Most wars were wars of
contact, both forces striving into touch to avoid
tactical surprise. Ours should be a
war of
detachment. We were to contain the enemy by the
silent threat of a vast unknown
desert, not dislcosing ourselves till we attacked. The attack might be nomimal, direted not against him, but against his
stuff; so it would not seek either his
strength or his
weakness, but his most accessible material. In
railway-cutting it would be usually an empty stretch of rail; and the more
empty, the greater the tactical success. We might turn our
average into a
rule (not a law, since war was
antinomian) and develop a habit of never engaging the
enemy.
T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom