Excerpt from Field Orders, Messages and Reports, 1906
1. It was supposed for a long time that the education of a soldier in time of peace must stop at the drill ground. Recent experience has dispelled that fallacy and taught us that most of the problems of war can be solved in time of peace. So well is this idea now established that a nation can not hope for success in war unless it has provided an elaborate system of peace training.
Among the important elements to be considered in time of peace are those which concern the leading of troops and the instruction of officers in issuing proper orders in the field. The drafting of orders has been so systematized that it has become a special art. It can only be learned by practice assisted by intelligence. Often those who have the best ideas are unable to convey them clearly in writing.
2. The earliest battles were merely collisions of armed mobs. The leaders exercised little influence upon the action except by personal example. In the course of time it was discovered that drill and discipline on one side or the other would neutralize the effect of individual courage and superiority in numbers of the enemy. Armies remained small and, although warfare was the favorite occupation of mankind, there were few great leaders and they made few improvements in their art. Occasionally some one acquired great success by seizing upon an apparently simple idea. A flank attack, a formed reserve, a rapid march, an ambuscade, or stratagem, sometimes a better weapon, sometimes a new maneuver at drill, was sufficient to make a reputation for a general, or even to change the course of history. But tactical results alone seem to have been sought, and the art of war was limited to the field of battle. In two thousand years it is hard to find cases where the terrain was considered in its relation to the campaign.
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