With effeminacy and loose principles it is in vain to calculate upon a surprise.

But so general, indeed so indispensable, as is this endeavour, and true as it is that it is never wholly unproductive of effect, still it is not the less true that it seldom succeeds to a REMARKABLE degree, and this follows from the nature of the idea itself.

We should form an erroneous conception if we believed that by this means chiefly there is much to be attained in War.

In idea it promises a great deal; in the execution it generally sticks fast by the friction of the whole machine.
In tactics the surprise is much more at home, for the very natural reason that all times and spaces are on a smaller scale.

It will, therefore, in Strategy be the more feasible in proportion as the measures lie nearer to the province of tactics, and more difficult the higher up they lie towards the province of policy.
The preparations for a War usually occupy several months; the assembly of an Army at its principal positions requires generally the formation of depots and magazines, and long marches, the object of which can be guessed soon enough.
It therefore rarely happens that one State surprises another by a War, or by the direction which it gives the mass of its forces.