*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 56146 ***

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

  * Italics are denoted by underscores as in _italics_, and small
    caps are represented in upper case as in SMALL CAPS.

  * Obvious printer errors have been silently corrected.

  * Errata emendations have been inserted into their proper places in
    the text.

  * Some maps and illustrations have been moved so that they do not
    break up paragraphs and lie near the text they illustrate.




THE TWO MAPS OF EUROPE




  THE TWO MAPS OF
  EUROPE

  AND SOME OTHER ASPECTS
  OF THE GREAT WAR

  BY
  HILAIRE BELLOC


  LONDON
  C. ARTHUR PEARSON LIMITED
  HENRIETTA STREET, W.C.
  1915




  _Printed by_ BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO. LTD.
  _At the Ballantyne Press_
  LONDON AND EDINBURGH




CONTENTS


                                PAGE

  THE TWO MAPS OF EUROPE           9

  NUMBERS IN WAR                  31

  SUPPLY                          55

  WAR TO-DAY AND YESTERDAY        75

  WHAT TO BELIEVE IN WAR NEWS     99

  WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US     115




FOREWORD


The six chapters of this little book discuss and explain six separate
and most important phases of the present war. Every effort has been
made to deal with the headings selected as comprehensively and as
simply as possible, and it is hoped that, in this convenient form,
the handbook will be welcomed by those who wish to follow the
campaign with understanding. The various articles reprinted were
written during the winter of the present year (1914-15), and many of
the conclusions reached apply, therefore, to that period of the war
only.




ERRATA


  _Page_ 38, _line_ 17,  400 _should read_ 500.
          „          „  5000    „     „   4000.
  _Page_ 42, Description of Map, _line_ 3, 400 _should read_ 500.




THE TWO MAPS OF EUROPE


_Wherein the map of Europe, as it will be if Germany wins, is clearly
defined and compared with the map of Europe re-arranged in accordance
with the ideals of the Allies._




THE TWO MAPS OF EUROPE


It is everywhere admitted that the result of the great war must be
either, upon the whole, to produce a new map of Europe upon the
German model, or a new map of Europe upon the model suitable to the
ideas of the Allies.

By this it is not meant that either ideal will be completely
reached, but that in the settlement one or the other will certainly
preponderate. Indeed, it is in the struggle between these two new
maps of Europe as ideals that the motive of the war consists.

Now, before attempting to determine in a graphic fashion what those
two ideals are--before, that is, trying to draw two maps which shall
represent respectively the German goal and the goal of the Allies, we
must lay down certain postulates which are not always recognized but
which are certainly true.

Unless we recognize their truth we shall come to accept wild
statements, and to be frightened of those ridiculous prophecies which
propose the extermination of Germany on the one hand, or the rule of
the German government over England or France on the other.

I. The first of these postulates is that a modern European nation no
longer desires to _annex_ white men in Europe, and the territory they
inhabit.

The example of Alsace-Lorraine alone has proved a sufficient
lesson; the continued vitality of Poland after a hundred years has
proved another, and even the difficulties of the Austro-Hungarian
governments, with their subject races, a third. This does not
mean that a modern European government would not annex in any
circumstance. The possession of some all-important military or
commercial point might occasionally make the perilous experiment
worth while. But it means that the idea of annexation as an obvious
corollary to military success has disappeared.

II. The second postulate is as follows: It is universally
recognized--by the Germans quite as much as by ourselves--that the
political boundaries so long established in Europe hardly ever
correspond to exact national groupings, and very often violently
conflict with the realities of national life.

No one is so foolish, for instance, as to pretend that the Finnish
provinces of Russia are not quite separate from the rest of the
Czar’s dominions in tradition, and consciousness, and habit, and
all the rest that makes a nation. No one in England now denies the
existence of an Irish nationality.

No one, to take an Eastern case, would pretend that the Serbian
feeling of nationality was not very real, and was very far from being
contained by the present boundaries of Serbia.

The excuse for the old point of view--the point of view that
political boundaries were sufficient and that the true nationalities
which they cut through or suppressed might be neglected--was that
in time, with the modern rapidity of communication and the power of
the modern State, these divergent elements would be _absorbed_, or
_digested into_, the greater nationality which governed them. But
experience has falsified this very reasonable conception. It has
been found not only that this transformation did not take place, but
even that the old real nationalities were actually getting stronger.
Poland, for instance, artificially cut through by the German,
Austrian, and Russian frontiers, did seem for a time as though it
were going to spring into a Russian, a German, and an Austrian
type of Polish men; and in the latter case, that of Austria, some
considerable advance was made towards such a result. But generations
passed, and the process did not continue; on the contrary, the tide
began to set backwards, and the conception of a united Poland is far
stronger to-day even in the small and successful Austrian portion of
Poland than it was thirty years ago.

In the face of these two postulates, the true national groupings
have discovered their power and have already begun to appear in real
form, as it were, through the artificial political boundaries which
divided or suppressed them. Any one, the Germans as much as the rest,
proposing to reconstruct Europe must most certainly take account of
such realities, and must deal with the many national groups of Europe
as the stones out of which the new building is to be erected.

But the particular way in which those stones may be used, the
combinations into which they may be grouped, the main influences
which are to impose themselves upon particular great agglomerations
of new nationalities are the whole issue of the debate, and form the
whole subject of this war.

The German Empire and its Ally, the Austro-Hungarian monarchy--that
is, the reigning house of Hapsburg-Lorraine--wants the re-arrangement
to take a certain form which would leave the German speech and
culture and tradition the predominating thing in Europe, and probably
in the whole world.

The Allies, upon the other hand, are fighting for a less simple idea.
They are fighting for the double conception of:

  (_a_) Retaining the existing independence of certain
  national groups.

  (_b_) Erecting other independent or partly independent
  groups, the existence of which and the general influence
  of which shall restrict German and in particular Prussian
  power.

This dual conception the Allies rightly term the preservation and the
extension of national liberties in Europe.

Now before we can comprehend either what the Germans are striving
for or what the Allies are striving for, we must make a catalogue
of those national groups which are at the foundation of the whole
business. In making that catalogue we must remember what it is that
creates a national group.

[Illustration: MAP I. THE MAIN TRUE NATIONAL FRONTIERS OF CONTINENTAL
EUROPE

(excluding the South, which is exterior to this war)

  The Slavs Roman in Religion.      True National Frontiers.

1, 2, 3, 4.--Luxembourg, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland.

National groupings have discovered their power and have already begun
to appear in real form through the artificial political boundaries
which divided or suppressed them. Anyone proposing to reconstruct
Europe must most certainly take account of such realities, and must
deal with the many national groups of Europe as the stones out of
which the new building is to be erected.]

What makes a nation is _corporate tradition_. The strongest element
in this is an historic memory. A nation which can point to having
enjoyed a national existence in the past is much more firmly seated
in its ambition to retain or to recover its independence than one
which has never had such historic existence.

Another element in this constitution of a nationality is language.
A common language is a much weaker element of nationality than
tradition, as we see in the case of Belgium, which is almost equally
divided between Latin-speaking and Teutonic-speaking people; and
in the case of Switzerland. But it is none the less a strong thing;
nowhere is it stronger than in the case of Poland. While, upon the
other hand, you have exactly the opposite in the case of Irish
national feeling; in the case of German-speaking Lorraine and Alsace;
and you might very well have had a similar case in Bohemia where
there is now a strong national feeling backed by a national Slav
language, though that language was artificially revived comparatively
recently.

Yet another factor is religion, and it is a most powerful one. It
creates, for instance, a gulf between the Catholic and the Orthodox
Slav, and it creates an awkward complexity in the problem of those
Slavs whose religious ritual is Greek, but who are yet in communion
with Rome.

It is impossible to attribute numerical value to each of these
various factors, or to say that language everywhere counts for so
much, religion for so much, etc. We have to take each particular
case and judge it as it stands. And if we do that with an impartial
judgment upon the real national feeling, we get some such list as the
following, for the Continent alone.

(1) The French, who within their own boundaries are perfectly united;
although certain districts (a little group in the Pyrenees and
another little group in Western Brittany and another in the extreme
north-east) speak a language of their own. To this French group
should be added the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine which were
annexed by the Germans in 1871. Alsace and Lorraine have enjoyed
great material prosperity under German rule; the metal industry of
the North has been immensely developed, and in a dozen other ways
the German administration has increased their wealth, and has added
to their population serious elements of German sympathy. But take the
provinces as a whole and there is no doubt that their re-union with
France is still the passionate desire of the great majority among
them.

(2) Belgium is again undoubtedly the example of a separate--though
less united--national group in whose individual feeling religion
plays a great part, but still more historic existence through nearly
a century as an independent State (during which century Belgium has
vastly increased its population and its wealth), and for much more
than a century the separate existence of the district as the Southern
Netherlands as distinct from Holland.

(3) Holland, in its turn, both on account of its long independent
existence, its strong national feeling and its peculiar experience
as a commercial seafaring power, makes a third individual group. The
populations immediately to the east of Holland in German territory
speak a language of the same sort as the Dutch, and have the same
social conditions and habits, but they have no desire to be Dutch,
nor the Dutch to be incorporated with them.

(4) The Scandinavian countries, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, form
an equally distinct unit, and are quite clearly divided into three
separate national groups. And here we have two anomalies: A quite
small belt of Denmark, much smaller than the total original extent
of Schleswig-Holstein, annexed by Prussia fifty years ago, is really
Danish, and maintains to this day its protest against the annexation.
One may go so far as to say that this really Danish belt is no more
than a tenth of the whole, but its protest is a proof of the vigour
which national feeling has maintained against artificial political
boundaries. On the other hand, the Finnish provinces of Russia are,
in their articulate spirit, their governing class, their religion,
and almost in their entire social life Swedish in tone. Norway is
intact, neither suffering a portion of her population under alien
rule nor pretending to govern populations alien to herself.

(5) The fifth great group is the German, and here there is so much
complexity that what we have to say must only be taken very generally
and roughly. But, roughly and generally, the German group is as
follows:

All German-speaking men and women with the exception of:

  (_a_) The bulk of the annexed provinces of Alsace-Lorraine
  (a matter of sentiment), and

  (_b_) The German-speaking cantons of Switzerland (a matter
  of political boundaries).

Now the boundaries of this “German feeling” group in Europe are
curiously involved and tortuous. Beginning at the Baltic, roughly at
the mouth of the River Niemen (which the Germans call the Memel),
the true frontier of the German type runs southward for a short
distance until it reaches what is called the Region of the Lakes,
where the Russian frontier begins to turn west. There the boundary
turns west also, and begins to run north again, nearly reaching the
Baltic Sea in the neighbourhood of Dantzig. It then turns south by
west, goes far west of Thorn and even of Posen, which are Polish
towns, and comes round not far east of Frankfort-on-Oder. Then it
goes south and east again, coming right through the middle of German
Silesia, but, on reaching the mountains that here bound Bohemia, it
curls round northwestward again, leaving the mountainous part of
the barrier of Bohemia all German, but excluding the Slavonic true
Bohemian people in the centre of that isolated region. The Upper
Valley of the Elbe is not German. Having thus gone all the way round
Bohemia proper, the boundaries of the German type run eastward
again, very nearly following the watershed of the Danube until they
strike the March River about thirty miles from Vienna. Vienna is
thus not a centre, but, like Berlin, an outpost of German speech and
civilization. From Vienna the true frontier of the German folk runs
south, more or less corresponding to the existing boundary between
Austria and Hungary, until it passes the point of Gratz--which counts
as German. Thence the boundary turns due west again, taking in the
greater part of the Tyrol, and so to the Swiss frontier and on to the
Rhine opposite Belfort. Thence it follows the Rhine to a point south
of Spiers, and after that follows the existing boundaries (excepting
Luxembourg), and is confined by the Dutch and Belgian frontier and
the North and Baltic Seas with the exception of the Danish belt north
of the Kiel Canal, which is mainly Danish.

Within that curiously twisted line nearly all speech and all
feeling is German. There are many States within that line, there
is much confusion of historic tradition, a sharp division in
religion--roughly Catholic in the south and west, Protestant in the
north and east. But the national group is, especially as against
the Slav and even as against western and southern Europe, one body;
and within that body Prussia, with its capital of Berlin, is the
organizing and directing centre.

Are there anomalies to be discovered with regard to this curiously
shaped body? There are; but they are of less importance than is
often imagined. Thus there are beyond Eastern Prussia and within the
Russian boundary the so-called “German” Baltic provinces of Russia.
But the term is a misnomer. The leaders of industry are largely
German, most of the towns, and the greater landed aristocracy for the
most part. But the mass of the population is not German-speaking, and
even of the German-speaking minority only a minority again are in any
sympathy with the united German feeling to the west.

There are colonies of German speech far eastward of Vienna under
the political dominion of Hungary; a particularly large one being
discoverable right up in the south-eastern Carpathians next to the
Roumanian border. But these colonies could never be included in any
united Germany. Nor could the considerable number of similar isolated
colonies of Germans in southern and western Russia. Finally, you
have on the extreme west the little province of Luxembourg, which is
German-speaking, which has its railways and most of its industries
controlled by Germans, but which would in any perfectly free system
certainly refuse incorporation with any new German unity, for it has
an historic tradition of independence which has proved very valuable
to it, and may be compared with that of the Swiss German-speaking
cantons.

(6) We next have to consider the Slavs, and these fall into two
groups, northern and southern, which two groups are thus separated
by the great Mongolian invasion of Eastern Europe in the Dark Ages.
There is further among the Slavs a cross-section of great importance,
that of religion. It separates the Slavs not into northern and
southern, but, roughly, into eastern or Greek church, and western or
Catholic. With the northern Slavs we count the Bohemians or Czechs,
the Poles, and the Russians--using the latter term, of course, for
many distinct but connected groups, for it is certain that Russia
proper must remain a unity.

There are also just north of the Carpathians two minor northern
Slavonic groups, the Slovacs and the Ruthenians. These northern Slavs
are divided into Catholic Slavs and Slavs of the Greek Church, or
Orthodox, by a vague belt of territory running, roughly, from the
town of Vilna down to the borders of the Bukovina; the Poles and
Czechs, etc., being in communion with Rome, while the Russians are of
the Greek Church.

The southern Slavs are again divided into Catholic and Orthodox by a
very sharp and bitter division. The Slovenes and the Croats stand for
the Catholic group, the Serbian nation, as a whole, for the Orthodox
group; a part of the Serbians and all the Slovenes and Croats are in
the Austro-Hungarian dominions, and it is the Serbian element which
is in rebellion. The rest of the Serbians are now independent. And so
complicated are population and religion in this region that nearly a
third of Bosnia and Herzegovina, while Slav in race, are Mohammedan
in religion.

(7) Between these two great Slav groups, northern and southern,
struck in, during the Dark Ages, a wedge of invading Mongols whose
position has been of the greatest importance to the history of
Eastern Europe. They were converted to Christianity nearly a thousand
years ago, and the Mongol type has entirely disappeared, but the
Mongol language remains under the title of _Magyar_, and it is the
_Magyar_-speaking _Hungarians_ that are the ruling race over all the
eastern part of Austria-Hungary, though they are only half of the
total population in their dominion. In any new national grouping this
fiercely independent Magyar population must be taken for granted,
though its claim to rule alien subjects is another matter.

(8) Finally, there is a curious group of the greatest importance,
both because so much of its population is forbidden independence and
because the remainder has attained independence. That group is the
Roumanian group.

Racially, the Roumanians are probably Slavs for the most part, but
their tongue is a Latin tongue; they are proud of Latin descent,
and they are just as much a wedge between the Slavs of the north
and south as the Magyars themselves. They everywhere overlap their
nominal political boundaries; three million and a half of them extend
far into Hungary, and a portion over the boundaries of Russia. For
the most part they are Orthodox, or Greek, in religion. But it must
always be remembered, because it is essential to understanding the
new Europe, that the Roumanian-speaking people under Hungarian rule
are, quite half of them and perhaps the majority, cut off from the
Orthodox Church and in union with Rome.

With this summary, which has been expressed in Map I, you have a
fair, though of course rough, division of Europe into its real
national components.

Now let us ask what Germany and Austria would propose, in case of
their victory, to make out of such materials.

[Illustration: MAP II. THE GERMANIC GROUP IN EUROPE

  1. Luxembourg
  2. Belgium
  3. Germany
  4. Switzerland
  5. Italy
  6. Mixed Italian and German
  7. Russia
  8. Bohemia
  9. Bosnia
  10. Austrian
  11. Holland
  12. Bukovina
  13. Hungary
  14. Serbia
  15. Roumania
  16. Bulgaria
  17. Montenegro
  18. Albania
  19. Greece
  20. Turkey

The boundaries of the “German feeling” group in Europe are very
roughly suggested by the thick black line. Within that curiously
twisted line nearly all speech and all feeling is German.]

In the first place Germany would keep all that she has, indifferent
to national anomalies or the unquiet of subject and oppressed
peoples. She would keep Alsace-Lorraine; she would keep in subjection
the Poles who are already in subjection to her; she would leave the
Austro-Hungarian Monarchy under the Hapsburgs with all its present
possessions, whether those possessions grossly interfered with
national realities or no. Would she annex territory, in spite of the
first of the two postulates which I have already mentioned?

The German constitutional system is of its nature federal. There is
room in it for many kinds of states, each possessed of a very great
measure of independence, and if the inclusion within one commercial
system and one military system also, however loose that inclusion, be
called annexation, then we may say that Germany would annex in some
degree. She would wish to control directly the Mouth of the Scheldt
and probably the Teutonic-speaking part of Belgium, that is, the
north of that country. She would certainly desire to administrate the
Ardennes, which would be her frontier against France, and she would
quite certainly take over Luxembourg.

As to Holland, her plan would probably be different there from that
pursued in any other case. She would leave it as independent in its
own eyes as it was before; she might insist upon an alliance with
the Dutch army, she would certainly insist upon commercial terms,
and probably rights of using certain ports in certain cases for war.
But nothing but inexcusable folly would tempt her to go further. The
position of Holland after a German settlement might not uncertainly
be compared to the position of Hamburg in the old days, on a larger
scale, a free State just as Hamburg was a free city.

This easy and, as it were, mutually arranged compromise with Holland,
coupled with dominion over the Scheldt and Antwerp, would give the
German peoples what they most desire, the whole littoral of the North
Sea. Further, possessing Antwerp, as they would certainly possess
it, they would have a commercial lever for keeping Holland in order.
They could direct all their trade at will towards Antwerp to the
starvation of Rotterdam.

The Scandinavian countries they would regard as naturally German
in feeling, and as falling in a vague and general way into their
orbit. Possessing the Kiel Canal, they would not strictly need the
Sound. But they would so dominate Denmark that they could make what
commercial or military terms they chose with regard to the passages
of the Baltic; and you would have German firms, German methods,
and to some extent the German language holding “civil garrisons”
throughout the useful part of Sweden and Norway.

On the East some have imagined they would erect as against Russia
a mutilated and dependent Polish State. It is more probable that
they would confine themselves to procuring some liberty for Russian
Poland, and obtaining some convention as to fortification and
commerce. Russia will always be formidable, and to maintain the
mutual bond of a subject Poland between Russia and herself would
serve in the future, as it has served in the past, the ends of
Prussia. It is essential to Prussia that no really independent Poland
should re-arise, even mutilated. It is even essential that there
should be no one area that the Poles could regard as the nucleus of a
really free Polish State.

In the Balkans the Germanic Powers would certainly demand the control
over what is now Serbia, and, at the risk of further war, the outlet
at Salonika. The remnant of the Turkish Empire in Europe they already
regard as being under their protectorate.

As to the West, they would, rightly, treat it merely as a defeated
foe. France (they would say) might continue to decline--for the
Germans, getting things out of Berlin, always talk of “the decay of
the Latin peoples”--her decline accelerated by stringent commercial
treaties and a heavy indemnity; England would be envisaged in the
same terms. Germany would demand from England certain coaling
stations; she would impose on England also certain commercial
conditions. But there would be no need to restrict the building of a
Fleet, for there a victorious Germany would feel easily able to look
after herself.

[Illustration: MAP III. EUROPE REMODELLED BY GERMANY AND AUSTRIA

Boundary of Germanic Allies to-day, with their dependent States.

Small districts which might be actually annexed: the Lower Scheldt,
Middle Meuse, Ardennes, Luxembourg, a corner of French Lorraine, a
few frontier districts of Russian Poland.

Countries which would be dependent upon the Germanic hegemony, being
of kindred blood and speech, and which would in special points admit
actual economic or political control by Germans.

Buffer Polish States, which Prussia might erect dependent on herself
and as a barrier against Russia.

Holland, a special case. Kindred in speech. Not actually annexed,
perhaps, but allowed only a quasi-independent position with German
control, veiled, in the two principal ports, and facilities for
German Navy. Also included in any economic policy.

Districts in no way kindred to Germanic peoples, but to be annexed,
or at any rate directly controlled in order to command the Balkans,
to dominate Constantinople, and to get a passage to the Ægean Sea.

District which German Empire might annex, both on account of its
German elements in population, and on account of controlling the
Baltic.]

One may sum up and say that Germany and Austria expect from victory a
Europe in which all that is German-speaking and already within their
moral influence shall support their power over the world, that power
not coming in the shape of annexations, save at one or two selected
points.

Once on the North Sea, and once having broken British maritime
supremacy, Central Europe would leave the future to do its work,
content in the East with dominating the Balkans and reaching the
Ægean Sea, and with permanently holding back the further advance of
Russia.

[Illustration: MAP IV. EUROPE REMODELLED BY THE ALLIES

1. To retain their present boundaries: Switzerland, Belgium,
Luxembourg, Holland, Norway, Sweden.

2. The Germanic Peoples: with the Catholic South leaning upon Vienna
and a large autonomy to individual States.

3. France: with Alsace-Lorraine.

4. Poland: Quasi-independent, but a holding of Russia.

5. Czechs: Quasi-independent, but probably still a holding of Vienna.

6. Ruthenians (a minor Slavonic group): either annexed to Russia, or
closely dependent on her.

7. An independent Magyar State.

8. An independent Catholic Southern Slav or Croat State, probably a
holding of Vienna.

9. An orthodox Southern Slav State, Serbia, with access to Adriatic,
but not holding Bulgarian territory.

10. Roumania, enlarged by her Transylvanian population.

11. Bulgaria.]

If this is the German programme, what is that of the Allies?

Primarily, it is the maintenance of not only liberties, but powers
already acquired. In the economic sphere it is, of course, the
maintenance of those international contracts upon which the wealth of
England and of France depends. It is the maintenance of English power
at sea, the re-establishment of a united France by land, the recovery
of Belgium, and the guaranteeing of Holland in her neutrality,
whether she wills it or no.

But over and beyond this there is the problem of reconstruction, and
here you have two clear principles:

(1) It is to the advantage of the Allies to recognize everywhere, as
much as possible, the realities of nationality.

(2) It is a matter of life and death to the Allies to prevent the
re-establishment of Prussian power, with its ideal of domination over
others.

To some extent these two policies agree, but not entirely. To erect
a larger Serbia, to free the Croats and the Slovenes, or perhaps
to take from their territory the ports necessary to Serbia on the
Adriatic, giving Serbia also the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina;
meanwhile, to let Bulgaria occupy the purely Bulgarian districts
which Serbia now has, to re-erect a united Poland, to give Roumania
her nationals beyond the Carpathians at the expense of Hungary;
to make Hungary as far as possible independent of Vienna in
administration, and in particular in military affairs--all that is
part of universal policy which everyone expects.

But what of Germany from within?

It is evident that the control of the Baltic, which the Kiel Canal
involves, means that the Kiel Canal should be neutralized. It is
equally evident that, while the Bohemians may not be wholly separated
from the Germanic body which nearly encloses them, the largest
measure of autonomy for these isolated Slavs fits the case of the
Allies. But as for the policy to be pursued for Germany herself in
case of a victory on the part of the Allies, that is a much more
complex matter.

Roughly, it would seem to depend upon two main principles: First,
that the more ancient and the more civilized pole of Germany, the
southern pole which is at Vienna, should be in every way favoured
at the expense of the northern pole, Berlin, to which we have owed
this catastrophe. Secondly, that an economic policy should be
imposed which shall leave industrial Germany free to produce and yet
compelled to pay.

A policy of that kind means, of course, a carefully framed tariff, so
designed that the tribute necessary to paying the cost of this great
adventure shall fall upon its authors.

Germany showed the way in 1871 upon what now looks like a modest
scale, but was then designed to be ruthless. It is our business to
copy that example.




NUMBERS IN WAR

_In which it is explained why, other things being equal, numbers
are always the deciding element in warfare, and how the enemy had a
superiority throughout the autumn and winter (written late in the
winter of 1914-1915)._




NUMBERS IN WAR


The general reader hears continually in these times that _numbers_
are the decisive element in war. That every authority, every student
and every soldier is convinced of it, he cannot fail to see from
the nature of the orders given and of the appeals made. Numbers in
material, and in men, are the one thing urged. The public critique of
the war is filled with estimates of enemy and allied numbers, numbers
of reserve, numbers of killed, numbers of prisoners. The whole of the
recruiting movement in this country is based on this same conception
of numbers.

Now the general reader may appreciate the general character of this
conception, but he must often be puzzled by the detailed application
of it.

If I am told that ten men are going to fight eight, the mere sound of
the figures suggests superiority on the part of the ten, but unless I
know how they are going to fight, I should be puzzled to say exactly
how the extra two would tell. I certainly could not say whether the
two would be enough to make a serious difference or not, and I might
come to a very wrong conclusion about the chances of the eight or
the ten. So it is worth while if one is attempting to form a sound
opinion upon the present campaign to see exactly how and why numbers
are the deciding factor in war.

In the first place it is evident that numbers only begin to tell
when other things are fairly equal. Quite a few men armed with
rifles will be a match for multitudes deprived of firearms, and the
history of war is full of smaller forces defeating larger forces
from Marathon to Ligny. But when war follows upon a long period of
peace and takes place between nations of one civilization all closely
communicating one with another, and when war has been the principal
study of those nations during the period of peace, then all elements
except those of numbers do become fairly equal. And that is exactly
the condition of the present campaigns.

The enemy have certain advantages in material, or had at the
beginning of the struggle, notably in the matter of heavy artillery,
but much more in the accurate forecast they had made of the way
in which modern fighting would turn. All sorts of their tactical
theories turned out to be just.

The Allied forces had advantages--the English in personal equipment,
medical and commissariat service; the French, Russians, and Serbians,
in the type of field gun. The French in particular in their theory of
strategy, which has proved sound.

But there was no conspicuous difference such as would make a smaller
number able to defeat a much larger one, and the historical observer
at a distance of time that will make him impartial, will certainly
regard the war as one fought between forces of nearly the same
weaponing and training. The one great differentiating point will be
numbers.

Now how is it that these numbers tell?

There are two aspects of the thing which I will call (1) The Effect
of _Absolute_ Numbers and (2) The Effect of _Proportionate_ Numbers.

(1) _Absolute Numbers_. I mean by the effect of absolute numbers the
fact that a certain minimum is required for any particular operation.
For instance, if you were holding a wall a mile long which an enemy
upon the other side desired to surmount, it is evident that you could
not hold such a wall with one man even though the enemy on the other
side consisted only in one man. The opportunities for the success
of the enemy would be too great. You could not hold it with ten men
against ten. You could hardly hold it with 100 men against 100. But
supposing that you have 3000 men to hold it with, and they are using
no weapons save their hands, then 3000 men could hold the wall not
only against 3000 others, but against any number of thousands of
others; for every man would have as his task the pushing of a ladder
off no more than a very small section of the wall with which his own
hands could deal.

There we see what is meant by the necessity of absolute numbers or a
minimum.

Now that is exactly what you have in the case of a great line of
trenches. Your defending force does not get weaker and weaker as
it diminishes in number until it reaches zero; it is able to hold
trenches of a certain length with a certain minimum of men, and when
it falls below that minimum _it cannot hold the line at all_. It has
to fall back upon a shorter line. Supposing you have, for instance,
under such conditions as those of Diagram I, a line of trenches A-B
holding the issue between two obstacles X and Y against an enemy
who attacks from the direction E. The number of men holding these
trenches, A-B, is nine units, and this number is just enough, and
only just enough, to prevent an enemy attacking from E getting
through. Nine units just prevent any part of the line of trenches,
A-B, from being left defenceless.

What does one mean by saying: “Just enough to prevent an enemy
getting through?”

[Illustration: DIAGRAM I. Suppose you have a line of trenches A-B
holding the issue between two obstacles X and Y against an enemy
who attacks from the direction E. The number of men holding those
trenches is nine units, and this number is only just enough to
prevent the attacking force getting through.]

One means that if you consider trenches in detail, a certain length
of trench needs a certain number of men to hold it, and if that
number of men is not present, it must be altogether abandoned. It
is evident that a mile of trench, for instance, could not be held
by half-a-dozen men, even if the forces opposed to them were only a
half-dozen.

[Illustration: DIAGRAM II. Every man in a trench may be regarded as
accounting for a certain angle of space in front of him, as A-B-C. If
the extreme point at which you can stop a rush is the line L-L then
you must have at least enough men--a-a-a--to cover that line with
their fire.]

You must, first, have enough men to cover the field of fire in front
of the trench with the missiles from the weapons of each, and so stop
the assault of the enemy. Every man with his rifle may be regarded
as accounting for a certain angle of space in front of him as in
the angles A B C and the other similar angles in Diagram II. These
angles must meet and cover the whole ground, in theory at least, not
further from the trench than the most advanced point to which it has
been discovered that an enemy’s rush will reach before combined fire
stops it. In practice, of course, you need very many more men, but
the theory of the thing is that if the extreme point at which you can
expect to stop a rush is the line L-L, and if the angle over which
a rifle is usefully used is the angle B-A-C, then you cannot hold
the trench at all unless you have at least enough men a-a-a just to
cover that line L-L with their fire. If you try to do it with less
men, as in Diagram III, you would only cover a portion of the front;
you would leave a gap in it between X and Y through which the trench
would be carried.

[Illustration: DIAGRAM III. If you try to hold your trench with less
men, as in this diagram, you would only cover a portion of the front;
you would leave a gap in it, between X and Y, through which the
trench would be carried.]

It is evident, I repeat, that in practice there are needed to hold
trenches a great many more men than this. You must allow for your
wastage, for the difference in ability and coolness of different men,
for the relieving of the men at regular and fairly short intervals,
and in general, it will be found that a line of trenches is not
successfully held with less than 3000 men to a mile.

The Germans are now holding in the West a line of trenches 500 miles
long with something like 4000 men to a mile; so the best work in
the war would seem to have been done by a portion of the British
contingent in front of Ypres when, apparently, a body only 1500 men
to the mile, and those I understand, dismounted cavalry, successfully
held some three miles of trenches for several days.

It is apparent, then, that when you are considering a line of
trenches you must consider them as a series of sections, to defend
each of which sections a certain minimum is required. Thus we may
consider the line A-B in Diagram IV as consisting of nine sections,
as numbered, and each section as requiring a certain minimum unit of
men, say a thousand. If any section has less than its proper minimum
the whole line fails, for that section will be carried and the cord
will be broken.

[Illustration: DIAGRAM IV. The line of trenches A-B may consist of
nine sections, to defend each of which 1000 men are required. If any
section has less than its proper minimum the whole line fails.]

[Illustration: DIAGRAMS V and VI. Suppose by killed, wounded and
prisoners the nine sections dwindle to six, the line A-B can no
longer be held. The six remaining sections would have to group
themselves as above, and in either case there would be a bad gap.
What then can the general in command of this dwindled force do?--

  (_See Diagram VII overleaf._)]

Now look back at the first diagram; there you have the line A-B, and
there are nine units just able to hold it.

Suppose by killed and prisoners and wounded and disease the nine
dwindle to six, then the line A-B can no longer be held. It means
in practice that the six remaining would have to be grouped as in
Diagram V or as in Diagram VI, and in any case there would be a bad
gap, double or single, through which the enemy pressing from E would
pierce. What can the general in command of the defence do when his
force has thus dwindled?

[Illustration: --DIAGRAM VII. The defender has no choice but to fall
back on shorter lines, such as F-G, which his remaining six units can
just hold. If the six dwindle to four he must again fall back to a
yet shorter line, C-D.]

He has no choice but to _fall back upon shorter lines_. That is,
having only six units left he must retire to some such point as the
line F-G, Diagram VII, where his remaining six units will be just
sufficient to hold the line, and if the six dwindle to four he must
again fall back to a yet shorter line, such as C-D.

Note carefully that this does not concern proportionate numbers. We
are not here considering the relative strength of the defence and of
the offence; we are dealing with absolute numbers, with a minimum
below which the defensive _cannot_ hold a certain line at all, but
_must_ seek a shorter one.

[Illustration: DIAGRAM VIII. The Germans are now holding, roughly,
the line A-B, from the North Sea to the Swiss Mountains--500 miles
long in all its twists and turns. If dwindling numbers force them
to take up a shorter line they could either abandon Alsace-Lorraine
and substitute C-G for C-B, or abandon most of Belgium and Northern
France and substitute E-C for A-C. With still failing numbers they
would have to take up the still shorter line F-B. It would be no
shortening of the German line to fall back upon the Rhine, D-D-D.]

Now that is precisely the state of affairs upon the French and
Belgian frontiers at this moment. The Germans are holding a line,
which is roughly that shown in Diagram VIII, between the Swiss
mountains and the sea near Nieuport, the line A-B about 400 miles
long in all its twists and turns. If their numbers fall below a
certain level they cannot hold that line at all, and they must take
up a shorter line. How could they do this? Either by abandoning
Alsace-Lorraine and substituting C-G for the present C-B, or by
abandoning most of Belgium and all northern France, and falling back
upon the line Antwerp-Namur-The Ardennes and the Vosges, substituting
E-C for A-C. With failing numbers they would have to take up a still
shorter line from Liege southwards, just protecting German territory,
the line F-B.

As for the line of the Rhine lying immediately behind F-B, the line
D-D-D, it is a great deal longer than the shortest line they could
take up. F-B, and though heavily fortified at five important points
and with slighter fortifications elsewhere, it would need quite as
many men to defend it as a corresponding line of trenches. Thus it
would be no shortening of the German line to fall back upon the Rhine.

So much for an illustration of what is meant by absolute numbers
and of their importance in the present phase of the campaign.

(2) Now what of _Proportionate_ numbers? That is a point upon which
even closer attention must be fixed, because upon it will depend the
issue of the campaign.

The first thing we have to see clearly is that Austria and Germany
began the war with a very great preponderance in numbers of trained
and equipped men ready to take the field within the first six weeks.
They had here a great advantage over Russia and France combined, and
to see what that advantage was look at Diagram IX.

[Illustration: DIAGRAM IX. A represents the total number of men
Germany and Austria together could put into the field by about the
middle of September. B represents the French and the first British
contingent; C what the Russians could do. This shows that Germany and
Austria began the war with a great advantage over Russia, France and
Britain combined, in their numbers of trained and equipped men ready
to take the field within the first six weeks.]

Figure A represents the total number of men Germany and Austria
together could put into the field by about the middle of September. B
represents the French and the first British contingent in the West; C
what the Russians could do in the East.

This original superiority of the enemy is a point very little
appreciated because of two things. First, that men tend to think of
the thing in nations and not in numbers, and they think of Germany,
one unit, attacked by England, France, Russia, a lot of other units,
and next because there is a grave misconception as to the numbers
Russia could put into the field _early_ in the war.

Russia had a certain force quite ready, that is fully equipped,
officered, trained, gunned, and the rest of it. But she had nothing
like the numbers in proportion to her population that the enemy had.
The proportions of population were between Russia and her enemy as
seventeen to thirteen. But Germany and, to a less extent, Austria
and Hungary, had organized the whole population ultimately for war.
Russia could not do this. Her advantage, only to be obtained after
a considerable lapse of time, was the power of perpetually raising
new contingents, which, by the time they were trained and equipped
could successively enter the field. But at the opening of the war,
say by the middle of September, when she had perhaps at the most
two-and-a-half million men in Poland, the total forces of the enemy,
that is the total number of men Austria and Germany had equipped,
trained, and ready for the field since the beginning of the war, was
at least eight million.

You have the war, then, beginning with the enemy standing at quite
8, the French nominally at 4, but really nearer 3; Russia at 2½.

Let us see how time was to modify this grave disproportion and how
new contingents coupled with the effect of wastage were to affect it.

The armies which were in the field in the early part of the war bear
very various relations to the countries from which they come.

Great Britain had upon the Sambre in the first battle of the campaign
rather more than one-tenth per cent. of her total population. The
French had in the field at the outset of the war 5 per cent. of their
total population, the Russians 1 per cent., the Germans perhaps 5 per
cent., the Austrians between 3 and 4 per cent., the Serbians quite
10 per cent.--and 10 per cent. is the largest total any nation can
possibly put into the field.

Now the chances of growth for each of these contingents were very
different in each case.

That of Great Britain was indefinitely large. Given sufficient time,
sufficient money, and sufficient incentive, Great Britain might
ultimately put into the field two million or even three. She was
certain of putting into the field in the first year of the war more
than one million; she might hope to put in two. She had further
behind her as a recruiting field, the Colonies, and--a matter of
discussion--the Indian Army.

The French had nothing to fall back on save the young men who were
growing up. Therefore, they were certain not to be able to add to
their numbers for at least six months, which is just about the time
it takes to train effectively new formations.

The Germans had in reserve about as many men again as they had put
under arms at the beginning of the war. If the French could hope for
a grand total of four millions wherein somewhat over three might be
really effective and of useful age for active service in any shape,
then Germany might hope to produce a grand total of somewhat over
seven millions and a similar useful body of over five, for the German
adult males are to the French as more than five to three.

Austria could in the same way call up a reserve somewhat larger in
proportion than the Germans, but as her population was somewhat
smaller than Germany, we must write her down for something over four
millions instead of something over five, for a grand total of between
five and six millions instead of for a grand total of seven.

Serbia, like France, could not increase her contingent save by
calling up her younger men; and her army was, like that of the
French, a fixed quantity, at any rate for the first six months of
the war, and increased by one-tenth or less when the new class was
trained.

Russia in her turn presented yet another type of growth. She had by
far larger reserves of adult males than any other Power, and was
practically equal, in the material of which one can ultimately make
trained soldiers, to Germany and Austria combined; theoretically,
counting all her various races, she was the superior of Austria and
Germany combined. But it was certain that she could not equip more
than a certain number in a given time, or train them, or officer
them, or govern them.

I think it just to say that she certainly could not put into the
European field more than five millions during the better part of
the first year of the war. Though it must be remembered that if the
war lasted indefinitely she would have at her back at any period
indefinitely large reserves to draw upon.

Let us call Russia ultimately, for the purposes of the war during all
its first months, a minimum of three and a maximum of five millions.
Let us count Great Britain in those same months at two millions,
including all who have gone out, all since recruited, and the many
more who will not be either recruited or fully trained for some
months to come--but excluding foreign garrisons and naval forces.
Such an estimate is certainly a maximum for that period.

Then putting all these figures together and considering for the
moment no wastage, the figures become as in Diagram X.

[Illustration: DIAGRAM X. How will time modify the grave
disproportion indicated in Diagram IX? Taking, roughly, the first
few months of the war, apart from wastage, our enemies remain month
after month far superior to either half of the Allies they are
fighting--the French and English in the West, the Russians in the
East.]

_Observe in this diagram and retain it for purposes of judgment
throughout the war--it is far the most important truth to
retain--that, apart from wastage, our enemies remained throughout the
winter far superior to either half of the Allies they are fighting.
Remember that we did not put as against Austro-Germany in the West
more than 6 to 9 for a long time, nor Russia in the East certainly
more than 5 to 9._

The Allies combined will at last be superior to their enemy
numerically, but only superior in a proportion of 11 to 9 (exclusive
of wastage), and that maximum will not be reached till summer.

I have italicized that paragraph because the misapprehension of so
simple a truth is at the bottom of three-quarters of the nonsense
one hears about the campaign. It was at the bottom of the conception
that victory would be easy and short; at the bottom of the conception
that it would be certain, and it is at the bottom of much foolish
impatience and criticism to-day.

It was a knowledge of this truth which made the German Government
feel secure of success when it forced on the war at its chosen day
and hour (remember with what curious superstition the Germans passed
the frontier on the same day and at the same hour as in 1870), and
an ignorance of it alone can account for the follies one still hears.

Even as I write I rise from reading the account of a sermon by some
clergyman, an Englishman--but not in England, I am glad to say--who
talked of Germany, with her back to the wall, fighting the world, and
expressing his admiration thereat. He had evidently never considered
the element of numbers.

Now what about the wastage?

Luckily for us, German necessities, as well as German doctrine, have
involved very heavy wastage. And, luckily for us, that wastage has
been particularly heavy in the matter of officers.

A discussion on numbers does not allow one to stray into the
equally important moral factors of the war, but the fact may be
just alluded to that the whole general military organism of Germany
depends more than that of any other nation upon the gulf between the
officer and those next in command. Not only can you make a French
non-commissioned officer into an officer without fear of losing an
atom of the moral strength of the French military organism, but the
thing is done continually during peace and during war on a large
scale. In Germany you can do nothing of the kind.

The attack in close formation, with all its obvious advantages of
speed and with all the very fine tradition of discipline which makes
it possible, is another element of expense, but most expensive of all
is the determination to win at once.

Why have the Germans been thus prodigal of men in their determination
to win rapidly? A long war is dreaded by Germany for four separate
and equal reasons:

  (1) That in a really considerable length of time two of her
  opponents are capable of indefinite expansion--Russia and
  Great Britain.

  (2) Because all historical experience is there to show that
  the French are a nation that rally, and that unless you
  pin them after their first defeats their tenacity will be
  increasingly dangerous.

  (3) Because the power of the British Fleet is capable of
  establishing a blockade more or less complete, and hitherto
  only less complete from political considerations.

  (4) Because the strategical problem, the fighting upon two
  fronts, involves, as a method of victory, final success
  upon one front before you can be certain of success upon
  the other.

This last point merits illustration. An army fighting inferior bodies
on two fronts is just like a very big man fighting two much smaller
men. They can harass him more than their mere fighting power or
weight accounts for, and they can do so because they are attacking
upon different sides.

The big man so situated will certainly attempt to put out of action
one of his two opponents before he puts his full force against the
other. It would be a plan necessary to the situation, and it is
exactly the same with a Power or a group of Powers fighting upon two
fronts, although they find themselves in superior numbers on either
front, as the Austro-Germans do still.

For all these four reasons, then, Germany was bound to waste men,
and she did waste men largely until about the end of last year. She
threw them away recklessly during the first advance on Paris, next
during the great attacks in Flanders, then--quite separately--in her
desperate Polish effort to reach Warsaw, which goal, at the moment of
writing, she has wholly failed to attain.

But though we know that Germany and Austro-Hungary have lost men in a
greater proportion than the Western Allies, and though we may guess
that they have lost men in a greater proportion than our Eastern
Allies--in spite of the heavy losses in prisoners at Tannenberg--it
is less easy to give an accurate estimate of the proportion.

In one case and up to one date we can arrive pretty accurately at the
proportion. The German Empire alone had, up to a particular date in
the autumn, lost in hit, sick, and caught (I will speak in a moment
of the question of “returns”) 40 per cent. of the individuals up to
that date put into the field. Both the French and the English had up
to the same date lost just under 25 per cent.

I know that that figure 40 per cent. looks absurdly exaggerated
when it is put thus without support, but it is a perfectly sound
conclusion. If you take the lists published by Prussia, note the
dates to which they refer, the proportion of killed to the _admitted_
wounded, and add the proportion for Bavaria, Wurtemburg, and Saxony,
you find that at this date in the late autumn two millions were
affected, and Germany had not armed more than five millions at the
most at that time.

Now, as in our own case, the proportion of officers hit, wounded,
and caught was large compared to that of men; but what is more
important, perhaps, the proportion of officers killed or badly
wounded was very much larger in proportion to the slightly wounded
than was the case with the men; it is fairly certain that one-half
of the trained professional officers of the German service were
permanently out of action by the end of the year.

Supposing the Russian losses to be no greater than the Western Allies
(they probably are somewhat greater, from the conditions of the
fighting), or call them 30 per cent. instead of 25 per cent., and
supposing the Austro-Hungarian losses to be comparable to the German
(which, from the only available sources of statistics, they would
seem to be), then we can strike a very rough estimate of the element
of wastage, and we can say that if the central figure be taken as 9,
3.6 have gone; while of the 4 and 3 on either side (the proportionate
strength of the Allies West and East in the first phase) 1 has gone
in each case, leaving 3 and 2.

It will be seen that, from this rough calculation, the wastage of
the enemy has been so much greater than our own that, if it were
absolute, his preponderance in numbers would have ceased, and the
figures would stand nearly equal.

But there is one last element in the calculation which must not be
forgotten. The only people permanently out of action in the war are
the killed, the disabled, and the captured. Much the greater part of
the sick return to the centre, and _just over half the wounded_--at
least, in a modern war, and where there are good ambulance
arrangements and good roads for them to work on.

Now, though these “returns” are probably smaller in the East than
in the West (for in the Eastern field climate and absence of
communication are fatal to many of the wounded, who would be saved
in the Western field), we should do well to take a conservative
estimate, and regard it as half the wounded in each case; or,
excluding prisoners, more than a third--say, 35 per cent. of all
casualties.

We must add, therefore, in that proportion to all our figures, and
the result will slightly modify our conclusion, for as the central
body--the enemy--has had more casualties, so it has a larger number
of returns in proportion to its size, and the general deduction is
that at the moment of writing (late winter) the Germanic body and the
Allies opposed to them actually in the field or in training--just
behind the field and ready to approach it within a few weeks--are
nearly equal in total numbers, but with an appreciable margin still
in favour of the enemy.




SUPPLY


_After numbers, the second main factor in the strength of an army is
its supply--its means of obtaining clothes, food, shelter, ammunition
and all those objects without which it can neither exist nor fight.
The marvellously complicated and expensive organization entailed is
here fully explained._




SUPPLY


An army has two main factors of strength--that is, two main material
factors apart from the moral factors of courage, discipline, habit,
and relationship. These two material factors are first its numbers,
and secondly its supply.

The first of these is so much the more obvious in the public eye that
it is often alone considered. It is, of course, the basis of all the
rest. Unless you have a sufficient number of men for your task you
cannot accomplish that task at all. But the second, which is less
often considered by general opinion, is a necessity no less absolute
than the necessity for adequate numbers.

The general term “supply” covers all those objects without which
an army cannot exist or fight--clothing, shelter, food, weapons,
auxiliary instruments, ammunition.

Now it is not the intention of these few lines to enter into details
or to give precise information, such as may be obtained by reference
to the text books, but rather to bring out a few main points about
supply which are not generally considered, especially in moments
such as this, when the obtaining of numbers by voluntary recruitment
is the chief matter in the public mind. And these chief points with
regard to supply may be put briefly in three groups.

First we ought to grasp the _scale_ of supply: that is, the
magnitude of the operation which is undertaken when an army is
equipped, put into the field, and maintained there.

Next we must grasp the _rate_ of supply--the pace at which the stream
of supply has got to be kept moving (varying for various forms of
supply) in order that an army shall neither break down nor dwindle in
efficiency.

Lastly we must consider the _delicacy_ or liability to
_embarrassment_ of supply; that is, the difficulties peculiar
to the maintenance of an army in the field, the ease with which
that maintenance may be fatally interrupted, and the consequent
embarrassment which an enemy may be made to feel, or which the enemy
may make us feel, in this vital operation of war.

As to the scale of supply. Remark that there are in this factor a
number of elements easily overlooked, and the first is the element
of comparative expense. It is of no great value to put before men
rows of figures showing that a large army costs so many millions of
pounds. It is the _comparative_ economic burden of armed service as
contrasted with civilian work which is really of importance, and
which is much more easily grasped than the absolute amount of the
cost.

The great mass of men in an army are, of course, drawn from the same
rank of society as the great mass of labourers and artisans during
peace, and the very first point we have to note about a state of war
is that these men are provided for their trade with instruments and
provisions upon a higher scale than anything which they require in
their civilian life.

[Illustration: DIAGRAM I. The great mass of men in the army are drawn
from the same rank of society as the great mass of labourers and
artisans during peace; but they are provided for their trade with
instruments and provisions upon a higher scale than anything which
they required in their civilian life. The difference in the cost of
upkeep--clothing, food, implements, etc.--of a navvy and a soldier
for one year is shown approximately in the above diagram.]

Their clothing is and must be better, for the wear of a campaign is
something very different from the wear of ordinary living. It is
to this factor that one owes not a little of the complaints that
always arise during a war upon the quality of the material used by
contractors.

Let me give an example drawn from my personal experience. If I am
not mistaken, the heavy dark blue great-coat worn by the gunners in
the French service costs (when all expense was reduced to a minimum
through the agency of Government factories, through the purchase of
clothing wholesale, and through the absence of a whole series of
those profits attaching to ordinary trade) no less than 100 francs,
or £4. That great-coat stood for material and workmanship which,
sold in a West End shop in London, would have meant anything from
£6 upwards. In other words, the private soldiers all through a vast
body of men were wearing a great-coat of a quality--in expense, at
least--which only very well-to-do men, only a tiny minority in the
State, could afford in time of peace.

Next observe that you feed the man (I am glad to say) far better than
the modern capitalist system of production feeds him. You must do
this, or you would not be able to maintain your army at its highest
efficiency.

Many a man who in civilian life would never get butcher’s meat more
than once or twice a week, receives a pound and a quarter of meat
a day in an army. He receives over a pound of bread. And it is
curious to note in a conscript service how small a proportion of the
men--only those, indeed, who are drawn from quite the wealthier
classes--find the provisioning of the army distasteful (none find it
inadequate), and how, for the great majority, it is an advance over
that to which they were accustomed at home.

But there is much more than this high scale of expenditure in the
things necessary to the maintenance of the man himself. You are also
equipping him with special furniture far more expensive than that
which he uses in ordinary life.

You give to the minesman a rifle which is a carefully constructed
and expensive machine, much more valuable than all the tools that
would ever be in the possession of any but a small minority of
skilled artisans. He has belt, pouches, pack covering to match. He
must expend in the use of that weapon ammunition costing something
quite out of proportion to any expenditure involved by the use of his
implements in his civilian trade.

The cavalryman you equip with a horse, which he could not think of
affording as his own property, and which is superior in quality
to the horse he may be working with for a master in most trades,
let alone the fact that the proportion of men thus equipped with
horses is much larger than the proportion of men who in civilian
life have to deal with those animals. To the driver of a gun you
are apportioning two horses necessarily sound and strong; to the
non-commissioned officers throughout the field artillery, to a great
number of officers throughout the service, you are furnishing horses
which, in a civilian occupation, they could never afford, and you
are, of course, also providing the keep of those horses.

Many branches of the service you are equipping with instruments of
very high expense indeed. A field gun does not cost less, I believe,
than £600. And to every thousand men you actually put into the field
you may reckon at least four of these instruments. Every time one of
them fires a shot it fires away fifteen shillings. Apart from the
wear and tear of the field piece itself, a modern quick-firing piece,
firing moderately, will get rid of a ten pound note in ammunition in
a minute, and each piece is allowed from the base onwards 1000 rounds.

Further, an army is equipped with heavy artillery, the pieces of
which cost anything from many hundreds to many thousands of pounds,
according to their calibre (a 9.2, with its mounting, comes to
near £12,000); and it is also equipped with a mass of auxiliary
material--vehicles, mechanical and other, telephones, field kitchens,
aircraft, and the rest--none of which expense attaches to the same
body of men in their civilian life.

The scale of the business is further emphasised by the fact that
once war is engaged the nation as a whole is suddenly called upon to
produce material not only _more expensive_ upon the average, man for
man, than the same men would have used and consumed in the same time
in civilian life, but things _different from_ those things which the
nation was organized to produce for use and consumption during peace.
That change in effect is costly. And yet another element of cost is
the novel use of existing instruments.

[Illustration: DIAGRAM II. Many branches of the service are equipped
with instruments of very high expense indeed. A field gun, for
instance, does not cost less than £600. Every time one of them fires
a shot it fires away fifteen shillings. A modern quick-firing piece,
firing moderately, will get rid of a ten pound note in ammunition in
a minute. Each piece is allowed from the base onwards 1000 rounds and
the extent of this quantity is illustrated in the diagram--40 rows of
shells, 25 in a row.]

It is more expensive to use an instrument for some purpose for which
it was never designed, than to use it for some purpose for which
it was designed. That is a universal truth from the hammering in
of a nail with a boot heel to the commandeering of a liner for the
transport of troops. And in time of war the whole nation begins at
once to use instruments right and left for military purposes, which
instruments had been originally designed for civilian purposes.

All up and down France and England, for instance, at this moment,
every workshop which can by hook or by crook turn out ammunition
is turning it out, and very often is turning it out with
instruments--lathes, cutting tools, etc.--that were originally
designed not for making ammunition at all, but for making the parts
of bicycles, of pumps, of motors, of turbines, etc.

Another instance. Both Powers have found their motor-buses extremely
handy in this war. Paris has been almost bereft of them. London has
been largely denuded of her normal supply. But a motor-bus carrying
meat or even troops is not doing what it was specially designed to
do--to wit, to run on the good roads of a great town, with a certain
maximum load. It needs adaptation, it is used far more roughly, has a
shorter life, and is being therefore more expensively consumed.

Here is one fairly graphic way of showing what this scale of supply
means. Take an Army Corps of 40,000 men. That stands in meat
alone for one year for about as many beasts. It means in clothing
alone--initial expense--apart from waste of all kinds, and apart
from weapons and auxiliary machinery, something between (counting
accoutrement) a quarter and half a million pounds. It stands, in
_daily_ rations of bread alone, for nearly 200 sacks of wheat; in
material equipment--initial, apart from ammunition--it stands in
weapons and machines for at least another quarter of a million, in
_ready_ ammunition of small arms for at least £80,000, in shell for
as much again.

To all this conception of scale you must add two more points. The
soldier is moved in a way that the civilian is not. He is given at
the expense of the State and not for his pleasure, the equivalent of
a great quantity of lengthy excursions. He is taken across the sea,
brought back on leave or in convalescence, moved from place to place
by train or by mechanical traction, and all that upon a scale quite
out of proportion to the narrow limits of his travel during civilian
occupation. Within six months hundreds of thousands of Englishmen
have been conveyed to the heart of France, moved again in that
country over a space of more than a hundred miles, and a considerable
proportion of them brought back and sent out again in the interval.
Lastly, there is the indeterminate but heavy medical expense.

The second and last point in this consideration of scale is the
enormously expensive element of uncertainty. It would be expensive
enough to have to arrange for so much movement and so much clothing
and equipment upon a wholly novel and increased scale, if we knew
exactly what that movement and that equipment was to be--if, so to
speak, you could take the problem _statically_ and work out its
details in an office as you work out the costings of a great shop
or factory. But it is in the essence of an army that it should
be mobile, moving suddenly and as quickly as possible where it
is wanted, with no power of prediction as to how those moves may
develop. You are “in” therefore, for an unknown factor of expense
over and above the novelty and very high cost of the economic energy
you suddenly bring into play with war. And that unknown factor is the
extent to which you will be wasting and moving.

If considerations such as these give us some idea of the _scale_ of
supply, a further series of considerations will help us to appreciate
the _rate_ or _pace_ at which the stream of supply must flow.

There are several ways in which this can be graphically presented
through examples. Here are a few.

Great Britain controls half of the shipping of the world. She engages
in the present war and part of her floating mercantile resources is
suddenly required for the campaign. Those ships have to be constantly
steaming, consuming coal, provisions for their crews, materials for
repairs, at a far higher rate than their civilian use demanded; and
the thing translates itself to the ordinary citizen in the shape of
vastly increased freights and consequently increased prices for the
imports received by this island.

[Illustration: DIAGRAM III. Great Britain controls half the shipping
of the world. She engages in war, and a part of her floating
mercantile resources is suddenly required for the campaign. Those
ships have to be constantly steaming, consuming coals, provisions,
etc., at a far higher rate than their civilian use demanded; and
the thing translates itself to the ordinary citizen in the shape of
increased freights, and consequently increased prices for imports.
The groups A, B and C combined represent the shipping of the world--A
being foreign shipping. B and C together represent the whole of the
British shipping, while the group C by itself represents the portion
detached for the purposes of the war.]

Here is another example. This country is as highly industrialized as
any in the world. It is particularly fitted for the production of
mechanical objects, and especially for mechanical objects in metal,
yet suppose that even this country were asked suddenly (with no more
than the plant it had before the war) to equip such a force as that
with which the French defended their country last August--not to
equip it with ammunition but with weapons and auxiliary machinery
alone; the performance of such a task would have taken all the arms
factories of Great Britain more than two years.

Take the rate of expenditure of ammunition. In considering this
element in the pace or rate of supply we must remember the moments
in which waste at the front becomes abnormal. A rapid retirement
like the retreat from Mons means the loss of material wholesale.
A favourable moment seized, as September 6 was seized, for the
counter-offensive, which is known as “The Battle of the Marne,” means
such an expenditure of ammunition as was never provided for in any of
the text-books or considered possible until this campaign was engaged.

Here is an example. The Germans had prepared war for two
years--prepared it specially for the particular moment in which
they forced it upon Europe. Their first operations in France up to
September 6 followed almost exactly the plan they had carefully
elaborated. Nevertheless, we now know that whole groups of the enemy
ran through the enormous supplies which were pouring in to their
front, and that one element in the disarray of the first German army
in those critical days was the shortage of shell, particularly for
the heavy pieces.

It is generally reported, and it is probably true, that the enemy
exhausted before the end of his great effort in the West (which
lasted less than one hundred days, and the intensity of which was
relaxed after the middle of November) _seven times_ the heavy
ammunition he had allowed for the whole campaign.

Here is another example. The life of a horse in the South African War
was, I believe, not quite as many _weeks_ as the same animal had
expectation of _years_ in civilian occupation.

[Illustration: DIAGRAM IV. A troop train is a very long train, and it
is packed close with men. To move one Army Corps alone (without the
cavalry) you must allow over 180 such trains. The diagram gives you
an idea of what that means.]

Here is yet another example, connected with the transport. A troop
train is a very long train, and it is packed close with men. For the
transport of animals and of material objects every inch of space
available is calculated and used. Well, to move one Army Corps alone
(without the cavalry) you must allow over 180 such trains. Now,
even at the origin of the war, upon one front alone, before the
numbers had fully developed, the German invasion involved at least
twenty-five Army Corps.

Such an appreciation of the scale and the pace of supply is
sufficient to illuminate one’s third point, the delicacy of the
whole business, and the peril of its embarrassment. You are feeding,
munitioning, clothing, evacuating the wounded from, sheltering, and
equipping millions of men; those millions subject to sudden abnormal
periods of wastage, any one of which may come at any unexpected
moment, and further subject to sudden unforeseen movements upon any
scale. You must so co-ordinate all your movements of supply that no
part of the vast line is pinched even for twenty-four hours.

The whole process may be compared to the perpetual running of
millions of double threads, which reach from every soldier back
ultimately to the central depots of the army, and thence to the
manufactories, and these double threads perpetually working back
and forth from the manufactories to the Front. These double
threads--always travelling back and forth, remember--are gathered
into a vast number of small, local centres, the sheaves or cords so
formed are gathered back again to some hundreds of greater centres,
and these ropes again concentrated upon some dozens of main bases
of supply. And the ends of these threads--though all in continual
movement back and forth--must each be kept taut, must cross sometimes
one over the other in a complicated pattern perpetually requiring
readjustment, while all the time now one, now another group of
threads suddenly sets up a heavy strain, where the men to whom they
relate are engaged in particularly violent action.

To keep such a web untangled, duly stretched, and accurately working
is an effort of organization such as will never be seen in civilian
life, and such as was never seen, even in military life, until modern
times.

[Illustration: DIAGRAM V. An important point in connexion with
supply is the delicacy of the whole business and the peril of its
embarrassment. The diagram concerns only one tiny detail of the
process--no more than the supply of ammunition to one part of a
division out of the hundreds of divisions that build up an army.
It shows how the ammunition is sorted and distributed from an
ammunition park to the men in the front line; the complexity under
actual conditions of service being apt to be far more tangled and
diversified, according to circumstances.]

Observe the fifth diagram, which concerns only one tiny detail of
the process; no more than the supply of ammunition (out of all that
has to be supplied) and no more than the ammunition of one part of
a division (excluding cavalry) out of the hundreds of divisions
and more that build up one of these great national armies. Even
that diagram, complex as it is, does not nearly represent the
whole complexity even of so small a fraction, but is sufficient to
illustrate my case.

Such a machine or organization, by which an army lives, and in
the collapse of which an army rapidly ceases to be, is clearly at
the mercy of the least disorder. It is indeed protected by the
most careful dispositions, and everything is done to safeguard its
gathering strands, as they unite towards the base, from interruption.
But conceive what the effect of such interruption would be, or
even the menace of it! Deduce from this the importance where such a
vast body of men is concerned, of _freedom from embarrassment_ in
the minds of those who have to direct the operation of the almost
infinite skein!

It is this point, the peril of embarrassment, which is--at the
moment in which I am writing these lines--of such capital importance
in connection with the question of blockade. We may blockade an
enemy’s resources and say: “With very careful economy he has food for
nine-tenths of the year”; or, “Though already anxious for the future,
he has sufficient copper for his shell and cartridge cases for some
time to come”; or, “Though already the Government is forbidding the
sale of petrol, the enemy can, for some time to come, supply his
mechanical transport.” But the mere numerical calculation of his
decreasing resources is no guide to the moral disorder which the
peril alone may cause. The elasticity of the whole machine is at once
affected from the mere knowledge that abnormal economy is demanded.
The directing brain of it is disturbed in an increasing degree as
civilian necessities mix with the already severe strain upon the
supplies of the army.

To produce such a confusion, moral as well as material, is the
directing motive of blockade, and the success of such a policy begins
long before the point of grave material embarrassment is reached.

It is on this account that nations fighting with their whole
strength, as modern nations in competition with the detestable
Prussian model are compelled to fight, must ultimately, willy-nilly,
turn to the policy of complete blockade, and that the success of
this policy attempted by both parties to a struggle--necessarily
better achieved by one than by the other--will perhaps more largely
than anything else determine--seeing what the complexity of national
commerce now is--the issue of a great modern war.




WAR TO-DAY AND YESTERDAY


_This war, in many ways, is quite different from any war in the past.
The length of defensive lines, the development of field fortification
and of big guns, and other important matters are dealt with in the
following pages._




WAR TO-DAY AND YESTERDAY


There has appeared in the present campaign a number of situations so
different both from what was known of war in the past and from what
was expected of any great modern war in West Europe that opinion upon
the change is confused and bewildered. Sometimes it is thrown right
out of its bearings by the novelties it witnesses. And, what is more
grave, opinion is sometimes led to misjudge altogether the nature of
war by these novelties.

For instance, you find people telling you that a war such as this
can end in a “draw” or stalemate. They say this foolish thing simply
because they are impressed by the present unexpected and apparently
unprecedented phase of the war.

Or, again, people tell you vaguely that “the question of finance will
end the war,” because they are bewildered by the magnitude of the
figures of expense, forgetting that the only five things a nation
needs in order to prosecute war are men, arms, clothing, shelter and
food, and, these things being provided, the whole hotch-potch of
reality and imagination which is called finance is indifferent to it.

Now, to prevent false judgments of that kind and the misleading of
public opinion, there is nothing more useful than to distinguish
between the things in which modern war between great forces, fought
with modern weapons and by men trained to utilize their powers to the
utmost, differs from and resembles the wars of the past.

Let us begin with the differences.

When you are dealing with many miles of men whose armament is not
only destructive at a great distance, but also over a wide belt
of ground, you have, in the first place, a vast extension of any
possible defensive lines. It is in this, perhaps, that the present
war is most sharply distinguished from the wars of the past; and I
mean by the wars of the past the wars of no more than a generation
ago.

There have been plenty of long defensive lines in the past. Generals
desiring to remain entirely upon the defensive, for any reason, over
an indefinite space of time (for no one can remain on the defensive
for ever), have constructed from time immemorial long lines behind
which their men, though very thinly spread out, could hold against
the enemy.

They have been particularly led to do this since the introduction of
firearms, because firearms give the individual man a wider area over
which he can stop his enemy. But in every form of war, primitive or
modern, these great lines have existed.

The Wall of China is one great instance of them; the Roman Wall
over the North of Britain, from sea to sea, is another; and the
long-fortified Roman frontier from the Rhine to the Danube was a
third.

The generals of Louis XIV, in a line called by the now famous name
of La Bassée, established on a smaller scale the same sort of thing
for a particular campaign. There are hundreds of examples. But the
characteristic novelty of the present war, and the point in which it
differs from all these ancient examples, is the _rapidity_ with which
such lines are established by the great numbers now facing each
other, armed as they are by weapons of very long range.

[Illustration: This gives you at a glance an idea of the numbers
engaged and the time occupied in some famous battles of the past.
Each little figure in the above drawings represents 5000 men. It will
be seen that even the Battle of Mukden is scarcely comparable in
duration with the months-long contests of the present war.]

Forty-eight hours’ preparation, or even less, is enough for troops
to “dig themselves in” over a stretch of country which, in the
maximum case of the French lines, is 300 miles in extent. Every
slight advance is guaranteed by a new construction of trenches, every
retirement hopes to check the enemy at another line of trenches
established at the rear of the first.

Roughly speaking, half a million of men could hold one hundred miles
of such a line under modern conditions, and, therefore, when the vast
numbers which such a campaign as this produces are brought into the
field, you can establish a line stretching across a whole continent
and incapable of being turned.

That is what has been done in France during the present war. You
have got trenches which, so long as they are sufficiently held in
proportion to the numbers of the offensive, are impregnable, and
which run from the Swiss Mountains to the North Sea.

It is possible that you may have to-morrow similar lines running from
the Carpathians to the Baltic. Though this I doubt, first, because in
the Eastern theatre of war Russia can produce perpetually increasing
numbers to assault those lines; secondly, because the heavy artillery
essential for their support cannot be present in large numbers in the
East.

One may sum up, therefore, upon this particular novel feature of the
present campaign and say that it is mainly due to the very large
numbers engaged, coupled with the retaining power of the heavy
artillery which the Germans have prepared in such high numerical
superiority over their opponents. It is not a feature which you will
necessarily find reproduced by any means in all the wars, even of the
near future, or in the later stages of this war.

You must be able, as you retreat, to check your enemy appreciably
before you can trace such a line; you must be able to hammer him
badly with heavy guns stronger than his own while you are making it,
and unless you are present in very great numbers you will only be
able to draw it over a comparatively short line which your enemy may
be able to turn by the left or the right.

Still, it may be of interest to compare the length of lines thus
drawn apparently during the course of a campaign in the past with
those drawn in the course of the present campaign, and in the first
diagram I show the contrast. It is striking enough.

Another novel feature in which this war differs even from the Balkan
War is the new value which has been given to howitzer fire, and in
particular to its domination over permanent fortification. This is
perhaps the most important of all the changes which this war has
introduced into military art and it is worth while understanding it
clearly. Its main principles are simple enough.

Mankind at war has always used devices whereby he has been able with
a small number to detain the advance of a larger number. That, for
instance, was the object of a castle in the Middle Ages. You built a
stronghold of stone which the engines of that time could not batter
down or undermine save at a very great expense of time, and you
were certain that for every man able to shoot an arrow from behind
such defences ten men or more would be needed for the work of trying
to batter them down. So when you knew that your enemy would have to
go through a narrow pass in the mountains, let us say, or across an
important ford of a river, you built a castle which, as the military
phrase goes, “commanded” that passage; that is, you devised a
stronghold such that with, say, only 1000 of your men you would quite
certainly hold up 10,000 of your enemy.

If your enemy passed by without taking your castle the thousand men
inside could sally out and cut off his supplies as they passed down
the mountain road or across the ford, and so imperil his main forces
that had gone forward.

Your stronghold would never, of course, suffice to win a war--its
function was purely negative. You could not attack with it; you could
not destroy your enemy with it. But you could _gain time_ with it.
You could check your enemy in his advance while you were gathering
further men to meet him, and sometimes you could even wear him out in
the task of trying to reduce the stronghold.

Now the whole history of the art of war is a history of the alternate
strength and weaknesses of these _permanent fortifications_; the
word _permanent_ means fortifications not of a temporary character,
hurriedly set up in the field, but solidly constructed over a long
space of time, and destined to permit a prolonged resistance.

[Illustration: DIAGRAM I. A striking comparison of the length of
lines in some past campaigns with the present. The characteristic
novelty of the present war is the rapidity with which such lines are
established by the great numbers now facing each other, armed as they
are by weapons of very long range.]

When cannon came and gunpowder for exploding mines underground, the
mediæval castle of stone could be quickly reduced. There was,
therefore, a phase in which permanent fortification or permanent
works were at a discount. The wars of Cromwell in this country, for
instance, were fought in the middle of such a phase. The castles
went down like nine-pins. But the ingenuity of man discovered a
new form of defence valuable even against cannon, in the shape of
scientifically constructed _earthworks_. The cannon ball of the day
could not destroy these works, and though they could be _sapped_
and _mined_, that is, though tunnels could be dug in beneath them
and explosives there fired to their destruction, that was a long
business, and the formation of the works was carefully designed to
give the garrison a powerful advantage of fire over the besiegers.

Works of this kind made the defensive strong again for more than two
hundred years. Just as there used to be a stone wall surrounding
a town, at intervals from which people could shoot sideways along
the “curtain” or sheer wall between the towers, so now there was
earthwork, that is, banks of earth backed by brick walls to hold
them up, and having a ditch between the outer parapet and the inner.
These earthworks were star-shaped, sending out a number of projecting
angles, so that an attack launched upon any point would receive
converging fire from two points of the star, and the entrances were
further protected by outer works called horn works.

With the war of 1870, and even for somewhat before it, it was found
that the increased range of modern artillery had destroyed the value
of these star-shaped earthworks, taking the place of the old walls
round a town. One could batter the place to pieces with distant
guns. Though the guns within the place were as strong as the guns
outside, they were at this disadvantage: that they were confined
within a comparatively small space which the besiegers could search
by their fire, while the guns of the besiegers could not be equally
well located by the gunners of the besieged within the fortress.

So the next step was to produce what has been known as the _Ring
Fortress_. That is, a series of detached forts lying three or four
miles outside the inner place of stores, barracks, etc., which you
wanted to defend. Each fort supporting the two others next to it on
either side of this ring was thought to be impregnable, for each fort
was built within range of the two nearest, and on such a model were
built Toul, Verdun, Epinal, Belfort, Metz, Strassburg, Thorn, Cracow,
and fifty other great modern strongholds.

The theory that these ring fortresses could hold out indefinitely
was based upon the idea that the fort so far out from the fortress
would keep the enemy’s guns too far away to damage the inner
place of stores and garrison, and that the supporting fire of the
various forts would prevent anyone getting between them. The three
systems--first the stone wall, then the earthwork, then the ring
fortress, are roughly expressed in the second diagram.

[Illustration: DIAGRAM II. Mankind at war has always used devices
whereby he has been able with a small number to detain the advance
of a larger number. Some of these systems are roughly expressed
above. 1. The old stone fortress or castle of the Middle Ages. 2.
The wall round a town. 3. The earthworks of a fortress of the period
1620-1860. 4. The “Ring” Fortress (1860-1914)--a series of detached
forts lying three or four miles outside the inner place of stores,
barracks, etc., which it was desired to defend.]

Well, the chief lesson, perhaps, of the present war is that these
ring fortresses fall quickly to howitzer fire. Each of the individual
forts can be easily reduced by howitzer fire. This is concentrated
against certain of the forts, which quickly fall, and once their
ring is broken the result is equivalent to the breach in the wall
of a fortress, and the whole stronghold falls. That is because in
quite recent years two new factors have come in: (1) the mobile heavy
howitzer; (2) the highest kinds of explosives.

[Illustration: DIAGRAM III. A howitzer is a gun with a shorter barrel
than the ordinary gun, and designed not to shoot its projectile more
or less straight across the earth, as an ordinary gun does, but to
lob it high up so that it falls almost perpendicularly upon its
target.]

A howitzer is a gun with a shorter barrel than the ordinary gun
(and therefore lighter in proportion to the width of the shell, and
so to the amount of the explosive it can fire) and designed not to
shoot its projectile more or less straight across the earth, as an
ordinary gun does, but to lob it high up so that it falls more or
less perpendicularly upon its target.

Thus the German 11.2-inch howitzer, of which we have heard so much in
this war, has a maximum range when it is elevated to 43 degrees, or
very nearly half-way between pointing flat and pointing straight
up--and howitzers can be fired, of course, at a much higher angle
than that if necessary.

[Illustration: DIAGRAM IV. You can hide a howitzer behind a hill. The
gun, though it has a longer range than the howitzer, can only get at
the howitzer indirectly by firing over the point where it supposes
the howitzer to be, as at A. Secondly, the howitzer can drop its
shell into a comparatively narrow trench which the projectile of the
gun will probably miss.]

[Illustration: DIAGRAM V. If you want to make your shell fall into a
trench of a fortification, A, or come down exactly on the top of the
shelter in a fort, B, it is obvious that your howitzer, firing from
H, and lobbing a projectile along the high-angle trajectory M, will
have a much better chance of hitting it than your gun G, sending a
projectile further indeed but along the flatter trajectory N.]

The advantage of the howitzer is two-fold.

In the first place, you can hide it behind a hill or any other form
of obstacle or screen, as it shoots right up in the air. A gun which
fires more or less flat along the earth cannot get at it.

The gun, though it has a longer range than the howitzer, can only get
at the howitzer indirectly by firing over the point where it supposes
the howitzer to be, as at A in Diagram IV, and so timing the fuse
that the shell bursts exactly there.

Now, that is a difficult operation, both because it is difficult to
spot a machine which you cannot see, and though modern time fuses are
very accurate, they cannot, of course, be accurate to a yard.

Secondly, the howitzer can drop its shell into a comparatively narrow
trench, which the projectile of a gun with its flat trajectory will
probably miss. If you want to make your shell fall into a trench of
a fortification or come down exactly on the top of the shelter in a
fort, as at A, the trench in the fifth diagram, or at B, the shelter,
it is obvious that your howitzer firing from H, and lobbing a
projectile along the high-angle trajectory M, will have a much better
chance of hitting it than your gun G, sending a projectile further,
indeed, but along the flatter trajectory N.

Of course, another howitzer within the fortifications could, in
theory, lob a shell of its own over the hill and hit the besieging
howitzer, but in practice it is very easy for the besieging howitzer
to find out exactly where the vulnerable points of the fortress
are--its trenches and its shelter and magazine--and very difficult
for the people in the fortress to find out where the howitzer outside
is. Its place is marked upon no map, and it can move about, whereas
the fortress is fixed.

[Illustration: DIAGRAM VI. The fort on an elevation at A, and
confined within a narrow space, is a target for howitzers placed
anywhere behind hills at, say, four miles off--as at B-B, C-C, D-D.
It is difficult enough for the fort to find out where the howitzer
fires from in any case; furthermore, the howitzer can shift its
position anywhere along the lines B-B, C-C, and D-D.]

Look, for instance, at Diagram VI.

The fort on an elevation at A, and confined within a narrow space,
is a target for howitzers placed anywhere behind hills at, say, four
miles off, as at B-B, C-C, D-D. It is difficult enough for the fort
to find out where the howitzer fires from in any case, and even when
it has spotted this the howitzer can move anywhere along the lines
B-B, C-C, or D-D, and shift its position.

Further, be it remembered that under quite modern conditions the
accuracy of the howitzer fire against the fort can be checked by
aeroplanes circulating above the fort, whereas the fort is a poor
starting-place for corresponding aeroplanes to discover the howitzer.

But while the howitzer has this advantage, it has the grave
disadvantage of not having anything like the same range as the gun,
size for size. For a great many years it has been known that the
howitzer has the advantage I have named. But, in spite of that,
permanent fortification was built and could stand, for it was
impossible to move howitzers of more than a certain small size.
The explosives in those small shells did very great damage, but
the fortress could, with its very heavy guns, keep the enemy out
of range. But when large, and at the same time mobile howitzers
were constructed which, though they fired shells of a quarter of a
ton and more, could go along almost over any ground and be fired
from almost anywhere, and moved at comparatively short notice from
one place to another, it was another matter. The howitzer became
dangerous to the fortress. When to this was added the new power of
the high explosives, it became fatal to the fortress.

To-day the 11-inch howitzer, with a range of about six miles,
capable of hiding behind any elevation and not to be discovered by
any gun within the fortress, and, further, capable of being moved
at a moment’s notice if it is discovered, has the fortress at its
mercy. Air reconnaissance directs the fire, and great masses of high
explosives can be dropped, without serious danger to the besieger,
upon the fortified permanent points, which are unable to elude great
shells of high explosive once the range has been found.

Another development of the present war, and somewhat an unexpected
one, has been the effect of the machine-gun, and this has depended
as much upon the new German way of handling it behind a screen of
infantry, which opened to give the machine-gun play, as to any other
cause.

The fourth most obvious, and perhaps most striking change is, of
course, the use of aircraft, and here one or two points should be
noticed which are not always sufficiently emphasized. In the first
place, the use of aircraft for scouting has given, upon the whole,
more than was expected of it. It prevents the great concentration of
troops unknown to the enemy at particular points on a line save in
one important exception, which is the movement of troops by night
over railways, and, indeed, this large strategical use of railways,
especially in night movements, in the present war, is not the least
of the novelties which it has discovered. But, on the other hand,
aircraft has reintroduced the importance of weather in a campaign,
and to some extent the importance of the season. When you doubtfully
discovered your enemy’s movements by “feeling” him with cavalry
or gathering information from spies and prisoners, it made little
difference whether the wind was high or low or whether you were in
summer or in winter. But the airman can only work usefully by day,
and in bad weather or very strong gales he cannot fly, which means
that unexpected attack is to be dreaded more than ever by night, and
that for the first time in many centuries the wind has again come to
make a difference, as it did against the missile of the bow and arrow.

There are a great many other novel developments which this war has
discovered, but these are, I think, the chief. It is advisable not
only to discover such novelties, but also the permanent features,
which even modern machinery and modern numbers have not changed. Of
these you have first the elementary feature of _moral_.

Ultimately, all Europeans have much the same potential _moral_.
Different types of drill and different experiences in war, a
different choice of leaders and the rest of it produce, however,
different _kinds of moral_; different excellencies and weaknesses.
Now in this department much the most remarkable general discovery
in the war has been the endurance and steadiness under loss of
conscript soldiers.

It had always been said during the long peace that modern conscript
short-service soldiers would never stand the losses their fathers
had stood in the days of professional armies, or longer service, or
prolonged campaigns such as those of the Napoleonic wars. But to this
theory the Manchurian campaign gave a sufficient answer if men would
only have heeded it; the Balkan War a still stronger one, while the
present war leaves no doubt upon the matter.

The short-service conscript army has in this matter done better than
anything that was known in the past. Of particular reasons perhaps
the most interesting and unexpected has been the double surprise in
the German use of close formation. It was always taken for granted,
both by the German school and by their opponents, that close
formation, if it could be used in the field at all, would, by its
rapidity and weight, carry everything before it.

[Illustration: DIAGRAM VII. You have here 1000 men ready to attack.
If they attack in long open waves of men as at A-A, it takes them a
long time to spread out, and when they are spread out the effect of
their shock is not overwhelming.]

You have in Diagram VII a thousand men ready to attack. If they
attack in long open waves of men as at A-A, it takes them a long time
to spread out, and when they are spread out the effect of their shock
is not overwhelming. They can only succeed by wave following wave.

[Illustration: DIAGRAM VIII. If your 1000 men attack in denser bodies
as at B-B, they can be launched much more quickly, and the effect of
their shock when they come on is much greater.]

If they attack in denser bodies (Diagram VIII), as at B-B, they can
be launched much more quickly, and the effect of their shock when
they come on is much greater; it is, to use the German’s own term,
the effect of a swarm.

This seemed obvious, but the critics of the second system of close
or swarm formation always said that, though they admitted its
enormous power if it could be used at all, it could not be used
because its losses would be so enormous against modern firearms.
Your spread-out line, as at A-A, offered but a small target, and the
number of men hit during an assault would be far less than the number
hit in the assault of such bodies as B-B, which presented a full
target of dense masses.

Well, in the event, that criticism proved wrong in _both_ its
conceptions. The Germans, thanks to their great courage and excellent
discipline, _have_ been able to use close formations. The immense
losses these occasion have not prevented their continuous presence
in the field, but, contrary to all expectations, they have not, as a
rule, got home. In other words, they have, in the main, failed in the
very object for which the heavy sacrifice they entail was permitted.

Another unexpected thing in which this war has warranted the old
conception of arms is the exactitude of provision. Everybody thought
that there would be a great novelty in this respect, and that the
provisioning of so many men might break down, or, at any rate, hamper
their mobility. So far from this being the case, the new great armies
of this modern war have been better and more regularly provisioned
than were the armies of the past, and this is particularly true upon
the side of the Allies, even in the case of that astonishing march of
three million of Russians across Poland with the roads in front of
them destroyed and the railway useless.




WHAT TO BELIEVE IN WAR NEWS


_Showing how the reports in the Press should be selected and
compared, so as to arrive at a just estimate of the true position of
affairs._




WHAT TO BELIEVE IN WAR NEWS


The other day there came a message to London from Italy, solemnly
delivered in printer’s ink and repeated in nearly every newspaper,
that the town of Cracow was invested, that the bombardment had begun,
and that part of the city was in flames.

Cracow is the key of Silesia, and Silesia is the Lancashire of
Prussia. The successful investment of Cracow would certainly bring
the war to its last phase, and that phase one bringing rapid victory
to the Allies.

But Cracow was not invested; no one had bombarded it. The whole thing
was fantastic nonsense.

So much for one particular newspaper report, which had nothing to
distinguish it from other telegrams and news, and which millions of
people must have read and believed.

Every one of the readers of these lines will be able to recall other
instances of the same kind. I have before me as I write extract after
extract of that sort. In one, Roulers has been retaken; in another,
Lille is reoccupied; in another (a much earlier one), the Germans are
at Pont Oise.

Sometimes these accounts appear in long and detailed descriptions
proceeding from the pens of men who are fairly well known in Fleet
Street, and who have the courage to sign their names.

There has, perhaps, never been a great public occasion in regard to
which it was more necessary that men should form a sound judgment,
and yet there has certainly not been one in our time upon which the
materials for such a judgment have been more confused.

The importance of a sound public judgment upon the progress of the
war is not always clearly appreciated. It depends upon truths which
many men have forgotten, and upon certain political forces which,
in the ordinary rush and tumble of professional politics, are quite
forgotten. Let me recall those truths and those forces.

The truths are these: that no Government can effectively exercise
its power save upon the basis of public opinion. A Government can
exercise its power over a conquered province in spite of public
opinion, but it cannot work, save for a short time and at an enormous
cost in friction, counter to the opinion of those with whom it is
concerned as citizens and supporters. By which I do not mean that
party politicians cannot act thus in peace, and upon unimportant
matters. I mean that no kind of Government has ever been able to act
thus in a crisis.

It is also wise to keep the mass of people in ignorance of disasters
that may be immediately repaired, or of follies or even vices in
government which may be redressed before they become dangerous.

It is always absolutely wise to prevent the enemy in time of war from
learning things which would be an aid to him. That is the reason
why a strict censorship in time of war is not only useful, but
essentially and drastically necessary. But though public opinion,
even in time of peace, is only in part informed, and though in time
of war it may be very insufficiently informed, yet upon it and with
it you govern. Without it or against it in time of war you cannot
govern.

Now if during the course of a great war men come quite to misjudge
its very nature, the task of the Government would be strained
some time or other in the future to breaking point. False news,
too readily credited, does not leave people merely insufficiently
informed, conscious of their ignorance, and merely grumbling because
they cannot learn more, it has the positive effect of putting them
into the wrong frame of mind, of making them support what they should
not support, and neglect what they should not neglect.

Unfortunately, public authority, which possesses and rightfully
exercises so much power in the way of censorship--that is, in the
way of limiting information--has little power to correct false
information. The Censor receives a message, saying that at the
expense of heavy loss General So-and-So’s brigade, composed of the
Downshires and the Blankshires, repelled the enemy upon such-and-such
a front, but that three hundred men are missing from the brigade at
the end of the action. If he allows this piece of news to go through
at all he must even so refuse to allow any mention of the names
of the regiments, of their strength, of the place where they were
fighting, and the numbers of those who are missing.

Why must the Censor act thus? Because this information would be of
the utmost value to the enemy. The enemy, remember, does not ever
quite know what is in front of him. Indeed, the whole of military
history consists in the story of men who are successful because they
can gauge better than other men the forces which they have to meet.

Now if you let him know that on such-and-such an occasion the force
that he met upon such-and-such a front was a brigade of infantry, and
if you let him know its composition, and if you do this kind of thing
with regard to the army in general, you end by letting him know two
things which he particularly wants to know, and which it is all your
duty to prevent him knowing. You let him know the size of the force
in front of him, and you let him know its composition.

Similar reasons make the Censor hide from the enemy the number of men
missing. The enemy knows if he has taken in prisoners wounded and
unwounded two hundred and fifty men, and, for all he knows, that is,
excepting the dead, your total loss; but if you publish the fact that
you have lost a thousand men, he is accurately informed of a weakness
in your present disposition, which he otherwise would not suspect.

All this action of the Censor is as wise as it is necessary, but in
the face of false news he is in another position. In the first place,
it is difficult for him to judge it (unless, of course, it concerns
our own particular forces). In the second place, it may not concern
matters which the enemy can possibly ignore. For instance, in this
example of the supposed investment of Cracow. The Russians were
certainly approaching the place. The news might conceivably be true.
If it were true, the enemy would already be amply acquainted with it,
and it would be of a nature not to aid him, but to discourage him.
But the news was, in fact, untrue, and, being untrue, its publication
did not a little harm.

Now, how are we to counter this danger? How is the plain man to
distinguish in his news of the war what is true from what is false,
and so arrive at a sound opinion? After some months of study in
connexion with my work upon the three campaigns, I may be able to
suggest certain ways in which such a position should be approached.

In the first place, the bases of all sound opinion are the official
communiqués read with the aid of a map.

When I say “the official communiqués” I do not mean those of the
British Government alone, nor even of the Allies alone, but of _all_
the belligerents. You must read impartially the communiqués of the
Austro-Hungarian and of the German Governments together with those
of the British Government and its Allies, or you will certainly miss
the truth. By which statement I do not mean that each Government
is equally accurate, still less equally full in its relation; but
that, unless you compare all the statements of this sort, you will
have most imperfect evidence; just as you would have very imperfect
evidence in a court of law if you only listened to the prosecution
and refused to listen to the defence. Now, these official communiqués
have certain things in common by whatever Government they are issued.
There are certain features in them which you will always find
although they come from natures as different as those of a Prussian
staff officer and a Serbian patriot.

These common features we may tabulate thus:

  (_a_) Places named as occupied by the forces of the
  Government in question are really occupied. To invent the
  occupation of a town or point not in one’s own hands would
  serve no purpose. It would not deceive the enemy and it
  would not long support opinion at home. Thus, when Lodz was
  reported occupied by the Germans in the middle of December,
  all careful students of the war knew perfectly well that
  the news was true.

  (_b_) Numbers, when they are quoted in connexion with a
  really ascertainable fact, and with regard to a precise
  and concrete circumstance, are nearly always reliable;
  though their significance differs, as I shall show in
  a moment, very greatly according to the way they are
  treated. Thus, if a Government says, “in such-and-such a
  place or on such-and-such a day we took three thousand
  prisoners,” it is presumably telling the truth, for the
  enemy who has lost those prisoners knows it as well as
  they do. But estimates of what has happened in the way of
  numbers, where the Government issuing the estimate can have
  no direct knowledge, are quite another matter. These are
  only gathered from prisoners or from spies, and are often
  ridiculously wrong.

  (_c_) All official communiqués of whatever Government
  conceal reverses, save in minor points. They are wise to do
  this because there is no need to tell the enemy more than
  he may know of his own success. Reverses are not actually
  denied. They are omitted. Witness all omission of Lemberg
  from Austrian or German communiqués and, until somewhat
  late, of Tannenberg in Russian, of Metz in French official
  accounts.

Those are the three points which all the official communiqués have
in common, and by bearing them well in mind we can often frame
an accurate picture, in spite of the apparent contradiction and
confusion which the reading of several communiqués one after the
other produces.

For instance, the Germans are trying to cross the Bzura River
according to the Russian communiqué of Saturday. Next Wednesday
the Russian communiqué says, “Two attempts to cross the Bzura at
such-and-such places were repelled”; while the German communication
says, “Our troops succeeded in crossing the Bzura River at
such-and-such a village and established themselves upon the right
bank.” In such a case the reader will be wise to believe the German
communiqué and to take it for granted that while the Russians have
repelled certain other attempts of the enemy to cross, this attempt
has succeeded. But if the Germans go on to say, “The Russians retired
after suffering losses which cannot have been less than twenty
thousand,” that is no news at all. It is obviously conjecture.

The various Governments issuing the communiqués have acquired certain
habits in them which are worth noting if one is attempting to get
at an accurate view of the war, and these habits may be briefly
described as follows:

The British Government publishes short notes of advances made or of
positions maintained, but very rarely refers to the losing of ground.
It publishes casualty lists, which are, of course, not complete till
very long after the events wherein the casualties were incurred.
It supplements the short communiqués, and this by a more or less
expanded narrative written by an official deputed for that purpose
and giving accounts, often graphic, but necessarily of no military
value; of no value, that is, for following the campaign. For if these
narratives were of that kind the object of the censorship would be
defeated.

The Belgian Government at the beginning of the war allowed very full
accounts to go through and permitted the presence of correspondents
at the front itself. That phase is now over and does not immediately
concern us.

The French Government is by far the most reticent. It occasionally
mentions the capture of a colour, but it publishes no casualty lists,
no account of the field guns taken by French troops, and only now
and then hints at the number of prisoners. It is, however, minutely
accurate and even detailed in helping us to locate the fluctuations
of the front, and by the aid of the French communiqués we can follow
the war upon the map better than by the aid of any other. In its
control of the Press the French General Staff is absolute. There has
been nothing like it before, and it has been perfectly successful.
You will see whole columns cut out of the newspapers in France and
left blank, so certain are the military authorities of that country
that the most vigorous censorship is vital to modern war. There
is lastly to be noted in connexion with the French communiqués,
especially after the first two months of the campaign, a remarkable
frankness with regard to the occasional giving of ground by their
own troops. The theory is that the enemy will know this in any case,
and that as the position is secure, details of the sort though
adverse, lend strength to the general narrative. In all this it must
be remembered, of course, that the French Government, and, at this
moment, the French Army, is far more powerful than any newspaper
proprietor or other capitalist, and it is well for any nation at war
to be able to say that.

The Russian Government is accurate, and, if anything, a little too
terse in what it communicates to the public, but its censorship is
far less strict than that of the French or even the English. Thus
during the fighting round Lodz in defence of Warsaw at the beginning
of December, correspondents from Petrograd were allowed to telegraph
the most flamboyant descriptions of an immediately approaching German
retreat which never took place. But, I repeat, the official Russian
news is sober and restrained and accurate to a fault.

When we turn to the enemy’s communiqués, we note first that the
Austro-Hungarians are rare, insufficient, and confused. They are of
little service, and may almost be neglected. But the German ones are
numerous, extended and precise, and it is our particular business
to judge them accurately if we are to understand the war, for when
or if they tell the truth it is from them that we learn what would
otherwise be hidden.

Well, in my judgment, these official German communiqués are in
the main remarkably exact, and I believe it is possible to say why
they are so exact. The German General Staff makes war in a purely
mechanical fashion. It gravely exaggerates, as do all modern North
Germans, the calculable element in human affairs. It is what used to
be called “scientific.” It is obvious that if you get a reputation
for exactitude your falsehood, where it pays you to tell the
falsehood, will be the more likely to work. The remarkable general
accuracy of the official German communiqués cannot be due to any
other object. It cannot be due to a mere love of truth, for the same
Government deliberately circulates to its own provincial Press and
to certain neutrals stories which cannot in the nature of things
be true. Nor is this inaccuracy the result either of haste or of
stupidity, it is very intelligent and obviously deliberate.

When, therefore, a German communiqué tells an untruth, that untruth
is deliberate and upon an effective scale, and we have to consider
what object it has, if we are to understand the news. We may take it
that the object is nearly always domestic and political. Remember
that these official German falsehoods, countersigned by the General
Staff and the Government, are as rare as they are solid. They do not
slip in. They are not vague or led up to by doubtful phrases.

Let me take two of them. Scarborough was officially described as a
fortified port, like Sheerness or Cherbourg. That takes one’s breath
away. But monstrous as it is, it is not childish, because it was
intended to give to the public that read it at home a certain effect
which was, in fact, produced.

So successfully was that effect produced that a competent military
critic in the German Press, writing the day after, had already got
the idea that Scarborough was the most important naval base upon the
East Coast. We must remember when we read such things that very few
educated men out of a thousand in our own country could give the
names of the fortified naval bases upon, say, the Adriatic, or even
the Atlantic coast of France.

Another example of the same thing in a rather different line is
the illumination of Berlin, the giving of a holiday to the school
children and the official proclamation of a great and decisive
victory in Poland during the course of the second battle for Warsaw,
an action which had already lasted a fortnight, which was destined
to last for many more days, and which remained at that time utterly
undecided.

According to fairly reliable accounts of what was passing in Berlin
at the moment, the Government was under some necessity of acting thus
because the beginning of popular unrest had appeared. But whatever
the cause, my point is that these German inaccuracies when they
occur, which is rarely, are easily distinguishable. They stand out
from the rest of the sober narrative by their conspicuous nonsense.
They do not disturb the judgment of a careful reader. They should not
prevent our continuing to collate most closely German statements in
detail with those of the Allies, if we wish to understand the war.

There is one other point which I have already alluded to briefly, in
which German communiqués may mislead, and that is in the way they
handle statistics. The actual wording of news is often chosen in
order to deceive, although the figures may be accurate. For instance,
under the title “prisoners,” the Germans include all wounded men
picked up, all civilians which in this singular war are carried away
into captivity, and, probably, when it is to their interest to swell
the number of captured, they include certain numbers of the dead.
In the same way they will talk of the capture of Verdun, and not
infrequently include such of their own pieces as a re-advance has
rediscovered upon the field.

It may be added in conclusion that while German communiqués rarely
wander into conjecture, when they do they are idiotic, and exactly
the same reason made German diplomats wholly misunderstand the
mind of Europe immediately before the war. A German induction
upon something other than material elements is worthless, and you
see it nowhere more than in the careful but often useless, though
monumental, work of German historians, who will accumulate a mass
of facts greater in number than those of the scholars of any other
nation, and then will draw a conclusion quite shamefully absurd;
conclusions which, during the last forty years, have usually been
followed by the dons of our own universities.

There is one last element for the formation of a sound opinion on
the war which must be mentioned at the end of this, and that is
the private evidence which occasionally but rarely comes through.
Here there is no guide but that of one’s own experience in travel,
or that of one’s own knowledge of the newspaper or the authority
printing it. The occasions upon which such evidence is available
are very infrequent, but when they do come the evidence is far more
valuable than any official communiqué Let me quote as an example
the letters from Hungary which appeared in the _Morning Post_ upon
various occasions during the autumn and early winter. They were quite
invaluable.

Lastly, one might add for those who have the leisure and the
confidence, the use of the foreign Press--especially the French and
the German. It is biased, as is our own, and often belated in news.
The German Press in particular suffers from the calculated policy of
the Government of the German Empire, which at this moment believes it
to be of service to stimulate public confidence of victory in every
possible manner. Nevertheless, unless you do follow fairly regularly
the Press of _all_ the belligerent nations, you will obtain but an
imperfect view of the war as a whole.




WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US


_Many theories formulated in times of peace have crumbled in the face
of recent actualities. Herein are set forth the main lessons to be
learnt from the present war._




WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US


THE POINTS AT ISSUE

Long periods of peace, intervening between cycles of war, are
necessarily periods during which there must arise a mass of theory
concerning the way in which men will be affected by war when it
breaks out. They are necessarily periods in which are perfected
weapons, the actual effect of which upon the human mind has not been
tested. They are necessarily periods in which are perfected methods
of defence, the efficiency of which against the corresponding weapons
of offence remains a matter of doubt.

More than this, the whole business of naval and military strategy,
though its fundamental rules remain unaltered, is affected by the use
of new materials upon the full character of which men cannot finally
decide until they come to action.

For instance, it is but a short while ago that a very eminent naval
authority in this country put forward a defence of the submarine.
This novel weapon had not been effectively used in war, though it
has existed for so many years. He suggested that in the next naval
war the battleship and cruiser would be rendered useless by the
submarine, which would dominate all naval fighting.

His theory, which, of course, was only a theory, was very warmly
contested. But between the two “schools” at issue nothing could
decide but actual warfare at sea in which the submarine was used.

This necessary presence of rival “schools of thought” upon naval
and military matters is particularly emphasized when the progress
of invention is rapid, combined with the gradual perfecting of
mechanical methods, and when the peace has been a long one.

Both these conditions have been present in Europe as a whole, and
particularly in Western Europe, during our generation, and that is
why this war has already taught so many lessons to those who study
military and naval affairs, and why already it has settled so many
disputed points.

Manœuvres could tell one much, but there was always absent from them
the prime factor of fear, and that next factor almost as important,
of actual destruction.

The list of questions, detailed and general, which have already
been wholly or partly answered by the present campaigns might be
indefinitely extended. There are hundreds of them. But if we consider
only the principal ones we shall find that they fall roughly into
two main categories. You have the technical questions of armament,
its use and its effect; formation, and so forth; and you have the
political questions.

The first set are concerned with the action of human beings under
particular forms of danger, and the physical effect of the weapons
they will employ under the conditions of a high civilization.

The second set are concerned with the action of human beings as
citizens, not as soldiers. How they will face the advent of war,
whether national feeling will be stronger than class feeling, whether
secrecy can be preserved, and the rest.

A list of the principal points in each of these sets will run
somewhat as follows:

In the first there were opposing schools as to--

(1) The value of modern permanent fortification and its power of
resistance to a modern siege train.

(2) The best formation in which to organize troops for action, and
particularly the quarrel between close formation and open.

(3) The doubts as to the degree of reliance which could be placed
upon air-scouts, their capacity for engaging one another, the
qualities that would give dominion of the air, and in particular the
value of the great modern dirigible balloons.

(4) The effect, method, and proportionate value of rifle fire and of
the bayonet.

(5) The use of field artillery; and particularly whether, after a
certain degree of rapidity, still greater rapidity of fire was worth
having.

(6) The exact _rôle_ that would be played in modern war by the supply
of certain materials hitherto unimportant and discoverable only
in certain limited regions, most of them out of Europe. There are
a great number of these materials, but much the most important is
petrol.

(7) Lastly, and by far the most vital of purely technical questions
to this country, was the solution of certain opposing theories upon
what is rather rhetorically called “the command of the sea” and what
might more justly be called naval superiority.

In the second set, the political questions, the most important were:

(1) The working of the conscript and of the voluntary systems.

(2) The possibility of preserving secrecy.

(3) Whether mobilization would work smoothly or not in the face of
class struggles supposedly formidable to national interests.

(4) The action of our modern town populations under the moral strain
of war.


LESSONS WE HAVE LEARNT

Not all of the questions, military or political, have as yet been
solved by experience. Many of them are, however, already partially
solved, some wholly solved. And we may consider them usefully one by
one.

(1) The value of permanent fortification.

Perhaps the most striking lesson of the war, and the one which
is already conclusively taught by its progress, is the fact that
modern permanent works, as we have hitherto known them at least, are
dominated by modern siege artillery, and in particular by the mobile
large howitzer using the last form of high explosive. It is here
important to give the plain facts upon a matter which has from its
suddenness and dramatic character given birth to a good many lessons.

Modern fortification has gone down after a very short resistance
to howitzer fire, throughout the western field of the campaign. In
general, if you can get the big, modern, mobile howitzer up to
striking distance of modern permanent work, it batters that work to
pieces within a period which will hardly extend over a week, and may
be as short as forty-eight hours.

It is not a question of tenacity or courage. The greatest tenacity
and the greatest courage can do nothing with a work that has been
reduced to ruins, and in which there is no emplacement for a gun. So
much is quite certain. But we must not run away with the idea either
that this is the end of fortification for the future; temporary
mobile batteries established _outside_ the old permanent works will
shield a garrison for an indefinite time. Nor is it true that the
Germans have in this field any particular advantage save over the
Russians, who are weak in their heavy artillery and have limited
powers of increasing it. It will be discovered as the war proceeds
that the Western armies are here in the same boat with the Germans.

It is true that the Germans have a larger howitzer than the French
and the English. They have a few 420 millimetre howitzers, that
is, guns of a calibre between 16 and 17 inches. But this gun is
almost too large to use. What has done the work everywhere is the
11-inch howitzer, and a gun of much the same size is in possession
of the French. Only hitherto the siege work has fallen to the German
invaders. When and if the _rôles_ are reversed, German permanent work
will be just as vulnerable to French howitzer fire. And as for the
abolition of fortification in future we need not look for that.

It is probable that the system of large, permanent enclosed works
will give way to a system of narrow, prepared, parallel trenches
connected by covered ways, which, by offering too small a target for
accurate fire from a distance, and by being doubled and redoubled one
behind the other, will be able to hold out far longer than the larger
works which bore the brunt of the present war. But that the defensive
will devise some means of meeting the new and unexpected powers of
the offensive we may be certain, upon the analogy of all past warfare.

(2) In the matter of formation the surprise of the war has
undoubtedly been the success of another German theory, to wit, the
possibility of leading modern short-trained troops, against enormous
losses, in close formation. Everywhere outside Germany that was
doubted, and the Germans have proved that their initial contention
was right, at least in their own case. But there is another aspect
of this question which has as yet by no means been proved one way or
the other, and that is, whether the very heavy losses this use of
close formation entails are worth while in a campaign not immediately
successful at the outset. We are not yet able to say how far troops
once submitted to such violence can be brought to suffer it again--or
how long after--nor are we able to say what effect this lavish
expenditure of men has towards the end of a campaign if its primary
object, immediate initial success, fails.

(3) In the matter of aircraft, four things have come out already.

(_a_) Men will engage each other in the air without fear and they
will do so continually, appalling as the prospect seemed in its
novelty before the outbreak of this war.

(_b_) Aircraft can discover the movement of troops in large bodies
more accurately and successfully than had been imagined.

(_c_) That body of aircraft which is used to a rougher climate, and
to working in heavier winds, will have an immense advantage not only
in bad weather but in all weather. It is this, coupled with a very
fine and already established tradition of adventure, which has made
the English airmen easily the superior of their Allies and enemies.

(_d_) The aeroplane is neither as invulnerable at a great height as
one school imagined it, nor as vulnerable as the opposite school
maintained. The casualties are not as high in proportion to the
numbers engaged as they would be in any other arm--at least so
far--but they exist. And it would seem that the impossibility of
telling whether an aeroplane belongs to friend or foe is a serious
addition to the risk.

Many questions connected with aircraft still remain to be solved; by
far the most important of which to this country are connected with
the efficiency of the dirigible balloon.

(4) The amount of attention that should be given to good rifle firing
and the importance that should be attached to the bayonet seem both
to have been answered hitherto by the war.

Superior rifle fire, especially under the conditions of a difficult
defensive, was the saving of the British force during the retreat
from Mons, and, during the whole battle of the Marne, French accounts
agree that the bayonet was the deciding factor in action after
action. But even if it be true, in the words of a French officer,
that “all actions end with the bayonet,” the actual number of troops
thus engaged and the casualties connected with them, are not in a
very high proportion to the whole.

It almost seems as though the bayonet had replaced the old shock
action of cavalry in some degree, and that it was to be used only
when the opposing troops were shaken or were occupied in too
precipitate a retirement. Of successful bayonet work against other
conditions we have at least had no examples recorded.

(5) On the two chief points in connexion with field artillery,
records hitherto received tell us little. We shall not know until
more detailed accounts are available whether the vastly superior
rapidity of fire enjoyed by the French 75 millimetre gun has given it
a corresponding superiority over its opponent, the German 77. That it
has a superiority is fairly clear. The degree of that superiority we
shall not learn until we have the story of the war from the German
side.

Neither are we established upon the question of weight. General
Langlois’ theory, which convinced the French that the light gun
was essential, has not so far been proved absolutely certain, and
there have been occasions when the English heavier gun (notably at
Meaux) was of vast importance to our Allies. But I suggest that this
question will be better answered now the weather has changed. In
dry weather, that is, over hard ground, the difference between the
heavier and the lighter gun is not so noticeable; once the ground is
heavy it becomes very noticeable indeed.

(6) With the next question, that of the materials and their supply,
we enter a region of the utmost interest to this country in
particular, because it is the superiority of this country at sea, and
the almost complete blockade of the Germanic Powers, that is here
concerned. Roughly speaking, we find (_a_) That a blockade of enemy
ports from a great distance is easy; (_b_) of enemy supply _through
neutrals_ very difficult indeed; (_c_) That certain special products
which modern science has made necessary in war are most affected. For
example:

Of the many things a modern army requires which are to be found only
in a few special places, and those, most of them, out of Europe,
the most important of all is petrol. It is obviously of capital
importance for air work, and where you have a number of good roads,
as in the Western field of operations, it is almost as important for
transport work.

Now it so happens that petrol is not found in Western Europe at
all. The European supply as a whole is limited, and is in the main
confined to Galicia, Roumania, and Russia. The Asiatic and American
supply is only available to Austria-Hungary and Germany by way of the
ocean, and the ocean is closed to them. Russian supply, of course,
they cannot obtain. Galician supply swings back and forth now in the
possession of the Austrian and now in that of the Russian Army.

There remains only Roumania, and though Roumania is neutral it is
doubtful or rather nearly certain that no sufficient supplies are
coming into the Germanic Powers from that source. This is up to the
moment of writing the chief effect of the British naval superiority,
to which I will next turn.

(7) Most of the things that were said in time of peace about the
effect of naval superiority or “command of the sea” have proved true.
The blockade of the inferior naval powers is nearly complete--though
it must be remembered that they have an exceedingly limited
coastline, and that the problem will be very different against a
large fleet possessed of many ports upon an extended coastline.

Further, the submarine has not proved itself as formidable against
men-of-war as some thought, and the superiority of large craft is
still admitted. On the other hand, it has been shown that a few
hostile cruisers could continue to hold the seas for a much longer
period than was imagined, and permanently to threaten commerce.

The conception that almost immediately after a declaration of war
naval superiority would prevent the inferior naval power from
commerce destroying, and that the trade routes of the superior power
would be as safe as in time of peace has broken down. So has the idea
that submarines could seek out the enemy’s fleet in its ports and
destroy them there.


THE POLITICAL RESULTS

When we turn to the political questions which the war has solved we
have obtained immediate results of the very highest interest and
importance, particularly to England.

In the first place, we have found that while the conscript system
of war worked and mobilized with astonishing success, our own much
more doubtful dependence upon a voluntary system for prolonged
warfare has not betrayed this country. Everyone is agreed that the
response to the call for volunteers, upon which there was at first
great and legitimate anxiety, has been quite out of proportion to our
expectations, and particularly to those of our enemies.

I think it true to say that there is nothing in which the German
estimate of British psychology has been more hopelessly at sea than
in this; and that the effects of this exceedingly rapid and large
voluntary enlistment, principally drawn from the best material in
the country, is the chief uncalculated factor in the scheme of what
Germany expected to face. It is a factor that matures more slowly
than many of the others, more slowly, perhaps, even than the effect
of the blockade (which is also due to British effort), but it will
mature with sufficient rapidity to affect all the later, and what may
easily be the decisive, phases of the great war.

We have an equally direct answer to that hitherto quite uncertain
question, whether in a modern state the secrecy which is essential
to the success of a military plan could be maintained or no. Here
again there has been a complete surprise. No one could have suggested
six months ago that so news-tight a system could possibly have been
worked with populations living in the modern great towns. And here
it must be admitted that our opponents have done even better than
ourselves. There is almost a comic element in the complete security
with which the German and Austrian Governments can give those whom
they govern exactly what news they choose and forbid the least scrap
correcting or amplifying these meagre official statements, to pass
the frontiers.

In connexion with this we should note that there is at the time of
writing no definite answer to that very important question of how a
complex modern town population will stand a heavy moral strain. But
in so far as the indirect strain already caused by the war is any
gauge, the answer seems to be favourable to the modern town liver.

Perhaps the most important point of all among the political questions
which the war has propounded is that connected with class as against
national feeling.

In plain fact, the idea that class feeling would anywhere in Europe
be stronger than national feeling has proved utterly wanting.

In the industrial parts of Germany where the distinction of
capitalist and proletariat was so clearly marked, that distinction
had no effect whatsoever, not only upon mobilization, but upon the
spirit of the troops; _a fortiori_ it had none in that French society
which is leavened by its peasantry, or in Russia which is almost
wholly a peasant state.

There is nothing on which the judgment of an educated man would have
proved more at sea had it been taken before the war broke out, and
nothing in which the war has more poignantly revealed the ancient
foundations upon which Europe reposes.


BALLANTYNE PRESS: LONDON AND EDINBURGH





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