The interest of tactics is chiefly for professional men; but it is worth while to notice its main principles, which are simple. All fighting is, and has always been, of two kinds, hand-to-hand or shock action, at a distance or missile action. Goliath challenged the Israelites to shock action, and David killed him by missile action; and I dare say that the Philistines thought it unfair. Now, whether for shock or for missile action, it is very obvious that if you can overmatch your enemy in numbers--other things being equal--you are likely to get the better of him; and that if you are on higher ground than he is you can see him better than he can see you to throw things at him, and can charge him with greater impetus down hill than he can meet you with, uphill. It may be said broadly that the art of tactics is the art of bringing stronger numbers to bear at some given point, and taking or acquiring superiority of position. This is the physical side of tactics. The moral side (apart from discipline) lies chiefly in those two eternal and undying resources, known as the ambush and the surprise. Here the leader tries to upset an enemy's physical advantage of numbers and position by taking him unawares. There is no finer example of a surprise in the world than that of Gideon. Think of it--the silent march of 300 picked men in three companies through the darkness, each with his trumpet and his torch hidden in a pitcher, the silent surrounding of the hostile camp just before dawn, when human vitality is at its lowest; and then the silence broken by the crash of three hundred pitchers, the sudden flare of the torches, the braying of three hundred trumpets as if in signal to a host of thousands unseen in the night; and the simultaneous yell "For the Lord and for Gideon." There was a wild panic in the Midianite camp, and no wonder. In the darkness they took to fighting each other, "every man's sword against his fellow." Of course they did. Exactly the same result was seen many times over during our last war in South Africa, and has been seen in every panic from Gideon's age to our own. Gideon was a man who studied moral force.