"Tactical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in 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 ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... sagaciously perceived that his only chance of victory rested in the superiority of the personal fortitude and activity of his countrymen, and to bring them face to face, and arm to arm, with their opponents, was the simple object of his tactical dispositions. He formed his troops into three divisions, with two wings. The centre, in which he stationed himself, he planted to act against the main body of the French, and he placed the right and left divisions, ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... morning Colonel Michaud had ridden round the Drissa fortifications with the Emperor and had pointed out to him that this fortified camp constructed by Pfuel, and till then considered a chef-d'oeuvre of tactical science which would ensure Napoleon's destruction, was an absurdity, threatening the destruction of the ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... 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
... 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 not ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... 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 about ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... 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
... 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 of the Bull as if they were not ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... down on the bed and began pulling off his boots. She knew that the left boot would stick. She knew exactly what he would say and how long it would take him to get it off. She rolled over in bed, a tactical movement which left no blanket ...
— A Parody Outline of History • Donald Ogden Stewart
... 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, southward and northward, eager to pounce on any ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... 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, if you like, ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... deliver his master when he had urged the appointment of Kheyr-ed-Din: brave as a lion, keen as the edge of his own good scimitar, fanatical, as became a Hodja who had visited the Holy Places, Sinan was a type of the Turkish sea-officer: devoid of strategical instinct and tactical training, his one idea was a headlong attack, then victory or the houris of Paradise. It will be seen that Barbarossa had not only Doria and the Christian fleet and army against which to contend on ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the 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 ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... organization 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 the ...
— Revolutionary Heroes, And Other Historical Papers • James Parton
... 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, to ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... the General, on behalf of Madame Decaen, sent Flinders an invitation to dine, dinner being then served. At this point, one cannot help feeling, he made a tactical mistake. It is easily understood, and allowance can be made for it, but the consequences of it were serious. He was angry on account of his detention, irritated by the treatment to which he had ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... of strategy to the sphere of tactics, a life-long experience of military study and thought had taught me that the principle of the tactical employment of troops must be instinctive. I knew that in putting the science of war into practice, it was necessary that its main tenets should form, so to speak, part of one's flesh and blood. In war there is little time to think, and the ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... the four schooners, mostly inferior in 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 ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... party and the yacht have somehow incurred the very gravest suspicion of the Spaniards, and that we are being most jealously watched. I fear that Carlos and I are chiefly responsible for this; indeed, the agent here did not scruple to say that we—Carlos and I—committed a very great tactical blunder in coming out here in the yacht. He asserts that we ought to have come out in the ordinary way by mail steamer, and that in such a case little or no suspicion would have attached to the yacht; but that certain news transmitted from ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... 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 ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... 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 ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... of his 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 ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... place within rifle-range, and where I should, I believed, have "command." I was not quite certain what "command" meant, but I knew it was important—it says so in the book; besides, in all the manoeuvres I had attended and tactical schemes I had seen, the "defence" always held a position on top of a hill or ridge. My duty was plain: Waschout Hill seemed the only place which did not contravene any of the nineteen lessons I had learnt, and up it I walked. As I stood near one of the huts, I got an excellent view of ...
— The Defence of Duffer's Drift • Ernest Dunlop Swinton
... 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 obey the recall ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... 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 ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... 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, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... 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
... were now fully 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, ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... Circus Maximus,—most of 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 ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... had been but a truce in the battle between two 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 ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... we must sketch the tactical system under which they are drawn up for peaceful contest. The classification of subjects adopted by the Commission embraces seven departments. Of these, the Main Building is devoted to I. Mining and Metallurgy; II. Manufactures; III. Education and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... 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 ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... of Staff.—The one insuperable obstacle to tactical triumphs such as CAESAR and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 14, 1917 • Various
... 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 not ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... afforded for Gordon to reveal his tactical skill than his strategical insight, and in this respect the only trammels he experienced were from the military value and efficiency of his force, which had its own limitations. But still it would be unjust to form too poor an estimate of the fighting efficiency and courage of either ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... torpedo-craft, dock gates, power stations, magazines, and the like; and that they are far less dependent on favourable weather than is generally supposed. 'In short, every one of the strategical and tactical advantages which the Committee of Imperial Defence anticipated in 1909 when recommending the construction of a rigid airship for the Navy, has been, or is in a fair way of being, realized by the German airships. These results have only been attained by perseverance under ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... 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 ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... that night Eliza Thick began to think that perhaps she had made a tactical error by interning herself in the kitchen where there was but small opportunity for a tete-a-tete with the bewitching Kathleen. The news that Blair was coming to the evening meal was highly disconcerting, and the worried cook even ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... biplanes possess high endurance qualities. They can remain aloft for many hours at a stretch and are remarkably reliable. Owing to these qualities they are utilised for prolonged and searching reconnoitring duties such as strategical reconnaissances as distinct from the hurried and tactical reconnaissances carried out by fleeter machines. While they are not so speedy as the monoplanes of the German military establishment, endurance in this instance is preferable to pace. A thorough survey of the enemy's ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... 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 ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... time of capture, the relief of the besieged twenty-four hours later and the 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 ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... 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 that China could ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... five thousand barrels a day. The 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 Rio ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... 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 ...
— The Russian Revolution; The Jugo-Slav Movement • Alexander Petrunkevitch, Samuel Northrup Harper,
... 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 at the same ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... end upset him. Lord John Russell, in alliance with O'Connell, proposed the disendowment of that Church and defeated Peel by thirty-three votes. It was a question of principle, though it was raised in a factious way, and subsequent history showed that the mover, after his tactical victory of the moment, could not effect any practical solution. Peel was driven to resign. But in this short period, so far from losing credit, he had won the confidence of his party and the respect of his opponents; he had put some useful measures on the Statute Book; and he had shown the ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... satisfaction that they were matters on which he also had no desire to talk. His real object was to penetrate the Minister's mind in quite another direction, and he saw that this astute diplomatist had not the slightest suspicion of what he was after. This, of course, gave the tactical advantage to the Indian. ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... 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
... their States for whatever candidate might be chosen. The old campaigner proved the stronger, and he was nominated with General James G. Field of Virginia for Vice-President. Unprejudiced observers viewed Weaver's nomination as a tactical error on the part of the Populist leaders: "Mr. Weaver has belonged to the group of third-party 'come-outers' for so many years that his name is not one to conjure with in either of the old camps;... his name suggests too strongly the abortive third-party ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... the fatal 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 ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... attempts to explain the sequence of chapters as follows: "Chapter IV, on Tactical Dispositions, treated of the offensive and the defensive; chapter V, on Energy, dealt with direct and indirect methods. The good general acquaints himself first with the theory of attack and defense, and then turns his attention to direct and indirect methods. He studies the art of ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... 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, ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell |
