Then appears to have happened what has so often happened
before in war. The two halves of the so-called broken line closed like the jaws of a nut-cracker on the German force, and the penetrators found out in action the simple but essential strategic principle that breaking a line and being enveloped may be only different names for the same thing. It all depends upon which way you look at it. If you are very numerous and sufficiently strong on your feet, having your line penetrated is exactly what you want. On the other hand, if you are fairly strong in numbers, very mobile, and, finally, if your moral is good, what the enemy call enveloping you is your name for driving a wedge between them and imitating the essential tactics of Napoleon. When the Emperor bad driven in his wedge be hit simultaneously and with all his might right and left. Then, swiftly determining which half of the enemy warn the weaker, he gathered practically his whole force together and flung himself in overwhelming numbers upon the selected victim, a small containing force meanwhile holding off the other section of the enemy. Of course for such a manoeuvre everything depends upon swift movement. It must be so swift, indeed, that you can make your numbers count twice over. In the last resort mobility can be expressed in terms of numbers, as in the case of the Irishman whose smallest pig ran about so fast that it had to be counted twice.
