Before the Black Gate

[Bêthberry]

Ah! A very good question, Mithadan.

. It seems to me that allowing his front yard to be so unkempt is a gross error in strategy that runs contrary to all military reasoning.

But are the generals always right? And are they always employing the kinds of strategy which the conditions of war require?

I have a very limited understanding of WWI tactics, but I do seem to recall that in hindsight it became very obvious (if not at the time to the men in the trenches) that the generals' understanding of tactics had not kept up with the technology of modern warfare. They used strategies and tactics more suited to pre-machine gun warfare. The very idea of trench warfare, which demanded that men rise up out of trenches and charge straight into guns with large rounds of ammunition in fact derived from the old idea of pitched battle, where one simply form lines (or regimental squares, etc) and marched straight into the enemies' lines, with bayonets/ axes/ swords, etc swinging. This was one thing when the enemy had a weapon with limited capacity to kill at a distance. It was quite another with the array of modern weapons which enabled one soldier to mow down many attackers with one weapon.

In short, the generals who learned their warfare on the playing fields of Eton lacked imagination. Perhaps this is Tolkien's way to suggest that so also does Sauron. Ironic, of course.

On the other hand, it could also suggest Sauron's lack of appreciation for the effects of technology on the landscape. He just does not realise that his technology creates (or allows) the very conditions of his downfall. A little below your excerpt in my edition is this passage:

They had come to the desolation that lay before Mordor: the lasting monument to the dark labour of its slaves that should endure when all their purposes were made void; a land defiled, diseased beyond all healing--unless the Great Sea should enter in and wash it with oblivion. (bolding mine)