It has to be well-versed in the actual war and its potential outcomes, as well as the moral and mental faculties that are most crucial to its application. In other words, strategy forms the plan of the war and, to achieve this, it links together the series of acts which are to lead to the final decision; in other words, it makes the plans for the individual campaigns and regulates the combats to be fought in each. Since strategy is the employment of the battle to gain the end of the war, it must, therefore, give an aim to the whole military action, which must be by the object of the war. Given that many of these details are largely dependent on educated guesses, some of which prove to be false, and because many other arrangements involving specifics cannot be made in advance, it follows naturally that Strategy must accompany the Army into battle to make the kind of alterations to the overall plan that is constantly required during times of war.

As a result, strategy can never look away from the task at hand. It is apparent from the previous practice of keeping Strategy separate from the Army and under the cabinet—which was only permitted if the cabinet was so close to the Army that it might be mistaken for the Army's main headquarters—that this has not always been the accepted viewpoint. Thus, the theory will assist strategy in making decisions about its plans; or, to put it another way, the theory will shed light on things as they are and how they relate to one another, emphasizing the few principles and rules that exist.