If you take a flat map And move wooden blocks upon it strategically The thing looks well, the blocks behave as they should.

The science of war is moving live men like blocks. And getting the blocks into place at a fixed moment.

But it takes time to mold your men into blocks, And flat maps turn into country, where creeks and gullies

Hamper your wooden squares. They stick in the brush, They are tired,

-- and rest, they straggle after ripe blackberries. And you cannot lift them up in your hands and move them.

It's all so clear on the maps, so clear in the mind, But the orders are slow, the men in the blocks are slow---

The General loses his stars and the block men die, In unstrategic defiance of martial law.

..an excerpt from John Brown's Body by Stephen Vincent Benet