_“The test is as true of cerebral power, as if a hundred thousand
men lay dead upon the field; or a score of hulks were swinging
blackened wrecks, after a game between two mighty admirals.”--Dr.
Oliver Wendell Holmes._
(Opening Address at Morphy Banquet, Boston, 1859.)
_Men whose business it is to understand war and warfare often are amused
by senseless comparisons made by writers who, as their writings show, are
ignorant even of the rudiments of military art and science. Of course a
certain license in expression of thought is not to be denied the layman;
he cannot be expected to talk with the exactness of the man who knows. At
the same time there is a limit beyond which the non-technical man passes
at his peril, and this limit is reached when he poses as a critic and
presumes to dogmatize on matters in regard to which he is uninformed._
The fanciful conjectures of such people, well are illustrated by the
following editorial _faux pas_, perpetrated by a leading metropolitan
daily, viz.:
“_Everyone knows now that a future war between states having
similar and substantially equal equipments will be a different
affair from any war of the past; characterized by a different
order of generalship and a radically novel application of the
principles of strategy and tactics._”
Many in the struggle to obtain their daily bread, are tempted to essay
the unfamiliar, and for a stipulated wage to pose as teachers to the
public.
Such always will do well to write modestly in regard to sciences which
they have not studied and of arts which they never practiced, and
especially in future comments on Military matters, such people may profit
by the appended modicum of that ancient history, which newspaper men as a
class so affect to despise, and in regard to which, as a rule, they are
universally and lamentably, ignorant.
What orders of Generalship can exist in the future, different from those
which always have existed since war was made, viz.: good generalship and
bad generalship?
Ability properly to conduct an army is a concrete thing; it does not
admit of comparison. Says Frederic the Great:
“There are only two kinds of Generals--those who know their trade and
those who do not.”
Hence, “a different order of Generalship,” suggested by the editorial
quoted, implies either a higher or a lesser degree of ability in the
“general of the future”; and as obviously, it is impossible that he can
do worse than many already have done, it is necessary to assume that the
commander of tomorrow will be an improvement over his predecessors.
Consequently, to the military mind it becomes of paramount interest to
inquire as to the form and manner in which such superiority will be
tangibly and visibly manifested, viz.:
Will the general of the future be a better general than Epaminondas,
Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Gustavus Adolphus, Turenne, Eugene,
Frederic, Washington, Napoleon, Von Moltke?
Will he improve upon that application of the principles of strategy and
tactics to actual warfare which comes down to us of today, stamped with
the approval of these superlative military geniuses?
Will the general of the future know a better way for making war than
acting against the enemy’s communications?
Will he devise a better method of warfare than that whose motive is the
concentration of a superior force upon the strategetic objective?
Will the processes of his prime logistic operations be preferable to
those of men who won their victories before their battles were fought, by
combining with their troops the topography of the country, and causing
rivers and mountains to take the place of corps d’armee?
Will the general of the future renounce as obsolete and worthless that
military organization founded centuries before the Christian Era, by the
great Theban, Epaminondas, the father of scientific warfare; that system
adopted by every captain of renown and which may be seen in its purity in
the greater military establishments from the days of Rome to the present
Imperial North German Confederation?
Will the general of the future renounce as obsolete and worthless that
system of Minor Tactics utilized by every man who has made it his
business to conquer the World? Will he propose to us something more
perfect than the primary formation of forces depicted in Plate XIII of
the Secret Strategical Instructions of Frederic II?
Will the general of the future renounce as obsolete and worthless those
intricate, but mathematically exact, evolutions of the combined arms,
which appertain to the Major Tactics of men who are remembered to this
day for the battles that they won?
Will he invent processes more destructive than those whereby Epaminondas
crushed at Leuctra and Mantinea the power of Sparta, and the women of
Lacedaemon saw the smoke of an enemy’s camp fire for the first time in
six hundred years?
Than those whereby Alexander, a youth of eighteen, won Greece for his
father at Chaeronea and the World for himself at Issus and Arbela? Than
those whereby Hannibal destroyed seriatim four Roman armies at Trebia,
Thrasymenus, Cannae and Herdonea?
Will he find out processes more sudden and decisive than those whereby
Caesar conquered Gaul and Pompey and the son of Mithridates, and which
are fitly described only in his own language; “Veni, vidi, vici”?
What will the general of the future substitute for the three contiguous
sides of the octagon whereby Tamerlane the Great with his 1,400,000
veterans at the Plains of Angora, enveloped the Emperor Bajazet and
900,000 Turks in the most gigantic battle of record?
Will he eclipse the pursuit of these latter by Mizra, the son of
Tamerlane, who with the Hunnish light cavalry rode two hundred and thirty
miles in five days and captured the Turkish capital, the Emperor Bajazet,
his harem and the royal treasure?
Will he excel Gustavus Adolphus, who dominated Europe for twenty years,
and Turenne, the military Atlas who upheld that magnificent civilization
which embellishes the reign of Louis XIV?
Will he do better than Prince Eugene, who victoriously concluded eighteen
campaigns and drove the Turks out of Christendom?
Will he discover processes superior to those whereby Frederic the Great
with 22,000 troops destroyed at Rosbach a French army of 60,000 regulars
in an hour and a half, at the cost of three hundred men; and at Leuthern
with 33,000 troops, killed, wounded or captured 54,000 out of 93,000
Austrians, at a cost of 3,900 men?
Will he improve on those processes whereby Napoleon with 40,000 men,
destroyed in a single year five Austrian armies and captured 150,000
prisoners? Will he improve on Rivoli, Austerlitz, Jena, Friedland,
Wagram, Dresden, and Ligny?
Will the general of the future renounce as obsolete and worthless that
system of Grand Tactics, by means of which the mighty ones of Earth have
swept before them all created things?
Will his system surpass in grandeur of conception and exactness of
execution the march of Alexander to the Indus? Will he reply to his
rival’s prayers for peace and amity as did the great Macedonian; “There
can be but one Master of the World”; and to the dissuasions of his
friend; “So would I do, were I Parmenio”?
Will he do things more gigantic than Hannibal’s march across the Alps?
Than the operation of Alesia by Caesar; where the Romans besieging one
Gallic army in a fortified city, and themselves surrounded by a second
Gallic army, single handed destroyed both? Than the circuit of the
Caspian Sea by the 200,000 light cavalry of Tamerlane, a feat of mountain
climbing which never has been duplicated? Than that marvelous combination
of the principles of tactics and of field fortification, whereby in the
position of Bunzelwitz, Frederic the Great, with 55,000 men, successfully
upheld the last remaining prop of the Prussian nation, against 250,000
Russian and Austrian regular troops, commanded by the best generals of
the age?
Will he conceive anything more scientific and artistic than the manoeuvre
of Trenton and Princeton by Washington? Than the capture of Burgoyne at
Saratoga and Cornwallis at Yorktown? Than the manoeuvres of Ulm, of Jena,
of Landshut? Than the manoeuvres of Napoleon in 1814? Than the manoeuvre
of Charleroi in 1815, declared by Jomini to be Napoleon’s masterpiece?
Will he excel the manoeuvres of Kutosof and Wittsengen in 1812-13 and
of Blucher on Paris in 1814 and on Waterloo in 1815; each of which
annihilated for the time being the military power of France?
Will he devise military conceptions superior to those whereby Von Moltke
overthrew Denmark in six hours, Austria in six days, and France in six
weeks?
* * * * *
The sapient race of quill-drivers ever has hugged to its breast
many delusions; some of which border upon the outer intellectual
darkness. One of these delusions is that most persistently advertised,
least substantial, but forever darling first favorite of timid and
inexperienced minds: “_The pen is mightier than the sword._”
Explanation of the invincible ignorance of the penny-a-liner is simple,
viz.:
Of the myriad self-appointed educators to the public, few are familiar
even with the rudimentary principles of Military Science and almost none
are acquainted even with the simplest processes of Strategetic Art.
Hence, like all who discourse on matters which they do not understand,
such writers continually confound together things which have no
connection.
Ignorant of war and the use of weapons; bewildered by the prodigious
improvements in mechanical details, they immoderately magnify the
importance of such improvements, oblivious to the fact that these latter
relate exclusively to elementary tactics and in no way affect the system
of Strategy, Logistics, and the higher branches of Tactics.
Of such people, the least that can be said and that in all charity, is,
that before essaying the role of the pedagogue, they should endeavor to
grasp that most obvious of all truths:
“_A man cannot teach what he never has learned._”
Says Frederic the Great: “Improvements and new discoveries in implements
of warfare will be made continually; and generals then alive must modify
tactics to comply with these novelties. But the Grand Art of taking
advantage of topographical conditions and of the faulty disposition of
the opposing forces, ETERNALLY WILL REMAIN UNCHANGED in the military
system.”
* * * * *
Naturally, the student now is led to inquire:
What then is this immutable military system? What are its text books,
where is it taught and from whom is it to be learned?
In answer it may be stated:
At the present day, private military schools make no attempt to teach
more than elementary tactics. Even the Governmental academy curriculum
aims little higher than the school of the battalion.
Scientific Chess-play begins where these institutions leave off, and ends
at that goal which none of these institutions even attempt to reach.
Chess teaches to conduct campaigns, to win battles, and to move troops
securely and effectively in the presence of and despite the opposition of
an equal or superior enemy.
Military schools graduate boys as second-lieutenants commanding a
platoon. Chess graduates Generals, able to mobilize Corps d’armee,
whatever their number or location; to develop these into properly posted
integers of a grand Strategic Front and to manoeuvre and operate the army
as a Strategetic Unit, in accordance to the laws of the Strategetic art
and the principles of the Strategetic science.
By precept and by actual practice, Chess teaches what is _NOT_ taught in
any military school--that least understood and most misunderstood; that
best guarded and most invaluable of all State Secrets--