Inflict the least possible permanent injury, for the enemy of to-day is the customer of the morrow and the ally of the future

The theory of the indirect approach operates on the line of least expectation.

The most consistently successful commanders, when faced by an enemy in a position that was strong naturally or materially, have hardly ever tackled it in a direct way. And when, under pressure of circumstances, they have risked a direct attack, the result has commonly been to blot their record with a failure.

Direct experience is inherently too limited to form an adequate foundation either for theory or for application. At the best it produces an atmosphere that is of value in drying and hardening the structure of thought. The greater value of indirect experience lies in its greater variety and extent. History is universal experience, the experience not of another, but of many others under manifold conditions.

For whoever habitually suppresses the truth in the interests of tact will produce a deformity from the womb of his thought.

As has happened so often in history, victory had bred a complacency and fostered an orthodoxy which led to defeat in the next war.

The effect to be sought is the dislocation of the opponent's mind and dispositions - such an effect is the true gauge of an indirect approach.