The ease and certainty with which orders can be transmitted and received, the precision with which large forces can be quickly despatched from place to place, and the tremendous power exertable by those forces, tend to blind the mind to the fact that transferring any force to any place is merely making a "move," and that the other player can make moves, too.

If a man were never to be pitted in strategy against another player, either in games or in actual war, the "infinite variety" of strategy would never be disclosed to his intelligence; and after learning how to make the moves, he might feel willing to tackle any one.
Illustrations of this tendency by people of great self-confidence are numerous in history, and have not been missing even in the present war, though none have been reported in this country as occurring on the Teuton side.

There has always been a tendency on the part of a ruling class to seize opportunities for military glory, and the ambition has often been disproportioned to the accompanying ability and knowledge--sometimes on the part of a King, prince, or man of high nobility, sometimes on the part of a minister, sometimes on the part of an army or navy man, who has been indebted to political or social influence for his place.

But within the past fifty years, especially since the establishment of the General Staff in Prussia and the studies of Von Moltke, the overshadowing importance of strategy has been understood, the necessity of comprehending its principles and practising its technic has been appreciated, and attempts to practise strategy by persons inexpert in strategy have been deprecated.
The game of strategy, while resembling in many ways the game of chess, differs from it, of course, in the obvious element of personal danger.

It also differs from it in an equally important but less obvious way--its relation to the instruments employed; for in chess those instruments (pieces) are of a number and character fixed by the rules of the game; whereas in strategy the number and character of the instruments (ships, etc.) employed are determined by strategy itself, assisted by engineering.