Little Wars by H. G. Wells (read a book TXT) 📕

r a detachment shall beconsidered to be isolated when there is less than half its number of itsown side within a move of it. Now, in actual civilised warfare smalldetached bodies do not sell their lives dearly; a considerably largerforce is able to make them prisoners without difficulty. Accordingly wedecided that if a blue force, for example, has one or more men isolated,and a red force of at least double the strength of this isolateddetachment moves up to contact with it, the blue men will be consideredto be prisoners.

That seemed fair; but so desperate is the courage and devotion of leadsoldiers, that it came to this, that any small force that got or seemedlikely to get isolated and caught by a superior force instead of waitingto be taken prisoners, dashed at its possible captors and slew themman for man. It was manifestly unreasonable to permit this. And inconsidering how best to prevent such inhuman heroisms, we were remindedof another frequent incident in our battles that also erred tow