The commander-in-chief along with his staff settles the strategy, but the commanders of divisions, and battalions, and squadrons, and batteries must carry his plans into effect. The art of doing this is known as _tactics_. The way in which the battle line is formed at a particular place, the manner in which cavalry or artillery are used for a particular purpose, and generally the methods by which marches are conducted, camps are laid out, fortifications are made, and the actual fighting is done, come under the head of _tactics_. It has been well said that the art of strategy consists in getting two men to a place where only one man is ready to oppose them. The arrangements by which the two men would best attack the one man when they meet him, or by which the one man could resist the two, belong to the art of tactics. [Footnote 183: See p. 109.] CHAPTER XXI. THE INVASION OF BELGIUM. You already know that the Germans thought it a matter of life and death to get into France and strike a decisive blow as speedily as possible. For this reason they meant to make their way through Belgium. We know that they had long intended to take this route when they went to war with France. Along that part of their frontier which marches with Belgium they had built many railways, so that troops might be brought rapidly to the border. At all the stations, even those of small towns, long platforms, often five or six hundred yards long, and special sidings, had been made, so that men and guns could be rapidly detrained within a few miles of Belgian soil. Ever since the time of Frederick the Great, German soldiers have believed that the worst place to make war is their own country, and the best the enemy's. On Sunday evening, 2nd August, the German Government sent a long message to the Belgian Government, declaring that the French were going to march through Belgium to attack Germany, and that it feared the Belgians would be unable to resist them. It had, therefore, decided to enter Belgium, so as to anticipate the attack of the enemy. This statement, as you know, was quite untrue. The French had never intended to do anything of the kind.