Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1918-09-16
sTRATEG1CAL DREAMS.
The Great General Must Have an
Imagination.
Fnm the Boston Transcript.

From the Boston Transcript
We have arrived at an epoch in the
history Of the war when strategical
dreams tend to arise in tho mind OF
the thoughtful observer. For four
wears the contestants have been locked
in a sort of deadly embrace from
which there seemed to be no escape.
AGAINST such a condition Of deadlock
the average thoughtful mind revolts.
It is a WEAKNESS too great Tor the
human spirit. The thoughtful mind
perceives that all the good generals
are partisans Of "free movement" OF
the tactics Of maneuver-that they
declare no war can be fought out
with stationary trench tactics any
more than a train can get to its des-
tination by blowing on steam ana
furiously sounding Its whistle with
out starting a wheel Somehow the
spell Of t1ity must Just be :. broken 70 hs don M
It is in replying to that question
that the thoughtful mind gets busy
and begins to invent answers. BY this
movement or that. this glorious SUI
prise assault or that. the thing-or 80
aarssegs CO fog g a aSe
dreamer embarks the entire British
army. with half a million or so Of
Americans, at Brest or LIE Havre.
ferries them around to the emo mouth no. OF
swiftly up that stream. and hurls
them into the vitals Of Germany. Or
perhaps he assemblies all the British
and French reserves in a long batter
ram formation just behind the
armies a whose commanders are known
to be on bad terms, forces by as
sauit a break in the line at this point,
and then drives his long, narrow bat
tering-ram clean through the breach,
Of the line. envelopes and captures the
German armies on both sides. and
presses on to Berlin. Or. little more
reasonably. and with better backing
Of opinion in the military books favor
leaf from the history Of the Ameri-
can civil war and solves the problem
Of 1918 with Sherman's march q The
sea in 1s64-5. That is to say. is
loose an American army OF Hi..1on
the Rhine. takes strasbourg, Mann
kefm. Mayence. Frankfort and pauses
not until the knife is laid at the very
heart Of Germany: There may be
something in that idea The attempt
army very busy for some months.
In all these exercises of the mill
tary Imagination, tho amateur strate-
gists are performing in their nm ra n
meled way what the great generals
have to do with expert reference to
hard facts and obstinate material OBJ
structtons It is very much easier 70
move troops in ones mind than to
move them over the ground. Never
theless, the great generals have been
great dreamers. Napoleon Bonaparte
had indeed q. highly practical mind.
| but his juvenile notebooks are full of
wild strategical dreams. and his first
| great success. which made everything
possible to him, was the audacious
| italian campaign, full Of Imagination
at every step. Military victories come
in obedience to the military tmagina-
ton: they are not Science" but art,
and the great general is an imagine
tive artist. II Tecumseh Sherman had
not been a true dreamer we should
never have had his march to the sea,
which cut the Confederacy in two and
utterly broke the back Of its resist-
ance Already we can zee working in
the mind Of Ferdinand Foch the
dreaming talent Of his Pyrenneau or
Catalonian race. famous for its artists
and its poets. So perhaps We should
not laugh at the amateur strategists
with their fantastic propositions.
Perhaps ono Of them will turn out 10
be the very thing that VIII end he