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 of the forces, the training of officers and men, the collection of the necessary material of all kinds, the arrangements for supplies and munitions of all sorts--the very principles on which war strategy conducts its operations--are the fruit of the tedious work of preparation strategy.