Excerpt from A Military Primer: Including an Outline of the Duties and Responsibilities, of the Military Profession and an Elementary Discussion of the Principles, and Practice of the Service of Security and Information

This book is in no sense a textbook for advanced students of military science, but a book for the beginner, designed to teach the cadets of the Military Academy, at the very begin ning of their military education, the objects of the profession for which they are preparing themselves, to show them the reason for the discipline to which they are subjected, and to define some of the independent duties of subaltern officers, in time of war in connection with the service of security and information.

In this service they must be trained, first, by thorough theoretical study of the general principles involved, and then by such practical applications of those principles as can be made when the enemy is imaginary, and all danger, save that of criticism, is absent.

Whether an officer so trained will prove valuable under the conditions attending actual hostilities, will always remain more or less of a problem, until tested by those conditions; but it can be asserted positively that in the present state of the military profession, no one can hope to really succeed, as an officer, who does not combine courage and loyalty with a thorough knowledge of the principles of strategy and tactics that can only come from exhaustive study.

The game of chess is the most complex game that is played with inanimate tools. The game of war possesses all the intricacies of chess, with the infinite added tangles caused by having the chess-men equipped with human minds, moved by the will, and not by the hand, of the master player, and by having the smooth squares of the chessboard replaced by the ever changing terrain of the theater of operations, where the weather often conspires with the enemy to change, and often to defeat, the most carefully laid plans.

An appreciation of the difficulties of his profession should make clear to the military student that he should hasten to prepare himself for its duties, for there will be no time to do so when war is declared.

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