"Tactical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... by firing this shot had materially aided General Washington, for any delay of the British, even a slight one, gave a great advantage to the Americans who were hurrying from superior numbers to put themselves in a good tactical position as soon ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... immediate victim of his rage; that is what mothers are for, and boys also; but in this case the boy had his mother at unfair disadvantage, for she was a guest, and had no means of enforcing obedience. Henry showed a certain tactical ability by refusing to start, and he met all efforts at compulsion by successful, though too vehement protest. He was in fair way to win, and was holding his own, with sufficient energy, at the bottom of the long staircase which led up to the door of the President's library, when the door ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... with his own War Minister in the background, is doing all he knows to get 20,000 of my new troops allotted to a side show, not for strategy's sake, but for the tactical relief of his troops from the shelling. I quite sympathize with his reason as, after all, he is responsible for his own troops and not for the larger issue. But, to take one objection only, the Navy could not land a force at Besika Bay and ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... however, Petewawa is a different matter. To them it means manoeuvres; and every soldier knows what manoeuvres mean. There is a popular idea that these tactical exercises are enjoyed by the officers. Perhaps they are, if perchance one is on the staff, a dizzy height the writer has ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... little, fiery, doll-like skipper made the tactical error of paying each man a couple of bob ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... 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 ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... 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 against the ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... other partners. Let us suppose that the rival armies have fought each other to a standstill; let us suppose that France is exhausted; let us further suppose that the German troops, by their mobility and their tactical skill, are able to hold the Russians in the eastern sphere of war. We can suppose all these things, but what we cannot imagine even for a moment is that Great Britain—to confine ourselves only to our own case—will ever consent to stop until she has achieved ...
— Armageddon—And After • W. L. Courtney
... 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 during the actual ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... affair speaks well both for the discipline and the spirit of the patriot army; and Caesar ungrudgingly recognizes both. He points out how far superior the British warriors were to his own men, both in individual and tactical mobility. The legionaries dare not break their ranks to pursue, under pain of being cut off by their nimble enemies before they could re-form; and even the cavalry found it no safe matter to press British chariots too far or too closely. At any moment the crews might spring to earth, and the pursuing ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... counties of 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 adopted by their ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... last been 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
... ten 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 its ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... idea, commonly entertained, that the tactical arrangement of the Laconian heavy infantry is highly complicated, no conception could be more opposed to fact. For in the Laconian order the front rank men are all leaders, (11) so that each file has everything necessary to play its ...
— The Polity of the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians • Xenophon
... relating to warfare that I cannot make myself. If nobody knows how to make gunpowder, I do. I can construct gun-carriages. If cannon must be cast, I will see that it is done properly. If tactical details must be taught, I will ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... tactical training in the great normal school of life had not embraced Love. Therefore no line of retreat had been considered. She was not only ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... caliber to the nine carronades on board a single vessel, the "Niagara," raking within pistol-shot of antagonists already in the condition described by Barclay. Such a conclusion traverses all experience of the tactical advantage of guns massed under one captain over a like number distributed in several commands, and also contravenes the particular superiority of carronades at close quarters. An officer of the "Detroit," who was on deck throughout, testified that the "Lawrence" had engaged at musket-shot, ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... eyes broke to one side. He moved nervously as though physically to dismiss the tactical ...
— General Max Shorter • Kris Ottman Neville
... shown that he knew when and how to retire. Long Island was his first battle and he had lost. Now retreat was his first great tactical achievement. He could not stay in New York and so sent at once the chief part of the army, withdrawn from Brooklyn, to the line of the Harlem River at the north end of the island. He realized that ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... 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
... turn back. Even if I did not succeed in fishing him out, it was a "gallant attempt," which would be almost as good. Partly to see how the crowd was taking it, and partly to rest myself, I turned over on my back and floated. This do doubt was a tactical error; for as a rule a hero does not float out to save any one's life. In my case it did not much matter, for the first thing I perceived as I turned was my drowning man's head bobbing up merrily between me and ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... does not go to prove that the South respected any less the humane warfare, or the tactical ability of him his greatest opponents declared "the ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... were to store and neglect the vast insane literature of this obsession, the intricate treaties, the secret agreements, the infinite knowingness of the political writer, the cunning refusals to accept plain facts, the strategic devices, the tactical manoeuvres, the records of mobilisations and counter-mobilisations. It ceased to be credible almost as soon as it ceased to happen, but in the very dawn of the new age their state craftsmen sat with their historical candles burning, ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... early age the tactical value of this remark, and the experience of maturer years confirmed the success of juvenile efforts to upset the equanimity of governesses. ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... account. Even at the 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 matters, and a patient endurance ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... assumed the position of the soldier, and quietly awaited my entrance. I entered laughing. They resumed their seats with a promise to repay me, and they did, for alas! I was "hived." Some cadet reported me for "imitating a tactical officer inspecting." For this I was required to walk three tours of extra guard duty on three consecutive Saturdays, and to serve, besides, a week's confinement in my quarters. The "laugh" was thus, of course, ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... here 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 Duc ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... not, except incidentally and indirectly, owe their command of our sympathies to the bare power of evoking reactions in a series of ocular envelopes or auditory canals. Their power lies in their freightage of association, in their tactical position at the focus of converging experience, in the number and vigor of the occasions in which they have crossed and re-crossed the palpitating thoroughfares of life. ... Sense-impressions are poetically valuable only in the measure of their power to procreate or re-create experience." [Footnote: ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... 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 officials in the New World. But Mezy did not live to ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... divisions on the floor of the House, or in strenuously contested bye-elections. No doubt our Junkers will try to disarm their opponents by representing that it would be in the last degree unfair, un-English, and ungentlemanly on the part of the Labour members to seize any tactical advantage in parliamentary warfare, and most treacherous and unpatriotic to attack their country (meaning the Junker Party) when it is at war. Some Labour members will be easily enough gulled in this way: it ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... have gotten the fissionables by taking apart a couple of light tactical missiles; the whole thing's packed inside a hundred-pound power-cartridge case. It was in a traveling-bag under his bed. And you know how it was to be fired? With a regular 40-mm flare-pistol, welded into the end of the bomb. The flare-powder had been taken out of the cartridge, and it had been ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... 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
... 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 ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... surface undisturbed, ready for the impress of so light an object as a hopping wren. To make his way across it would be to drag his bonds behind him, plainly asking the world to pull him back. Obviously there must be a more tactical retreat, and without more ado he followed the river's course, keeping ever, as he could, in the shelter of the younger woods, where the snow did not lie or was gathered by the wind in alleys and walls. Forgotten was the cold in his hurried flight through ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... only after the Hsia empire in North China, and then the empire of the Juchen, had been destroyed by the Mongols, and only after long and remarkably modern tactical preparation, that the Mongols conquered South China, the empire of the Sung dynasty. They were now faced with the problem of ruling their great new empire. The conqueror of that empire, Kublai, himself recognized ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... same time they attributed to themselves the lion share in the overthrow, presumably on the ground that masses follow leaders and the Constitutional Democrats were the only ones who had a chance for open protest in the Duma and made use of it. This delusion led to a series of tactical errors and cost them dearly. In all elections they polled a comparatively small vote. Trying to save Russia for the Allies they failed to meet the Russian Socialists on their own ground and were forced to explain away differences of opinion much too thoroughgoing to be explained ...
— The Russian Revolution; The Jugo-Slav Movement • Alexander Petrunkevitch, Samuel Northrup Harper,
... Corps programme 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 ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... his 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 ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... 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 inordinate that ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... From the beginning of the second the general features of ship design, the classification of ships, the armament of ships, and the handling of fleets, were to remain without essential alteration until the date of Navarino. Even the tactical methods, except where improved on occasions by individual genius, altered little. The great thing was to bring the whole broadside force to bear on an enemy. Whether this was to be impartially distributed throughout the hostile line or concentrated on one ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... to safety. Men, alas! are snared in this way. Instances too numerous for the good repute of the swinish sex, were cited, and the question of how Morality was defensible from their grossness passed without a tactical reply. There is no defence: Those women come like the Cholera Morbus—and owing to similar causes. They will prevail until the ideas of men regarding women are purified. Nevertheless the husband who could forgive, even propose ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... mayor New York ever had." But neither the effectiveness of his administration nor the combined efforts of the friends of good government could save him from the designs of Tammany Hall when, in 1917, he was a candidate for reelection. Through a tactical blunder of the Fusionists, a small Republican group was permitted to control the party primaries and nominate a candidate of its own; the Socialists, greatly augmented by various pacifist groups, made heavy inroads among the foreign-born voters. ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... 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 ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... have convinced me. 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, ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... and the Squadron was getting very efficient, both in the technical and tactical handling of guns. Barrage-drill (the latest introduction from Grantham), was practised, and an exhibition barrage, fired out to sea, proved very instructive. On April 18th, there was an "Action" competition for sub-sections under their respective ...
— Through Palestine with the 20th Machine Gun Squadron • Unknown
... the offensive. The Germans were driven out of their most advanced positions, though they held the Vimy Ridge, and accepting defeat before Arras, transferred some of their best troops, including the Prussian Guards, farther north. Possibly this relinquishment was the worst of their tactical mistakes, but the higher commands on both sides had learnt the cost of persisting in attempts to break through, and Falkenhayn may well have thought it best ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... 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 ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... of his spy system which enabled him to carry out his plan of always having a superior force at the point of attack. These two were the great secrets of his tactical system, namely, to have the best information and the most men at ...
— Revolutionary Heroes, And Other Historical Papers • James Parton
... writings there is evident a distinct contrast between the spirit of his strategical and that of his tactical ideas. As a strategist (he claimed to be the first of strategists) he reduces to mathematical rules the practice of the great generals of the 18th century, ignoring "friction," and manoeuvring his armies in vacuo. At the same time he professes that ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... bring superior force to any field of battle at all possible to her. This was a perfectly just military conception, to which in great measure we owed our successes of 1812. The same rule does not apply to fleets, which to achieve the like superiority rely upon united action, and upon tactical facility obtained by the homogeneous qualities of the several ships, enabling them to combine greater numbers upon a part of the enemy. Therefore Great Britain, which so long ruled the world by fleets, attached less importance ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... Professor Royce's arguments articulately. I admit the momentary evasion. In the present lectures, which are cast throughout in a popular mould, there seemed no room for subtle metaphysical discussion, and for tactical purposes it was sufficient the contention of philosophy being what it is (namely, that religion can be transformed into a universally convincing science), to point to the fact that no religious philosophy has actually ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... little band in their uniform, and sent the others back with the prisoners. Then 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 his life ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... individual Kayan, the loyalty and obedience of each household to its chief, the custom of congregating several long houses to form a populous village upon some spot carefully chosen for its tactical advantages (generally a peninsula formed by a deep bend of the river), and the strong cohesion between the Kayans of different and even widely separated villages, — all these factors combine to render the Kayans comparatively secure and their villages immune from attack. But ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... 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 ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various
... 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 find at some ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... 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 day's fight on the soil ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... general as only Toombs could do. When he returned to his headquarters he narrated the circumstance to Dr. Henry H. Steiner, his brigade surgeon and lifelong friend. Dr. Steiner, who had been a surgeon in the regular army, and had served in the Mexican war, was a better tactical officer than Toombs. He was himself fearless and upright, but full of tact and discretion. "General," said Dr. Steiner, "you have been too rash; you will be arrested." Toombs replied that he thought so, too. He held himself in anticipation for two or three days, but he was not disturbed. When ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... on the right, centre, and left of the house, looking from the tribune or speaker's platform, from which all set speeches are delivered, they are often at odds among themselves, and Bismarck and Buelow brought about tactical differences among them for their own purposes. Their programme may be summed up as "As you were," which is not inspiring either as an incentive or as ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... war prosperity that had fallen upon them for two years might last until that indefinite, but to most minds far-off, day when peace should come. For it was the general opinion that in the West, at least, the war had reached a condition of tactical dead-lock. Trench warfare had petrified movement, except in laborious shifting of a few hundred yards at a time, hardly perceptible on a small-scale map. The day of sweeping advances, of sudden retirements, was over. At a reasonable distance behind ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... succeeded such a stupid and unexpected tactical blunder on the part of the usually astute Mr. Ferguson were felt rather than visually discerned. The atmosphere might have been described as panicky. Asa Waring and Phil Goodrich smiled as Wallis Plimpton, after a moment's hush, scrambled ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... 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 ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... a 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
... each other against a 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
... up mountainously as he approached the line. Putting a company into its place on parade is one of the crucial tests of tactical proficiency. To march a company to exactly the right spot, with every man keeping his proper distance from his file-leader—"twenty-eight inches from back to breast," clear down the column, so that when the order "front" was given, ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... 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 ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... 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 ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... 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 ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... 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
... or undesirable degree of 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 eyes fell upon those objects, there was a light ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... Whatever its tactical merits, the battle had the important strategic effect of putting the Dutch out of the war. The remnants of their fleet were destroyed in harbor during an otherwise profitless expedition into Holland led by the Duke of York in 1799. ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... to be) "congenitally inaccurate"; 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 ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... aroused, and, not relishing the fun of being buffeted unmercifully in their beds without resistance, they one and all turned out and, seizing their pillows, joined in the fight. The attack, begun with tactical judgment, turned now into a confused melee. Friend and foe were mixed up in one grand shindy, and for many minutes the battle continued without intermission. Blows fell fast and thick; there was a rushing about of half-clad figures swaying bolsters, and each one intent ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... 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
... the 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 step taken. The control of our foreign ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... yet occurred that it was a tactical error to leave me between the door and himself. I supposed he relied too implicitly on the mesmeric pistol. He was ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... reminiscence, the 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 ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... he was now fairly under weigh and got up and walked about the room as he spoke. I knew, he said, his (K.'s) feelings as to the political and strategic value of the Near East where one clever tactical thrust delivered on the spot and at the spot might rally the wavering Balkans. Rifle for rifle, at that moment, we could nowhere make as good use of the 29th Division as by sending it to the Dardanelles, where each of its 13,000 rifles might attract a hundred more ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... fight the American vessel was of heavier tonnage, and threw a heavier broadside; but the sailors were fighting the most renowned naval power in the world, The British captains in every case sought the encounter, and they were defeated by the superior tactical skill, and especially the superior gunnery, of the Americans, Congress was obliged by the force of public sentiment to begin the construction of new vessels. At the same time American privateers ranged the seas and brought in British merchantmen. ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... Compare this with Foch explaining to his friend Andre de Mariecourt, his own emotions at the critical hour at Fere Champenoise, when he had to invent something new to beguile soldiers who had retreated for weeks and been beaten for days. His tactical problem remained unchanged, but he must give his soldiers, tired with being beaten to the "old tune" a new air, which would appeal to them as new, something to which they had not been beaten, ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... the British before the advance commenced, right up to Laon, the chief feature of tactical importance is the fact that there are six rivers running across the direction of the advance, at all of which it was possible that the Germans might make resistance. These rivers are, in order from the south, the Marne, Ourcq, Vesle, Aisne, ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... regarding him as a brilliant and witty writer whom no one could take seriously; it now regards him as a serious, and indeed responsible, thinker whose wit is a matter of harmless inspiration, and often a tactical advantage. ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... wait long in peace. The tribesmen, whose tactical instincts have been evolved by centuries of ceaseless war, were not slow to realise that the presence of the 3rd Brigade at Nawagai was fatal to their hopes. They accordingly resolved to attack it. The Suffi and Hadda Mullahs exerted the whole of their ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... and said: "At what time to-morrow morning do you wish the battery to be ready for the tactical ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... little surprised and disappointed at that revelation of the truth from the lips of the superior whom I so highly respected, and did not doubt for a moment his better judgment, I could not be unmindful of the fact that the other tactical officers did not know me so well and had not so high a reputation as Lieutenant Jones in respect to discipline; and I felt at liberty to avail myself, in my own interest, of the opportunity suggested by this reflection. Hence, when, after my complete restoration to the academy in ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... 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 ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... free-for-all was under way, with each couple battling to eject every other couple from the room. Fighting coalitions formed and dissolved with the lightning changes of the tactical situation. Em and Lou were thrown into the hall, where they organized others in the same situation, and stormed ...
— The Big Trip Up Yonder • Kurt Vonnegut
... William is planning to add a permanent effective of 40,000 men to the tactical units. In return, he will promise Parliament and the country a provisional two years' service, being quite capable of withdrawing his promise so soon as the ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... instant discussion of the Union (July 3). The House preferred to deliberate on anything else, and the leader of the Jacobites or Cavaliers, Lockhart of Carnwath, a very able sardonic man, saw that this was, for Jacobite ends, a tactical error. The more time was expended the more chance had Queensberry to win votes for the Union. Fletcher of Saltoun, an independent and eloquent patriot and republican, wasted time by impossible proposals. Hamilton brought forward, and by only two votes lost, a proposal ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... subsequent retreat were actions which had brought many anxious moments, plenty of hard work in the blazing sun, and the lives of some fine officers and men. The Turks, too, had suffered many casualties. The only tactical result of the operation was that the enemy chose to make the outpost of contention a strong, almost impregnable position, which was captured three months later only by a ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... Hills, the Army of the Potomac would probably have been destroyed. When Malvern Hills was won by the splendid fighting of the National troops, without any agency of their commander, and when they were enthusiastic for a forward movement upon Richmond, McClellan consulted his tactical horoscope, and ordered them to retreat just as if they had been beaten. The second battle of Bull Run, with General John Pope in command on the Union side, and Generals Lee, "Stonewall" Jackson and James Longstreet leading the Confederates, stopped short of being as ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... from one of our patrols with new acquisitions; and this vocabulary he would handle like a master, stalking a little before me, "beard on shoulder," the plaid hanging loosely about him, the yellow staff clapped under his arm, and guiding me uphill by that devious, tactical ascent which seems peculiar to men of his trade. I might count him with the best talkers; only that talking Scots and talking English seem incomparable acts. He touched on nothing at least but he adorned it; when he narrated, the scene was before you; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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; but ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... that duffadar Faiz Talab did not fail to appropriate the thickest and strongest wall in support of his tactical scheme. ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... explored by Alicia Drake. She had not meant to tell her secret, but somehow she had 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 ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... night, after 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 ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... Emma Goldman was a delegate to an Anarchist conference in New York. She was elected to the Executive Committee, but later withdrew because of differences of opinion regarding tactical matters. The ideas of the German-speaking Anarchists had at that time not yet become clarified. Some still believed in parliamentary methods, the great majority being adherents of strong centralism. ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... pickets out to your front; and several hundred yards to your front the Spaniards had a heavy outpost occupying a house, with rifle pits surrounding it. Later in the day, and during the following day, the various regiments forming the Division were rearranged and brought into tactical formation, the First Brigade on the left and immediately to the right of Fort San Juan, and the Second Brigade on ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... Anthony and her leadership, the movement in America went 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 ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... well-feigned fear of returning home in the dark without an escort, the brilliantly lighted house and well-timed supper, at which, unconscious of the flight of time, he sat listening to her diverting talk, including her piquant sketch of Sir Rowland's glorious dinners and tactical lectures, and the value his officers set on each. Here his auditors had each an opportunity of laughing at each other, and being ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... at Moascar, working hard at the elementary forms of infantry drill and tactics, and on 8th January we marched to our new camp El Ferdan, some ten miles along the Canal. Here we continued our training, but of a more advanced kind, brigade schemes, tactical tours and route marches, "jerks," bathing, and football kept us busy ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... (15) but the notes of the paean at length announced to them the fact, and without an instant's delay the answering order "prepare for battle" ran along the different sections of their army. As soon as their troops were drawn up, according to the tactical disposition of the various generals of foreign brigades, the order was passed to "follow the lead," and then the Lacedaemonians on their side also began edging to their right, and eventually stretched out their wing so far that only six out of the ten regimental divisions of ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... and, worst of all, they depended ultimately on reinforcements drawn from beyond the Alps by way of Mantua. In the rich plains of Lombardy they, however, had one advantage which was denied to them among the rocks of the Apennines. Their generals could display the tactical skill on which they prided themselves, and their splendid cavalry had some chance of emulating the former exploits of the Hungarian and Croatian horse. They therefore awaited the onset of the French, little dismayed by recent disasters, and animated by ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... 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 endangered ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... of course, is only the infantryman's idea of things. From a tactical point of view mud has a far greater importance—it is the most relentless enemy that an army can be called upon to face. Even without mud and without Germans it would be a very difficult task to feed and look after a million men on the ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... gone Carl glanced at her. She stiffened and pretended to be absorbed in a magazine. He took from the mess of papers and letters that lived in his inside coat pocket a war-map he had clipped from a newspaper, and drew tactical lines on it. From his room he brought a small book he had bought that day. He studied it intently. Ruth managed to see that the title of the book was Aeroplanes and ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... abnormally developed in 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 ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... fearlessly but foolishly on her threshold, why does she not retreat into her fortress, where the other would not attack her? The accumulated experience of generations should have taught her this elementary tactical device, which is of the greatest value to the prosperity of her race. If the Pompilus has perfected her method of attack, why has not the Segestria perfected her method of defence? Is it possible that centuries upon centuries ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... 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 Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and the Countess de Saldar—had brought matters to this pass; and from the two tactical extremes: the former by openness and dash; the latter by subtlety, and her own interpretations of the means extended to her by Providence. I will not be so bold as to state which of the two I think right. Good and evil work ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... trenches stretch in a comparatively straight line for miles, facing one another squarely, and giving little opportunity for tactical enterprise. The infantry blaze and sputter at one another in front; the guns roar behind; and that is all there is to be said about it. But here, the line follows the curve of each little hill. At one place you are in a salient, ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... Leonidas. I agree with you on that point, and for that reason I aver that I have made a tactical gain." ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... felt a twinge, half regret, half compunction, which was not tactical at all. After all, this man had been extraordinarily nice to her, and she was letting him go feeling that she did ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... millions against their five, the Grays will take the offensive," he said. "For us, the defensive. La Tir is in an angle. It does not belong in the permanent tactical line of our defences. Nevertheless, there will be hard fighting here. The Browns will fall back step by step, and we mean, with relatively small cost to ourselves, to make the Grays pay a heavy price for each step—just as heavy as ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... harriers. In fact, he headed within a 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 ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... from G.H.Q. was that Dukka was a village on a hill commanding considerable country. The village did sit on a hill, but, unfortunately, the hill was commanded on every side by much higher hills and Dukka was of no tactical value. So the Brigadier decided to move on Beit Anan, a similar village situated on the hill commanding Dukka from the south, and on the road to Kubeibeh, the ancient Emmaus. Scouts were pushing forward to search Beit Anan, and the ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... reform, it could not long restrain itself. The third plank in the platform of the Jewish Committee, the increase of Jewish disabilities, which had hitherto been kept in reserve, was now pressing forward, and issued forth from the recesses of the chancelleries somewhat earlier than tactical considerations might have dictated. On April 20, 1843, while the "enlightenment" propaganda was in full swing, there suddenly appeared, in the form of a resolution appended by the Tzar's own hand to the report of the Council of ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... 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, either knowing nothing of solicitors, though much ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... why the army should be got out of the Wilderness, in the midst of which lies Chancellorsville. This is, of all places in that section, the least fit for an engagement in which the general commanding expects to secure the best tactical results. But out towards Fredericksburg the ground opens, showing a large number of clearings, woods of less density, and a field suited to the operations ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... however, not to submit the constitution, would not Congress have 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 ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... 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 ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... 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 ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... 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 the incongruity of any audience, so constituted, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... their resignations, and thus to initiate the subsequent debate. He objected to what he understood to be Lord Hartington's proposed course—namely, formally to oppose Mr. Gladstone's scheme immediately on its announcement; and this he thought not only a tactical error, but also discourteous ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... is that the federal element in this Home Rule Bill, as in that of 1893, will be merely a pretence, designed to keep timid and hesitating Home Rulers in line—a tactical manoeuvre of much the same character as the talk about a reformed Second Chamber which preceded the Parliament Act, and found due burial in the preamble to that Act. In essence the Bill will set up Ireland as an entirely separate state subject to certain restrictions which the ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... 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
... by Tennyson and most subsequent English poets, as well as by Baudelaire, Mallarme and the whole younger school in France, was obstinately preserved, and has not wholly subsided. It would be a tactical mistake for those who wish to insist on Poe's supremacy in his own line to ignore the serious resistance which has been made to it. In the canonisation-trial of this whimsical saint, the Devil's advocates, it may be confessed, are many, and their objections are imposing. It is possible that ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... Hollanders, Irish, and others—were made prisoners, and among them were General de Koch and Piet Joubert, nephew of General Joubert. General Viljoen was killed. The mongrel force, estimated at about 1200 strong, was commanded by Colonel Schiel, to whom it doubtless owed its excellent tactical disposition. This officer was wounded and taken prisoner. The Times gave somewhat interesting character sketches of prominent Boers who were killed or wounded on ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... reader will at once perceive, what was the fact, that the sending for the said jelly pot, on the present occasion, and in the way described, was a mere breaking of ground previous to the performance of some other contemplated operations. It was, in truth, entirely a tactical proceeding—a dexterously and ingeniously laid pretext for a certain intended measure which could not decently have stood on its own simple merits. In proof of this, we need only state, that it is beyond all question that nothing could ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... cross-examining, and was soon on the windward side of the judge, but his address to the jury was too boisterous. He felt too much. His adversary was not under this disadvantage, and Sir Hardinge Giffard's address to the jury, considered merely as a tactical display, was ...
— Reminiscences of Charles Bradlaugh • George W. Foote |
