and professional pride they possessed in abundance.  Man for man, in all virile qualities, neither officers nor men were inferior to their foes.  But one thing their generals lacked, and that was education for war.  Strategy was almost a sealed book to them.”  Also, “Moltke committed no mistake.  Long before war had been declared every possible precaution had been made.  And these included much more than arrangements for rapid mobilization, the assembly of superior numbers completely organized, and the establishment of magazines.  The enemy’s numbers, armaments, readiness, and efficiency had been submitted to a most searching examination.  Every possible movement that might be made, however unlikely, had been foreseen; every possible danger that might arise, however remote, discussed and guarded against”; also, “That the Prussian system should be imitated, and her army deprived of its monopoly of high efficiency, was naturally inevitable.  Every European state has to-day its college, its intelligence department, its schools of instruction, and its course of field maneuvers and field firing.”

Strategy may be divided into two parts, war strategy and preparation strategy; and of these two, preparation strategy is by far the more important.

War strategy deals with the laying out of plans of campaign after war has begun, and the handling of forces until they come into contact with the enemy, when tactics takes those forces in its charge.  It deals with actual situations, arranges for the provisioning, fuelling, and moving of actual forces, contests the field against an actual enemy, the size and power of which are fairly well known—­and the intentions of which are sometimes known and sometimes not.  The work of the strategist in war is arduous, pressing, definite, and exciting; and results are apt to follow decisions quickly.  He plays the greatest and oldest game the world has ever known, with the most elaborate instruments, and for the largest stakes.  In most wars, the antagonists have been so nearly equal in point of personnel and material that the result has seemed to be decided by the relative degrees of skill of the strategists on both sides.  This has been the verdict of history; and victorious commanders in all times and in all lands have achieved rarer glories, and been crowned with higher honors, than any other men.

Preparation strategy deals with the laying out of plans for supposititious wars and the handling of supposititious forces against supposititious enemies; and arranges for the construction, equipment, mobilization, provisioning, fuelling, and moving of supposititious fleets and armies.  War strategy is vivid, stimulating and resultful; preparation strategy is dull, plodding, and—­for the strategist himself—­apparently resultless.  Yet war strategy is merely the child of preparation strategy.  The weapons that war strategy uses, preparation strategy put into its hands.  The fundamental plans, the strength and composition