A
supreme activity, both of brain and body, was a prominent
characteristic of his military life. His idea of strategy was to
secure the initiative, however inferior his force; to create
opportunities and to utilise them; to waste no time, and to give the
enemy no rest. "War," he said, "means fighting. The business of the
soldier is to fight. Armies are not called out to dig trenches, to
throw up breastworks, to live in camps, but to find the enemy and
strike him; to invade his country, and do him all possible damage in
the shortest possible time. This will involve great destruction of
life and property while it lasts; but such a war will of necessity be
of brief continuance, and so would be an economy of life and property
in the end. To move swiftly, strike vigorously, and secure all the
fruits of victory is the secret of successful war."
That he felt to the full the fascination of war's tremendous game we
can hardly doubt. Not only did he derive, as all true soldiers must,
an intense intellectual pleasure from handling his troops in battle
so as to outwit and defeat his adversary, but from the day he first
smelt powder in Mexico until he led that astonishing charge through
the dark depths of the Wilderness his spirits never rose higher than
when danger and death were rife about him.
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