What is strategy? Strategy is another name for arranging your forces like chessmen on a chess-board with the object of winning in the end. Great strategists are born, not made. Cæsar was a great strategist, so was Napoleon, and so was Lord Roberts. Just as a composer can write a piece of music without the help of a piano or any other instrument, so the born strategist can work out the plan of a battle, and even make a shrewd guess as to who is going to win, when sitting in his study with a good map before him. It may interest you to know that before each of his great battles Napoleon spent the night in his tent studying a number of large maps laid out on the floor. Lying flat on his stomach, and with a little stick in his hand, he would work out the dispositions of his troops and of the enemy. When he had made up his mind what was going to happen, down to every detail, he would call in his generals and explain to each of them exactly what he was to do the next day. His generals soon found that though he was not always certain what his own side would do, he could always foresee the plans of the enemy. I have already spoken of Sir John Moore at Corunna. At the time that great soldier made his famous retreat, he was much criticised, but now all military historians regard it as having been a most wonderful piece of work, if only because it forced Napoleon to alter his whole plan of campaign. Just as General von Kluck wished to obey the Kaiser and destroy the British Army, so Napoleon was most eager to destroy Sir John Moore’s forces. Fresh from a series of brilliant victories, at the head of a splendid host, Napoleon dashed into Spain, but Sir John Moore, by his masterly retreat, defeated all his plans. The first of his contemporaries to realise the splendid thing Moore had done was Napoleon himself. While the British commanders—Moore’s own contemporaries and even his own friends—were criticising the dead man, for he fell at Corunna, Napoleon was putting on record his unbounded admiration of his foe. How our gallant soldiers felt when ordered to fall back was graphically described by Private Harman, of the King’s Royal Rifles: “We did not like the order to retire, for we knew we were doing better than the Germans, and inflicting heavy losses upon them. Our officers also knew we were disappointed. On the fifth day of the retreat—which was the last I was in before being knocked out—our commanding officer came round and spoke to us, saying, ‘Stick it, boys, stick it! To-morrow we shall go the other way and advance.’” And in time, as we shall see, they did advance, but before that glad moment came they had to retreat, fighting. Listen to this, written by another private: