Distant authority is issuing confident orders about ground it has never seen.

The book's political theory, and its most subversive claim: the sovereign's interference is a defeat mechanism, cataloged like terrain. Ordering an advance the ground cannot support, governing an army like a civilian bureaucracy, promoting officers without regard for circumstance: each "shakes the confidence of the soldiers," and together they are "simply bringing anarchy into the army, and flinging victory away." The remedy is stated without flinching. The general who knows the ground must disobey. And the portrait of the one worth trusting: "The general who advances without coveting fame and retreats without fearing disgrace, whose only thought is to protect his country and do good service for his sovereign, is the jewel of the kingdom." Loyalty to the mission outranks obedience to the order.