A campaign, project, or conflict is drifting past its planned end and everyone is calling it patience.

Chapter two is an economics lecture disguised as strategy. A hundred thousand men cost a thousand ounces of silver a day; prices rise near the army and drain the people; the peasantry is stripped by exactions; the state's revenue bleeds into broken chariots and worn-out horses. Then the strategic consequence: "when your weapons are dulled, your ardor damped, your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity." Time is not neutral; it taxes the attacker and invites third parties. Hence "let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns." Speed is not impatience. It is cost control, and the leader of armies is "the arbiter of the people's fate."