of metaphysics, ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... so arranged the itinerary that the girls didn't perceive that the sector was bounded on one side by Pere Popeau's turnip field and on the other by a duck-pond, and he showed a tactical knowledge of the value of cover in getting us into a trench out of view of certain stakes and pickets that were obviously used by Mere Popeau as a drying-ground. To divert attention he gave a vivid demonstration of bombing along a C.T. with clods of earth, with myself as bayonet-man nipping round ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various
... has probably undergone, within the last thirty years, such a succession of extensive alterations in organization, in administrative arrangements, and in tactical regulations, as that of Russia. The Crimean War surprised it during a period of transition. Further changes of importance were carried out after that war. Once more, in 1874, the whole military system was remodelled, while ever since the Peace of ...
— Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute • Theo. F. Rodenbough
... mutual enemy. It was also known that foreign experts were imported, and foreign stocks of war material—material of the newest and most expensive kind—were prepared in anticipation of war, and that even such a thing as tactical instruction—a thing hitherto ignored among the Transvaalers—had been acquired from accomplished German sources, and all this for one sole purpose—war with Great Britain. In order that there may be no doubt that the Boers were completely ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... unfortunately rages in the far East has emphasized in striking fashion the new possibilities of naval warfare. The lessons taught are both strategic and tactical, and are political as well as military. The experiences of the war have shown in conclusive fashion that while sea-going and sea-keeping torpedo destroyers are indispensable, and fast lightly armed ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... believe a word about finding the money downstairs. He was accustomed to being put off that way and had already formulated his next tactical move. In fact he was about to name it with some positiveness, recounting the sort of papers which would follow and the celerity of their serving, when he suddenly became aware that St. George's eyes were fixed upon ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... where, he held, the primary decision must have been lost and won and the fighting would have been most intense; while the action on all the other parts of the line must have been contingent upon the results at this "tactical center." This "focus" could not have been to the north or west of Paris, because the great bodies of French troops are to the east; nor was it on the battle line nearest Paris, for everything we saw today in and behind the zone of operations testified to the contrary. ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... Majesty's Government in Whitehall had immediately issued a communique which took a glacial view of the "puerile" proposal to toss for Northern Ireland. It was the timing of this communique, rather than its contents, that proved a tactical error. It had come too quickly, and Irishmen, both north ...
— The Golden Judge • Nathaniel Gordon
... General Smuts' campaign of 1916 in German East Africa, do not presume to give an accurate account of the tactical or strategical events of this war. The actual knowledge of the happenings of war and of the considerations that persuade an Army Commander to any course of military conduct must, of necessity, be a closed book to the individual soldier. To the fighting ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... mistake of his speech. Huxley instantly grasped the tactical advantage which the descent to personalities gave him. He turned to Sir Benjamin Brodie, who was sitting beside him, and emphatically striking his hand upon his knee, exclaimed,] "The Lord hath delivered him into mine hands." [The bearing of the exclamation did not dawn upon Sir Benjamin until ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... war developed there was an increased tendency toward the tactical maneuvering of a number of aeroplanes, a greater frequency of bombing raids, and these attempts naturally led to reprisals as well as to defensive efforts. Often the aeroplanes designed for dropping bombs were heavy and powerful machines, not armed primarily for attack, but depending for protection ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... The long and acrimonious controversy over Mr Bradlaugh's seat, if it added little to the reputation of the English legislature, at least showed that Lord Randolph Churchill was a parliamentary champion who added to his audacity much tactical skill and shrewdness. He continued to play a conspicuous part throughout the parliament of 1880-1885, dealing his blows with almost equal vigour at Mr Gladstone and at the Conservative front bench, some of whose members, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... her naval tactics; but with full consent that I may, on suitable occasion, to be decreed by my judgment on the spot, try conclusions with her foes to the bitter end or to death, at shorter range and at closer quarters than have hitherto been sanctioned by her tactical authorities." ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood
... Ontario, from the city of Toronto and from the city of Winnipeg, till some five or six thousand citizen-soldiers were under arms. They were needed, too, every man, not so much because of the possible weight of numbers of the enemy opposing them, nor because of the tactical skill of those leading the hostile forces, but because of the enemy's advantage of position, owing to the nature of the country which formed the scene of the Rebellion, and because of the character of the warfare ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... flag. As there is no reason to suppose that Farragut deliberately intended to offer the gunboat up as a forlorn hope by drawing the first fire of the enemy, always the most deadly, and thus saving the more important vessels, the disposition of her constitutes the only serious fault in his tactical arrangements on this occasion—a fault attributable not to his judgment, but to one of those concessions to human feelings which circumstances at times extort from all men. His first intention, an advance in two columns, the heavy ships leading and closely ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... that the Vice President should have the satisfaction of preventing confirmation by his casting vote. "It will kill him, sir, kill him dead," declared the vengeful South Carolinian to a doubting friend. "He will never kick, sir, never kick." But no greater tactical error could have been committed. Benton showed the keener insight when he informed the jubilant Calhoun men that they had "broken a minister," only to elect a ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... man must feel that the time has come for the tactical practice of the great sea officers of the past to be laid by in the temple of august memories. The fleet tactics of the sailing days have been governed by two points: the deadly nature of a raking fire, and the dread, natural to a commander dependent upon the winds, to ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... outflanked. Joffre's vaunted plan that had inspired us through the dolorous startled days of retirement was, it appeared, a fact, and not one of those bright fancies that the Staff invents for our tactical delectation. ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... which he finds so much to say in disparagement of Lord Kitchener, Lord French has very frankly admitted his inability to foresee certain tactical developments in connection with heavy artillery and so forth, which actual experience in the field brought home to him within a few weeks of the opening of hostilities. Most of the superior French and German military authorities who held sway in the early days ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... chess, the war-lord's tactical plan, the evolution of a geometrical theorem, the devising of a great business campaign, the elimination of waste in a factory, the denouement of a powerful drama, the overcoming of an economic obstacle, the ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... cried Nancy. "Oh, I'm sure you weren't that," and then intoxicated by her own success, she made her first tactical error. She turned to Riatt and said: "Don't forget that you are dining with me on Wednesday evening." She enjoyed this exhibition of power. She saw Laura and Christine glance at each other. But they were not dismayed; they saw at once that Max had not been playing his hand ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... on the great day was a marvel of organisation. The jobs fitted into one another, and into the general tactical scheme of the advance, as exactly as the parts of a flawless motor. At no time could enemy craft steal toward the lines to spy out the land. Every sector was covered by defensive patrols which travelled northward and southward, ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... thousand dollars a year, to go to the front, leaving behind him a wife and family. Such devotion to duty is exemplary. He understood his guns thoroughly, and is one of the few men I have met who had studied the tactical employment of the gun as well as ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... bright-eyed contempt for the popular slaves of a fatuous public, care to swell the successful throng who worshipped the rising genius in his new temple in Grove Road. The fact that in those days Rainham avoided Lightmark's name, once so often quoted; his demeanour, when the more ignorant or less tactical of their mutual acquaintances pressed him with inquiries as to the well-being and work of his former friend, had not failed to suggest to the intimate circle that there had been a rupture, a change, something far more significant than the general severance which ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... Socialist movement to-day there are men and women of all creeds and all shades of religious belief. By all the Socialist parties of the world religion is declared to be a private matter—and the declaration is honestly meant; it is not a tactical utterance, used as bait to the unwary, which the Socialists secretly repudiate. In the Socialist movement of America to-day there are Jews and Christians, Catholics and Protestants, Spiritualists and Christian Scientists, Unitarians and ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... of their line confronting the enemy. This hour, and Hancock's capacity to use his whole force when necessary, would, no doubt, have enabled him to crush Anderson before he could be reinforced. But the movement made was tactical. It kept the troops in mass against a possible assault by the enemy. Our left occupied its intrenchments while the two corps to the right passed. If an attack had been made by the enemy he would have found the 2d corps in position, fortified, and, practically, the ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... Denton French as the man who for the last twelve years has been the driving force of tactical instruction in the British Army. He made use of all the best ideas of the Generals who preceded him in the Aldershot Command, and he was, I think, instrumental in causing the appointment of Horace Smith-Dorrien and Douglas Haig to succeed in turn to ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... politics as a game, but is painful to the citizen who wishes to see the country well governed, and who suffers if it is not. Sometimes, indeed, the formation of a Ministry seems more like the distribution of loot among successful campaigners, or a tactical disposition of the officers for continuing a contest than the provision of the best means and selection of the best men for each part of the work of ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... finds that there is a gap somewhere between the forces stretching back, and he happens to have ten or fifteen thousand men handy? Why, he just swoops down upon us, and, if we can't defend ourselves until the rest of the army comes up, he has won what is called a tactical victory, and ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... resignation from the Cabinet of James Buchanan has already been referred to. I confess that I was, for the time being, more interested in that quiet man, standing there under the shadow of a tree, looking on at the parade, than in the tactical movements of the embryotic soldiers. There was, indeed, much about him to excite the curiosity and inflame the imagination of a youngster only ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... embraced from behind, and kissed with appreciation. He had not yet arrived at the age when one is surprised at finding oneself suddenly kissed over one's shoulder by a lady. Besides, this was his old acquaintance, whom he was delighted to welcome, but who made the tactical mistake of introducing "the other lady" as Lady Gwendolen Rivers. Stiffness might have resulted, if it had not been for the conduct of that young lady, which would have thawed an iceberg. It was not always thus with her; but, ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... position for a bivouac; the doctor accompanied them to examine the place chosen, see to the water supply, the drainage, and sanitation. In addition to this, our commanders had to find the battalion a resting-ground easy to defend and of merit as a tactical position. ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill
... he plunged boldly into the cloud, a squad of Federals, bummers, pioneers. Does the reader reflect upon the fine fibre of the material requisite for such an exploit? It is not strength, courage or tactical cunning that is most wanted, but that most difficult art, to be able to put off your own nature and put on another's—to play a part, not as the actor, who struts his hour in tinsel and mouths his speeches as no mortal man ever walked or talked in real life, but as one who stakes ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... sergeant glanced at his men. Apparently all was well: the only visible menace lolled within easy arm's reach, swinging his short legs and sucking noisily on his candy. Nevertheless the non-com shifted to a slightly better tactical position as he awaited the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... obtained for him (March 1756) in the 3rd Dragoon Guards. He served with his regiment in the Seven Years' war, and the opportunity thus afforded him of studying the methods of the great Frederick moulded his military character and formed his tactical ideas. He rose through the intermediate grades to the rank of lieutenant-colonel of the regiment (1773) and brevet colonel in 1780, and in 1781 he became colonel of the King's Irish infantry. When that regiment was disbanded in 1783 he retired upon half-pay. That up to this time he had scarcely ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... of tactical action on the battle-field may have somewhat suffered, Bernhardi sees in the strategical handling of the Arm its chief possibilities, and here he includes reconnaissance and operations against the enemy's rearward communications and pursuit of a ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... Friedland, on the River Alle, in the vicinity of Konigsberg, toward which the Russians were marching. Here Benningsen, the Russian general, had incautiously concentrated his troops within a bend of the river, a tactical mistake of which Napoleon hastened to ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... present time they are similarly ignored. Everything is settled between the clergy, the nobility, and the bourgeoisie. The priests, who are very numerous, give the cue to the local politics; they lay subterranean mines, as it were, and deal blows in the dark, following a prudent tactical system, which hardly allows of a step in advance or retreat even in the course of ten years. The secret intrigues of men who desire above all things to avoid noise requires special shrewdness, a special aptitude for dealing with small ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... work was over, the colored people would gather in the little hamlet and march to the music of a drum and fife, and under the command of Nimbus, whose service in the army had made him a tolerable proficient in such tactical movements as pertained to the "school of the company." Very often, until well past midnight the fife and drum, the words of command, and the rumble of marching feet could be heard in the little village. The white people in the country around ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... as the 'Gooroo.' Wymer, in the protection of his convoy, had to stand on the defensive. The Ghilzais, regardless of the grape which tore through their masses, fell on sword in hand, and with an intuitive tactical perception struck Wymer simultaneously in front and flank. His sepoys had to change their dispositions, and the Ghilzais took the opportunity of their momentary dislocation to charge right home. They were met firmly by the bayonet, but again and again the hillmen renewed their ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... Radicalism or Socialism? Are they the complementary critic—the critic who sees all the things which the ordinary man does not see? No one can maintain it. The attitude which the House of Lords adopts towards Liberal measures is purely tactical. When they returned to their "gilded Chamber" after the general election they found on the Woolsack and on the Treasury Bench a Lord Chancellor and a Government with which they were not familiar. When their ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... [he says] appears in everything, from tactical details to the largest strategical conception, and from things so vague and general as the tone of military writings, to things so particular as the instruction of the conscript in his barrack-room. The German soldier is taught—or was—that victory was ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... state's attorney said that he was wrong, the old man would have called him a popinjay to his face. Abijah's exclamation was not deference to legal knowledge; it was merely quick seizure of a tactical point. ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... seemed to be having no part in the big game, at all. But these aerial observers realized that the tremendous sledge-hammer blows, directed with consummate skill and resiliency, left the mass of wastage on the German side; for, with strategical and tactical problems suddenly changed from boxed-in trench warfare to the elastic manoeuvers of open battle, the directing mind which is more elastic, all things else being equal, wins the day—and, whatever other virtues the Boche may possess, his mind can hardly be said ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... converging upon the bluff whence the shots had proceeded. Each of the four had heard the three shots fired, each was executing the tactical arrangement agreed upon, and each was waiting as he rode, laboring under a high nervous tension, for the fourth shot, which was to confirm the alarm and notify the definite discovery ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... "bad bit of jungle." He was well winded and a trifle confused. Excepting a single rifle-shot now and again, there was no sound of strife behind him; the enemy was pulling himself together for a new onset against an antagonist of whose numbers and tactical disposition he was in doubt. The fugitive felt that he would probably be spared to his country, and only commended the arrangements of Providence to that end, but in leaping a small brook in more open ground one of the arrangements incurred the mischance of a disabling sprain at ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... Hungarian Prime Minister how he observed the regulation. Under Burian's regime it had become the custom for all telegrams and news, even of the most secret nature, to be communicated at once to Count Tisza, who then brought his influence to bear on all decisions and tactical events. Tisza possessed a most extraordinary capacity for work. He always found time to occupy himself very thoroughly with foreign policy, notwithstanding his own numerous departmental duties, and it was necessary, therefore, to gain his consent to every ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... is the lowest common denominator among the combat patrols, and we therefore have mutinies, disobedience of orders, defections of every variety. That is a real situation, and it will persist until we can induce the men to accept tactical leadership that can ...
— Shock Absorber • E.G. von Wald
... Henceforth you are Director of the Naval and Military operations of the German Empire, subject, of course, to the conditions which will be arranged by myself and those who are entrusted with the tactical and strategical developments of such plan of campaign as I may decide to carry out on sea and land. And now, to put it rudely—brutally, if you ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... track of time as he watched the Kerothi fleet take advantage of their superior tactical position and tear the Earth fleet to bits. Not until he saw the remains of the Earth fleet turn tail and run did he realize that the ...
— The Highest Treason • Randall Garrett
... presentment of individual assassination in which Guise himself plays a butcher's part. Greatness is more often attributed to outward aloofness and inactivity than to busy participation in the execution of a plot. Moreover, it was a tactical error to give prominence to the personal quarrel between Guise and Mugeroun, for it dissipates upon a private matter the force which, devoted to an exalted ambition, might have been impressive. However, there are one or two touches which give a cold grandeur to this ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... not caring to lose her was on his lips, but he refrained from uttering it. Another conclusion he had arrived at was that she was not to be nagged. Continual, or even occasional, reminders of his feeling for her would constitute a tactical error of no ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... it may be called) was, as we have seen, necessarily futile and was foredoomed to failure. But Harold had no intention to let the action bear no more fruit than a tactical victory upon this particular field. The brain that had designed the exact synchrony of Stamford Bridge and the famous march southward from the Humber was of that sort which is only found once in many centuries of the history of war and which is (it may be said without ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... conscientiously on endeavoring to pile up state after state in the "free column." Gradually her followers lost sight of her aggressive attack and her objective-the enfranchisement of women by Congress. They did not sustain her tactical wisdom. This reform movement, like all others when stretched over a long period of time, found itself confined in a narrow circle of routine propaganda. It lacked the power and initiative to extricate itself. Though it had many eloquent agitators ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... take the child from me by force indeed failed, but later the theft was successfully carried out by due process of law. It is always a blunder from a tactical point of view for a Christian to use methods of illegal violence in persecuting an Atheist in this Christian land; legal violence is a far safer weapon, for courage can checkmate the first, while it is helpless before the second. All Christians who ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... situations of life is the clearest of proofs of her general superiority. She did not obtain her present high immunities as a gift from the gods, but only after a long and often bitter fight, and in that fight she exhibited forensic and tactical talents of a truly admirable order. There was no weakness of man that she did not penetrate and take advantage of. There was no trick that she did not put to effective use. There was no device so bold and ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... laid down that mere strength of position is noted and greedily seized in barbaric times alone. For mere strength of position is a mere refuge. A strong position (I do not speak, of course, of tactical and temporary, but of permanent, positions), chosen only because it is strong, will save you during a critical short period from the attack of a fierce, unthoughtful, and easily wearied enemy—such as are all barbarians; but it cannot of itself fall into a general scheme ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... in recent years by those peculiar forces which have produced the American multimillionaire. "Mental dynamite!" was Weston's characterization of the man. "And," he once added, when, despite his anger, he could not but admire Ames's tactical blocking of his piratical move, which the former's keen foresight had perceived threatened danger at Washington, "it is not by any tacit agreement that we accept him, but because he knows ten tricks to ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... got into print; but, in the hands of a genuine humorist, it must have been an incomparable ground for burlesque. Dunning, when solicitor-general, had gone to see the Prussian reviews. Some of these were profoundly secret, and were presumed to be experiments in those tactical novelties with which Frederick dazzled Europe. But others were showy displays, to which the king invited the princes and generals of the Continent. Dunning had announced himself as Solicitor-General of England. Frederick, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... railroad systems appropriated by their grandfather and father, with all of the allied and collateral properties. Both of these heirs had been put through a punctilious course of training in the management of railroad affairs; all of the subtle arts and intricacies of finance, and the grand tactical and strategic strokes of railroad manipulation, had been drilled into ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... told it, simply to give herself importance with this smart lady, and to feel her power over Diana. Then, it was no sooner told than she was quickly conscious that she had given away an advantage, which from a tactical point of view she had infinitely better have kept; and that the command of the situation might have passed from her to this girl whom Diana had supplanted. Furious with herself, she had tried to swear Miss Drake to silence, only to be politely but ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and break their organization. [Footnote: Officers experienced in war know that manoeuvres which are easy and of fine effect on parade are difficult and even dangerous under fire, and that it is wise to simplify the tactics as much as possible. Marshal Saint-Cyr, whose reputation for tactical skill was second to none in the wars of the French Republic and Empire, thus speaks of the matter in his comments on the battle of Novi, apropos to the break of the French division Watrin, which was in two brigade lines: "La premiere, attaquee ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... irreconcilable principles: between Magyar nationalism, determined to maintain its ascendancy in an independent Hungary, and Habsburg imperialism, equally determined to preserve the economic and military unity of the Dual Monarchy. In this conflict the tactical advantage lay with the monarchy; for the Magyars were in a minority in Hungary, their ascendancy was based on a narrow and artificial franchise, and it was open to the king-emperor to hold in terrorem over them an appeal to the disfranchised majority. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... fortnight of his coming into North Morgraunt a force which was the largest known since Earl Roger of Bellesme had made a quietness like death over those parts. By the time of Prosper's exodus, that is by mid-May, his tactical situation was this—it is as well to be precise. He had Hauterive and Waisford. Goltres was in the hollow of his hand. If he could get Wanmeeting he would be master of the whole of the north forest, west of Wan. Here would be enormous advantage. By ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... our discussion of the treaty with the Germans is to be more than a sham and a form it is necessary to consider at least some of the details of the treaty as subject to reconsideration and that, therefore, it would be a tactical blunder to publish the details as first drafted, notwithstanding the fact that there is no likelihood that they will be departed from in any ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... their ammunition, and in parts of the line, which were known as "quiet corners," for tactical reasons the stalemate was almost peaceful, either side holding its fire unless the other became restless. But between the trenches which had remained in the same position for many months, no living thing was visible day after day except a rabbit or a field ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... warfare was to be regarded, according to our Note of February 16th, as a measure of reprisal in answer to the English blockade. From a tactical point of view, this contention was unfortunate, as it afforded America the opportunity of agreeing at once, and thus of conceding us a point which benefited us not at all, but merely gave the United States all the more right to renew its protests ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... unusual. Many a time "Slochd!" rang through the night on the Athole winter when I dosed far off on the fields of Low Germanie, or sweated in sallies from leaguered towns. And experience made the burghers mighty tactical on such occasions. Old Leslie or 'Pallas Armata' itself conferred no better notion of strategic sally than the simple one they used when the MacNicolls came down the stair with their prisoner; for they had dispersed themselves in little companies up the closes on either side the street, ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... Woolson Spice Co. was credited with spending unheard-of sums of money in advertising Lion brand coffee. The eastern newspaper displays alone exceeded anything ever before attempted in this line. However, many people are of the opinion that it was a tactical error on the part of the sugar interests to spend so much money advertising a Rio coffee in the central and New England states, while John Arbuckle was confining his activities to the south and the west, where there already existed a ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... a single direction. His one object is to out-manoeuvre in a game of desperate and immoral chances. The tactical spirit in him has none of the higher ambition. It has felt itself in the degree only ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... the right to accept it and admit Kansas as a Mate? This question was immediately raised. It now became plain that, by refusing to take part in the election, the free-state Kansans had thrown away a great tactical advantage. Of this blunder in generalship the Yancey men took instant advantage. It was known that the proportion of Free-Soilers in Kansas was very great—perhaps a majority—and the Southerners reasoned that they should not be obliged to give up the advantage they had won merely to let ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... o'clock found him, wet to his skin, sneaking on the points of his toes through the thick grass beyond the river, with nineteen other men sneaking at his heels. There had been no especial pretext of Boers in the neighborhood; tactical thoroughness merely demanded a guard on the farther side of the river. Nevertheless, the enthusiastic fellows threw themselves into the game with the same spirit with which, twenty years before, they had faced ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... Omdurman was not the only occasion in which Colonel Macdonald has exhibited magnificent tactical skill combined with soldierly dash and undaunted courage. It is not so long since the Atbara was fought, and in half a score of engagements before that he quitted himself equally well. He was deservedly promoted from ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... all, when we consider the want of symmetry or commensurateness, to any extended duration of time, in the acts of such an audience, which acts lie in the vanishing expressions of its vanishing emotions,—acts so essentially fugitive, even when organized into an art and a tactical system of imbrices and bombi, (as they were at Alexandria, and afterwards at the Neapolitan and Roman theatres,) that they could not protect themselves from dying in the very moment of their birth,—laying together all these considerations, we see ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... solitary recent campaign rather tends to prove a deficiency of men of supreme gifts, it at all events proved a considerable degree of competence and devotion. I could not go so far as a recent writer who regretted the termination of the Boer War because it interrupted the evolution of tactical science, but it is undoubtedly true that the growing aversion to war, the intense dislike to the sacrifice of human life, creates an atmosphere unfavourable to the development of high military genius; because great military reputations ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... for the carrying out of manoeuvres, with the result that a period of "intensive training" set in. Drill orders took place four days a week, and batteries were specially trained in the methods of open warfare, while many hours were devoted to tactical schemes. ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
... in the Shih Chi (see above), from which we learn that "he knew how to handle an army, and was finally appointed General." His work, entitled the Art of War, is a short treatise in thirteen chapters, under the following headings: "Laying Plans," "Waging War," "Attack by Stratagem," "Tactical Dispositions," "Energy," "Weak Points and Strong," "Manoeuvring," "Variation of Tactics," "The Army on the March," "Terrain," "The Nine Situations," "The Attack by Fire," and "The Use of Spies." Although the warfare of Sun Wu's day was the warfare of bow and arrow, of armoured chariots and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... attack is the jury. As the burden of proving a case is on the plaintiff, he is supposed to have the first and the last word; therefore, the defendant begins to sum up. After he is through, it is the turn of the plaintiff. The tactical position is in favor of the plaintiff. The advantage, as in all verbal disputes, is reputedly with the man who has the last word. In all debates the proponent has the right of opening and closing. The plaintiff began the case ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... service in the earlier Philippine campaigns. Later came two sergeants, and another officer, Lieut. Losey J. Williams. With this slender force, and the aid of a company of Faculty men who drilled every night in order to prepare themselves as advisors, or "tactical officers" to supervise the student company commanders and with 300 old rifles, Michigan managed to "carry on," maintaining the largest, though owing to these difficulties probably not the most effective R.O.T.C. organization in the country. Nevertheless it served a very useful purpose, as its ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... proceeded to fulfil the destiny he had planned by joining as a volunteer aid the army which, under General Johnson, was charged with the capture of Crown Point on Lake Champlain. In this campaign it was largely owing to Major Hester's soldierly knowledge and tactical skill that the French army, under Baron Dieskau, which had advanced as far as the southern end of Lake George, was defeated. For this victory Sir William Johnson was raised to a baronetcy and presented with a purse of ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... combination in battle after battle, on the British front, of the strategical genius, at once subtle and simple, of Marshal Foch, with the supreme tactical ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... acquired considerable dimensions, it failed to put an end to the tumult. Besides, the papal decision was deprived of much of its force by the fact that Eck, Caraccioli, and Aleandro were appointed as a commission to superintend its execution. The appointment of Eck was a great tactical blunder, as it afforded Luther and his friends an opportunity of proclaiming that the sentence of excommunication was procured by the intrigues and misrepresentations of their personal enemies; while the fact that the German bishops were disregarded in the execution ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... Laval widened quickly. Three of the councillors having joined the bishop against him, Mezy undertook a coup d'etat, dismissed these councilors from their posts, and called a mass-meeting of the people to choose their successors. On the governor's part this was a serious tactical error. He could hardly expect that a monarch who was doing his best to crush out the last vestige of representative government in France would welcome its establishment and encouragement by one of his own ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... of mind, tactical knowledge and bravery displayed in this affair are thus noticed in the official despatches by ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... the Honourable Hilary raised his eyes to his son's face, and shot at him a penetrating look of characteristic shrewdness. But he followed in conversation the same rule as in examining a witness, rarely asking a direct question, except as a tactical surprise. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... fiery, doll-like skipper made the tactical error of paying each man a couple of bob advance on ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... resentment against the injustice of the father, he fought hotly, and his denunciations of various influences were burning and scornful. So slowly but dangerously there crept into their arguments the element of contention. Hitherto Stuart had made no tactical mistakes. He had endured greatly and in patience, but now he was unconsciously yielding to the temptation of assailing an abstract code in a fashion which her troubled judgment might translate into attacks ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... Harm of sudden tariff reductions. It is rarely appreciated how great is the tactical advantage which the advocates of a high tariff enjoy in popular political discussion. They can so easily impress the popular judgment with the evident fruits of their own policy and with the immediate dangers of the policy of their opponents. When a protective rate is first applied or is increased, ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... friend she had in the world, before he had made the tactical error of asking her to marry him, was Richard Thorndyke. He was still, thanks to his immediate skill in trying to retrieve that error, a very good friend indeed. Nancy would normally have told him everything that happened to her in the exact order of its occurrence; ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... the event that such tactical weather-war failed, he could cause a drought in the aggressor's food-producing regions, forcing the aggressor to surrender ...
— Summer Snow Storm • Adam Chase
... denied any more than his failure. In this book I have sought to show him at his best and also almost at his worst. For sheer brilliance, military and mental, the campaigning in France in 1814 could not be surpassed. He is there with his raw recruits, his beardless boys, his old guard, his tactical and strategical ability, his furious energy, his headlong celerity and his marvelous power of inspiration; just as he was in Italy when he revolutionized the art of war and electrified the world. Many of these qualities are in evidence in the days before Waterloo, but ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... in his novels and elsewhere he went out of his way to tread on the corns of all sorts of people; he constantly ventured out of his depth in such subjects as philosophy and theology; and he suffered a terrible defeat by rashly engaging, and by tactical ineptitude, in his contest with Newman. His politics, in which matter at one time he engaged hotly, were those of a busier and more educated Colonel Newcome. His poems, which were his least unequal work, seem never to have ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... or from taking Cuddalore, which gave them a good naval and military station, or from reducing Trincomali. In this long and famous naval duel Hughes, though a capable and gallant captain, showed himself far inferior to Suffren in strategical and tactical skill. The French admiral, however, was constantly thwarted by the misconduct of his subordinates, while the English captains gave Hughes loyal support.[168] Coote carried on the war with vigour, but his victory over Haidar and his French allies at Arni was rendered fruitless by his lack ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... but pointed to the blue covering which he had for his cap—which made it all right. The Italian insisted on keeping to the trousers. He talked red trousers till the Frenchman got out at his station, and then turned to me to confirm his views on this fatal strategic and tactical error of the French. After all, he was more pertinent than most of the military experts trying to write on the basis of the military bulletins. It was droll to listen to this sartorial discourse, when at least two hundred thousand men lay dead and wounded from that ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... and will attack the enemy, with my division, at dawn." Bonaparte, impressed by the arguments which Augereau had put forward, then said that he would stay with him. After which there was no more talk of retreat, and the next day a brilliant victory, due in large part to the courage and tactical skill of Augereau, established, for a long time, the position of the French army in Italy. Bonaparte was always mindful of this day, and when, as Emperor, he created a new nobility, he named Augereau ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... Sullen and obdurate, he was ordered to face away, while Bradley from behind searched his pockets. And the crown of his abasement was reached when Bradley drew from a hip pocket a full flask of whisky. The material advantage of the find was not great, but the tactical advantage was enormous. Behind Stone, Bradley silently but jeeringly held it up as an exhibit for the thirsty Texas men; and to show it was full, uncorked and with gusto sampled it. Stone was ordered back ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... progress of the enemy toward Paris. The division attacked and retook the town and railroad station at Bouresches and sturdily held its ground against the enemy's best guard divisions. In the battle of Belleau Wood, which followed, our men proved their superiority and gained a strong tactical position, with far greater loss to the enemy than to ourselves. On July 1, before the 2d was relieved, it captured the village of Vaux with most ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... possess the extraordinary ability and tact required to play the complicated game successfully, and he committed the fatal mistake of using the office-bearers of the association as detectives for the discovery of the "evil-intentioned." This tactical error had its natural consequences. As soon as the workmen perceived that their professed benefactors were police spies, who did not obtain for them any real improvement of their condition, the popularity of the association rapidly declined. At the same time, ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... was General Menou's intention to attack the British camp next morning. The news was thought too good to be true, as in a few days Abercromby would have been compelled to attack the lines of Alexandria under every tactical disadvantage. It was, however, confirmed, and on the 21st of March the battle of Alexandria was fought, the fate of Egypt was decided, and Abercromby received his death-wound. Maitland again covered the British right flank from the sea. In the detailed plan of the battle ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland
... pairs,—presenting points of contrast, in deficiencies and in excellencies, which group them together, not by similarity chiefly, but as complementary. Howe and Jervis were both admirable general officers; but the strength of the one lay in his tactical acquirements, that of the other in strategic insight and breadth of outlook. The one was easy-going and indulgent as a superior; the other conspicuous for severity, and for the searchingness with which he carried the exactions of discipline into the minute ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... burdens of the war, particularly of the bad discipline of the mercenaries quartered among them, and the king, weary of the petty quarrelling and of the impolitic as well as unmilitary conduct of his allies, began to have a presentiment that the problem which had fallen to him might be, despite all tactical successes, politically insoluble. The arrival of a Roman embassy of three consulars, including Gaius Fabricius the conqueror of Thurii, again revived in him for a moment the hopes of peace; but it soon appeared that they ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... general and field-marshal, of Scottish descent, and of the same family as Robert Barclay the Quaker; distinguished in successive Russian wars; his promotion rapid, in spite of his unpopularity as German born; on Napoleon's invasion of Russia his tactic was to retreat till forced to fight at Smolensk; he was defeated, and superseded in command by Kutusow; on the latter's death was made commander-in-chief; commanded the Russians at Dresden and Leipzig, and led them into France in 1815; he was afterwards Minister of War ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood |
