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marching speed of an army, reckoned at three miles per hour, was exceeded by that of a scout’s horse perhaps six times; but a scout had to make an outward as well as return journey, so the margin was halved. In the interval between scouts making contact with the enemy and returning, moreover, the enemy might advance, reducing the margin still further. Little wonder that surprise was so difficult to achieve in ancient campaigns. When it was, as spectacularly by the Seljuk Turks at Manzikert in 1071, the reason was often treachery or a total failure to reconnoitre, or both. At Manzikert the Byzantine army’s cavalry screen deserted, leaving the commander blind.
    Manzikert was an “encounter” battle, with both armies advancing simultaneously. More typical was the situation in which an advancing army ran into the outposts of an army standing on the defence. They automatically raised the alarm and, not having to go out and back, as in encounter operations, but back only, could give early warning. Wellington, for example, during the Waterloo campaign was, though strategically surprised, not so tactically. The French ran into his outposts, allowed him to fight a delaying battle at Quatre Bras on 16 June and to retire to a previously reconnoitred main position at Waterloo two days later.
    Surprise was equally as difficult to achieve at sea as it was on land until recent times. Indeed, the traditional problem in naval warfare was for opposing fleets to find each other at all. Hence the tendency for naval battles to occur in narrow waters, or “the shipping lanes,” often in areas where battles had occurred before. In theory, with the invention of the telegraphic flag code at the beginning of the nineteenth century, an admiral, by disposing his ships at the maximum limit of intervisibility—intervals of twelve miles—could, if his chain was long enough, create an early-warning screen which would cover several hundred miles of ocean. In practice admirals never had enough ships; and anyhow, they preferred to keep those they had concentrated, for the danger of being brought to battle dispersed outweighed that of being surprised. An admiral surprised with his ships within range of recall could form a line of battle; an admiral with his ships scattered on reconnaissance beyond quick recall had no such hope. Not until the invention of wireless telegraphy at the beginning of the twentieth century, and its adoption by war fleets, could admirals truly begin to command the far seas. Even then, old habits died hard. Sailors like to see.
    Sight is, of course, the principal and most immediate medium of real-time intelligence. It was so in the pre-telegraphic age, and it has become so again in the age of electronic visual display. In the intervening period, which embraces the invention of the electric telegraph in the middle of the nineteenth century and its supersession by radio at the beginning of the twentieth, hearing acquired a superior status. It still enjoys something like parity. Radio in all its forms is an essential tool of military communication. Strategically, it has become less important than the written message electronically communicated, by fax or e-mail. Tactically, it predominates, by immediacy and urgency. In the heat of engagement, voice-to-voice communication between commander and the front line, and in the opposite direction, is what makes battles work, a reality not altered since Caesar took personal, front-line control of the Tenth Legion against the Nervii on the river Sambre in 57 B . C . “Calling to the centurions by name, and shouting encouragement to the rest,” Caesar transformed the tempo of the battle, shifting the psychological advantage to the Roman side and assuring the defeat of the Gauls.
    The golden age of heard communication—the dot-dash of Morse telegraphy, the human voice of radio transmission—was comparatively short. It lasted in the military arena from about 1850 until the end of the