Most wars are wars of contact, both forces striving to keep in touch…. The Arab war should be a war of detachment: to contain the enemy by the silent threat of a vast unknown desert, not disclosing themselves till the moment of attack…. From this theory came to be developed ultimately an unconscious habit of never engaging the enemy at all. This chimed with the numerical plea of never giving the enemy’s soldier a target. —T. E. Lawrence, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926)
