PART III. CONDUCT OF NAVAL WAR

I. INTRODUCTORY--

1. INHERENT DIFFERENCES IN THE CONDITIONS OF WAR ON LAND AND ON SEA

2. TYPICAL FORMS OF NAVAL OPERATIONS

II. METHODS OF SECURING COMMAND--

1. ON OBTAINING A DECISION

2. BLOCKADE

III. METHODS OF DISPUTING COMMAND--

1. DEFENSIVE FLEET OPERATIONS--"A FLEET IN BEING"

2. MINOR COUNTER-ATTACKS

IV. METHODS OF EXERCISING COMMAND--

1. DEFENCE AGAINST INVASION

2. ATTACK AND DEFENCE OF TRADE

3. ATTACK, DEFENCE, AND SUPPORT OF MILITARY EXPEDITIONS

Appendix: The "Green Pamphlet"

INDEX

* * * * *

INTRODUCTION

The Theoretical Study of War--Its Use and

Limitations

* * * * *

At first sight nothing can appear more unpractical, less promising of

useful result, than to approach the study of war with a theory. There seems

indeed to be something essentially antagonistic between the habit of mind

that seeks theoretical guidance and that which makes for the successful

conduct of war. The conduct of war is so much a question of personality, of

character, of common-sense, of rapid decision upon complex and

ever-shifting factors, and those factors themselves are so varied, so

intangible, so dependent upon unstable moral and physical conditions, that

it seems incapable of being reduced to anything like true scientific

analysis. At the bare idea of a theory or "science" of war the mind recurs

uneasily to well-known cases where highly "scientific" officers failed as

leaders. Yet, on the other hand, no one will deny that since the great

theorists of the early nineteenth century attempted to produce a reasoned

theory of war, its planning and conduct have acquired a method, a

precision, and a certainty of grasp which were unknown before. Still less

will any one deny the value which the shrewdest and most successful leaders

in war have placed upon the work of the classical strategical writers.

The truth is that the mistrust of theory arises from a misconception of

what it is that theory claims to do. It does not pretend to give the power

of conduct in the field; it claims no more than to increase the effective

power of conduct. Its main practical value is that it can assist a capable

man to acquire a broad outlook whereby he may be the surer his plan shall

cover all the ground, and whereby he may with greater rapidity and

certainty seize all the factors of a sudden situation. The greatest of the

theorists himself puts the matter quite frankly. Of theoretical study he

says, "It should educate the mind of the man who is to lead in war, or

rather guide him to self-education, but it should not accompany him on the

field of battle."

Its practical utility, however, is not by any means confined to its effects

upon the powers of a leader. It is not enough that a leader should have the

ability to decide rightly; his subordinates must seize at once the full

meaning of his decision and be able to express it with certainty in

well-adjusted action. For this every man concerned must have been trained

to think in the same plane; the chief's order must awake in every brain the

same process of thought; his words must have the same meaning for all. If a

theory of tactics had existed in 1780, and if Captain Carkett had had a

sound training in such a theory, he could not possibly have misunderstood

Rodney's signal. As it was, the real intention of the signal was obscure,

and Rodney's neglect to explain the tactical device it indicated robbed his

country of a victory at an hour of the direst need. There had been no

previous theoretical training to supply the omission, and Rodney's fine

conception was unintelligible to anybody but himself.

Nor is it only for the sake of mental solidarity between a chief and his

subordinates that theory is indispensable. It is of still higher value for

producing a similar solidarity between him and his superiors at the Council

table at home. How often have officers dumbly acquiesced in ill-advised

operations simply for lack of the mental power and verbal apparatus to

convince an impatient Minister where the errors of his plan lay? How often,

moreover, have statesmen and officers, even in the most harmonious

conference, been unable to decide on a coherent plan of war from inability

to analyse scientifically the situation they had to face, and to recognise

the general character of the struggle in which they were about to engage.

That the true nature of a war should be realised by contemporaries as

clearly as it comes to be seen afterwards in the fuller light of history is

seldom to be expected. At close range accidental factors will force

themselves into undue prominence and tend to obscure the true horizon. Such

error can scarcely ever be eliminated, but by theoretical study we can

reduce it, nor by any other means can we hope to approach the clearness of

vision with which posterity will read our mistakes. Theory is, in fact, a

question of education and deliberation, and not of execution at all. That

depends on the combination of intangible human qualities which we call

executive ability.

This, then, is all the great authorities ever claimed for theory, but to

this claim the chief of them at least, after years of active service on the

Staff, attached the highest importance. "In actual operations," he wrote in

one of his latest memoranda, "men are guided solely by their judgment, and

it will hit the mark more or less accurately according as they possess more

or less genius. This is the way all great generals have acted.... Thus it

will always be in action, and so far judgment will suffice. But when it is

a question not of taking action yourself, but of convincing others at the

Council table, then everything depends on clear conceptions and the

exposition of the inherent relations of things. So little progress has been

made in this respect that most deliberations are merely verbal contentions

which rest on no firm foundation, and end either in every one retaining his

own opinion, or in a compromise from considerations of mutual respect--a

middle course of no actual value."[1]

[1] Clausewitz, _On War_, p. ix. The references are to Colonel Graham's

translation of the third German edition, but his wording is not always

followed exactly.

The writer's experience of such discussions was rich and at first hand.

Clear conceptions of the ideas and factors involved in a war problem, and a

definite exposition of the relations between them, were in his eyes the

remedy for loose and purposeless discussion; and such conceptions and

expositions are all we mean by the theory or the science of war. It is a

process by which we co-ordinate our ideas, define the meaning of the words

we use, grasp the difference between essential and unessential factors, and

fix and expose the fundamental data on which every one is agreed. In this

way we prepare the apparatus of practical discussion; we secure the means

of arranging the factors in manageable shape, and of deducing from them

with precision and rapidity a practical course of action. Without such an

apparatus no two men can even think on the same line; much less can they

ever hope to detach the real point of difference that divides them and

isolate it for quiet solution.

In our own case this view of the value of strategical theory has a special

significance, and one far wider than its continental enunciators

contemplated. For a world-wide maritime Empire the successful conduct of

war will often turn not only on the decisions of the Council chamber at

home, but on the outcome of conferences in all parts of the world between

squadronal commanders and the local authorities, both civil and military,

and even between commanders-in-chief of adjacent stations. In time of war

or of preparation for war, in which the Empire is concerned, arrangements

must always be based to an exceptional degree on the mutual relation of

naval, military, and political considerations. The line of mean efficiency,

though indicated from home, must be worked out locally, and worked out on

factors of which no one service is master. Conference is always necessary,

and for conference to succeed there must be a common vehicle of expression

and a common plane of thought. It is for this essential preparation that

theoretical study alone can provide; and herein lies its practical value

for all who aspire to the higher responsibilities of the Imperial service.

So great indeed is the value of abstract strategical study from this point

of view, that it is necessary to guard ourselves against over-valuation. So

far from claiming for their so-called science more than the possibilities

we have indicated, the classical strategists insist again and again on the

danger of seeking from it what it cannot give. They even repudiate the very

name of "Science." They prefer the older term "Art." They will permit no

laws or rules. Such laws, they say, can only mislead in practice, for the

friction to which they are subject from the incalculable human factors

alone is such that the friction is stronger than the law. It is an old

adage of lawyers that nothing is so misleading as a legal maxim, but a

strategical maxim is undoubtedly and in every way less to be trusted in

action.

What then, it will be asked, are the tangible results which we can hope to

attain from theory? If all on which we have to build is so indeterminate,

how are any practical conclusions to be reached? That the factors are

infinitely varied and difficult to determine is true, but that, it must be

remembered, is just what emphasises the necessity of reaching such firm

standpoints as are attainable. The vaguer the problem to be solved, the

more resolute must we be in seeking points of departure from which we can

begin to lay a course, keeping always an eye open for the accidents that

will beset us, and being always alive to their deflecting influences. And

this is just what the theoretical study of strategy can do. It can at least

determine the normal. By careful collation of past events it becomes clear

that certain lines of conduct tend normally to produce certain effects;

that wars tend to take certain forms each with a marked idiosyncrasy; that

these forms are normally related to the object of the war and to its value

to one or both belligerents; that a system of operations which suits one

form may not be that best suited to another. We can even go further. By

pursuing an historical and comparative method we can detect that even the

human factor is not quite indeterminable. We can assert that certain

situations will normally produce, whether in ourselves or in our

adversaries, certain moral states on which we may calculate.

Having determined the normal, we are at once in a stronger position. Any

proposal can be compared with it, and we can proceed to discuss clearly the

weight of the factors which prompt us to depart from the normal. Every case

must be judged on its merits, but without a normal to work from we cannot

form any real judgment at all; we can only guess. Every case will assuredly

depart from the normal to a greater or less extent, and it is equally

certain that the greatest successes in war have been the boldest departures

from the normal. But for the most part they have been departures made with

open eyes by geniuses who could perceive in the accidents of the case a

just reason for the departure.

Take an analogous example, and the province of strategical theory becomes

clear at once. Navigation and the parts of seamanship that belong to it

have to deal with phenomena as varied and unreliable as those of the

conduct of war. Together they form an art which depends quite as much as

generalship on the judgment of individuals. The law of storms and tides, of

winds and currents, and the whole of meteorology are subject to infinite

and incalculable deflections, and yet who will deny nowadays that by the

theoretical study of such things the seaman's art has gained in coherence

and strength? Such study will not by itself make a seaman or a navigator,

but without it no seaman or navigator can nowadays pretend to the name.

Because storms do not always behave in the same way, because currents are

erratic, will the most practical seaman deny that the study of the normal

conditions are useless to him in his practical decisions?

If, then, the theoretical study of strategy be approached in this way--if,

that is, it be regarded not as a substitute for judgment and experience,

but as a means of fertilising both, it can do no man harm. Individual

thought and common-sense will remain the masters and remain the guides to

point the general direction when the mass of facts begins to grow

bewildering. Theory will warn us the moment we begin to leave the beaten

track, and enable us to decide with open eyes whether the divergence is

necessary or justifiable. Above all, when men assemble in Council it will

hold discussion to the essential lines, and help to keep side issues in

their place.

But beyond all this there lies in the theory of war yet another element of

peculiar value to a maritime Empire. We are accustomed, partly for

convenience and partly from lack of a scientific habit of thought, to speak

of naval strategy and military strategy as though they were distinct

branches of knowledge which had no common ground. It is the theory of war

which brings out their intimate relation. It reveals that embracing them

both is a larger strategy which regards the fleet and army as one weapon,

which co-ordinates their action, and indicates the lines on which each must

move to realise the full power of both. It will direct us to assign to each

its proper function in a plan of war; it will enable each service to

realise the better the limitations and the possibilities of the function

with which it is charged, and how and when its own necessities must give

way to a higher or more pressing need of the other. It discloses, in short,

that naval strategy is not a thing by itself, that its problems can seldom

or never be solved on naval considerations alone, but that it is only a

part of maritime strategy--the higher learning which teaches us that for a

maritime State to make successful war and to realise her special strength,

army and navy must be used and thought of as instruments no less intimately

connected than are the three arms ashore.

It is for these reasons that it is of little use to approach naval strategy

except through the theory of war. Without such theory we can never really

understand its scope or meaning, nor can we hope to grasp the forces which

most profoundly affect its conclusions.

* * * * *

PART ONE

THEORY OF WAR

* * * * *

CHAPTER ONE

THE THEORY OF WAR

* * * * *

The last thing that an explorer arrives at is a complete map that will

cover the whole ground he has travelled, but for those who come after him

and would profit by and extend his knowledge his map is the first thing

with which they will begin. So it is with strategy. Before we start upon

its study we seek a chart which will show us at a glance what exactly is

the ground we have to cover and what are the leading features which

determine its form and general characteristics. Such a chart a "theory of

war" alone can provide. It is for this reason that in the study of war we

must get our theory clear before we can venture in search of practical

conclusions. So great is the complexity of war that without such a guide we

are sure to go astray amidst the bewildering multiplicity of tracks and

obstacles that meet us at every step. If for continental strategy its value

has been proved abundantly, then for maritime strategy, where the

conditions are far more complex, the need of it is even greater.

By maritime strategy we mean the principles which govern a war in which the

sea is a substantial factor. Naval strategy is but that part of it which

determines the movements of the fleet when maritime strategy has determined

what part the fleet must play in relation to the action of the land forces;

for it scarcely needs saying that it is almost impossible that a war can be

decided by naval action alone. Unaided, naval pressure can only work by a

process of exhaustion. Its effects must always be slow, and so galling both

to our own commercial community and to neutrals, that the tendency is

always to accept terms of peace that are far from conclusive. For a firm

decision a quicker and more drastic form of pressure is required. Since men

live upon the land and not upon the sea, great issues between nations at

war have always been decided--except in the rarest cases--either by what

your army can do against your enemy's territory and national life or else

by the fear of what the fleet makes it possible for your army to do.

The paramount concern, then, of maritime strategy is to determine the

mutual relations of your army and navy in a plan of war. When this is done,

and not till then, naval strategy can begin to work out the manner in which

the fleet can best discharge the function assigned to it.

The problem of such co-ordination is one that is susceptible of widely

varying solutions. It may be that the command of the sea is of so urgent an

importance that the army will have to devote itself to assisting the fleet

in its special task before it can act directly against the enemy's

territory and land forces; on the other hand, it may be that the immediate

duty of the fleet will be to forward military action ashore before it is

free to devote itself whole-heartedly to the destruction of the enemy's

fleets. The crude maxims as to primary objects which seem to have served

well enough in continental warfare have never worked so clearly where the

sea enters seriously into a war. In such cases it will not suffice to say

the primary object of the army is to destroy the enemy's army, or that of

the fleet to destroy the enemy's fleet. The delicate interactions of the

land and sea factors produce conditions too intricate for such blunt

solutions. Even the initial equations they present are too complex to be

reduced by the simple application of rough-and-ready maxims. Their right

handling depends upon the broadest and most fundamental principles of war,

and it is as a standpoint from which to get a clear and unobstructed view

of the factors in their true relations that a theory of war has perhaps its

highest value.

The theory which now holds the field is that war in a fundamental sense is

a continuation of policy by other means. The process by which the

continental strategists arrived at it involved some hard philosophical

reasoning. Practical and experienced veterans as they were, their method is

not one that works easily with our own habit of thought. It will be well,

therefore, to endeavour first to present their conclusions in a concrete

form, which will make the pith of the matter intelligible at once. Take,

now, the ordinary case of a naval or military Staff being asked to prepare

a war plan against a certain State and to advise what means it will

require. To any one who has considered such matters it is obvious the reply

must be another question--What will the war be about? Without a definite

answer or alternative answers to that question a Staff can scarcely do more

than engage in making such forces as the country can afford as efficient as

possible. Before they take any sure step further they must know many

things. They must know whether they are expected to take something from the

enemy, or to prevent his taking something either from us or from some other

State. If from some other State, the measures to be taken will depend on

its geographical situation and on its relative strength by land and sea.

Even when the object is clear it will be necessary to know how much value

the enemy attaches to it. Is it one for which he will be likely to fight to

the death, or one which he will abandon in the face of comparatively slight

resistance? If the former, we cannot hope to succeed without entirely

overthrowing his powers of resistance. If the latter, it will suffice, as

it often has sufficed, to aim at something less costly and hazardous and

better within our means. All these are questions which lie in the lap of

Ministers charged with the foreign policy of the country, and before the

Staff can proceed with a war plan they must be answered by Ministers.

In short, the Staff must ask of them what is the policy which your

diplomacy is pursuing, and where, and why, do you expect it to break down

and force you to take up arms? The Staff has to carry on in fact when

diplomacy has failed to achieve the object in view, and the method they

will use will depend on the nature of that object. So we arrive crudely at

our theory that war is a continuation of policy, a form of political

intercourse in which we fight battles instead of writing notes.

It was this theory, simple and even meaningless as it appears at first

sight, that gave the key to the practical work of framing a modern war plan

and revolutionised the study of strategy. It was not till the beginning of

the nineteenth century that such a theory was arrived at. For centuries men

had written on the "Art of War," but for want of a working theory their

labours as a whole had been unscientific, concerned for the most part with

the discussion of passing fashions and the elaboration of platitudes. Much

good work it is true was done on details, but no broad outlook had been

obtained to enable us to determine their relation to the fundamental

constants of the subject. No standpoint had been found from which we could

readily detach such constants from what was merely accidental. The result

was a tendency to argue too exclusively from the latest examples and to

become entangled in erroneous thought by trying to apply the methods which

had attained the last success to war as a whole. There was no means of

determining how far the particular success was due to special conditions

and how far it was due to factors common to all wars.

It was the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, coinciding as they did with a

period of philosophic activity, that revealed the shallowness and empirical

nature of all that had been done up to that time. Napoleon's methods

appeared to his contemporaries to have produced so strenuous a revolution

in the conduct of land warfare that it assumed a wholly new aspect, and it

was obvious that those conceptions which had sufficed previously had become

inadequate as a basis of sound study. War on land seemed to have changed

from a calculated affair of thrust and parry between standing armies to a

headlong rush of one nation in arms upon another, each thirsting for the

other's life, and resolved to have it or perish in the attempt. Men felt

themselves faced with a manifestation of human energy which had had no

counterpart, at least in civilised times.

The assumption was not entirely true. For although the Continent had never

before adopted the methods in question, our own country was no stranger to

them either on sea or land. As we shall see, our own Revolution in the

seventeenth century had produced strenuous methods of making war which were

closely related to those which Napoleon took over from the French

Revolutionary leaders. A more philosophic outlook might have suggested that

the phenomenon was not really exceptional, but rather the natural outcome

of popular energy inspired by a stirring political ideal. But the British

precedent was forgotten, and so profound was the disturbance caused by the

new French methods that its effects are with us still. We are in fact still

dominated by the idea that since the Napoleonic era war has been

essentially a different thing. Our teachers incline to insist that there is

now only one way of making war, and that is Napoleon's way. Ignoring the

fact that he failed in the end, they brand as heresy the bare suggestion

that there may be other ways, and not content with assuming that his system

will fit all land wars, however much their natures and objects may differ,

they would force naval warfare into the same uniform under the impression

apparently that they are thereby making it presentable and giving it some

new force.

Seeing how cramping the Napoleonic idea has become, it will be convenient

before going further to determine its special characteristics exactly, but

that is no easy matter. The moment we approach it in a critical spirit, it

begins to grow nebulous and very difficult to define. We can dimly make out

four distinct ideas mingled in the current notion. First, there is the idea

of making war not merely with a professional standing army, but with the

whole armed nation--a conception which of course was not really Napoleon's.

It was inherited by him from the Revolution, but was in fact far older. It

was but a revival of the universal practice which obtained in the barbaric

stages of social development, and which every civilisation in turn had

abandoned as economically unsound and subversive of specialisation in

citizenship. The results of the abandonment were sometimes good and

sometimes bad, but the determining conditions have been studied as yet too

imperfectly to justify any broad generalisation. Secondly, there is the

idea of strenuous and persistent effort--not resting to secure each minor

advantage, but pressing the enemy without pause or rest till he is utterly

overthrown--an idea in which Cromwell had anticipated Napoleon by a century

and a half. Scarcely distinguishable from this is a third idea--that of

taking the offensive, in which there was really nothing new at all, since

its advantages had always been understood, and Frederick the Great had

pressed it to extremity with little less daring than Napoleon himself--nay

even to culpable rashness, as the highest exponents of the Napoleonic idea

admit. Finally, there is the notion of making the armed forces of the enemy

and not his territory or any part of it your main objective. This perhaps

is regarded as the strongest characteristic of Napoleon's methods, and yet

even here we are confused by the fact that undoubtedly on some very

important occasions--the Austerlitz campaign, for example--Napoleon made

the hostile capital his objective as though he believed its occupation was

the most effective step towards the overthrow of the enemy's power and will

to resist. He certainly did not make the enemy's main army his primary

objective--for their main army was not Mack's but that of the Archduke

Charles.

On the whole then, when men speak of the Napoleonic system they seem to

include two groups of ideas--one which comprises the conception of war made

with the whole force of the nation; the other, a group which includes the

Cromwellian idea of persistent effort, Frederick's preference for the

offensive at almost any risk, and finally the idea of the enemy's armed

forces as the main objective, which was also Cromwell's.

It is the combination of these by no means original or very distinct ideas

that we are told has brought about so entire a change in the conduct of war

that it has become altogether a different thing. It is unnecessary for our

purpose to consider how far the facts seem to support such a conclusion,

for in the inherent nature of things it must be radically unsound. Neither

war nor anything else can change in its essentials. If it appears to do so,

it is because we are still mistaking accidents for essentials, and this is

exactly how it struck the acutest thinkers of Napoleonic times.

For a while it is true they were bewildered, but so soon as they had had

time to clear their heads from the din of the struggle in which they had

taken part, they began to see that the new phenomena were but accidents

after all. They perceived that Napoleon's methods, which had taken the

world by storm, had met with success in wars of a certain nature only, and

that when he tried to extend those methods to other natures of war he had

met with failure and even disaster. How was this to be explained? What

theory, for instance, would cover Napoleon's successes in Germany and

Italy, as well as his failures in Spain and Russia? If the whole conception

of war had changed, how could you account for the success of England, who

had not changed her methods? To us the answer to these questions is of

living and infinite importance. Our standpoint remains still unchanged. Is

there anything inherent in the conception of war that justifies that

attitude in our case? Are we entitled to expect from it again the same

success it met with in the past?

The first man to enunciate a theory which would explain the phenomena of

the Napoleonic era and co-ordinate them with previous history was General

Carl von Clausewitz, a man whose arduous service on the Staff and the

actual work of higher instruction had taught the necessity of systematising

the study of his profession. He was no mere professor, but a soldier bred

in the severest school of war. The pupil and friend of Sharnhorst and

Gneisenau, he had served on the Staff of Blücher in 1813, he had been Chief

of the Staff to Wallmoden in his campaign against Davoust on the Lower

Elbe, and also to the Third Prussian Army Corps in the campaign of 1815.

Thereafter for more than ten years he was Director of the General Academy

of War at Berlin, and died in 1831 as Chief of the Staff to Marshal

Gneisenau. For the fifty years that followed his death his theories and

system were, as he expected they would be, attacked from all sides. Yet

to-day his work is more firmly established than ever as the necessary basis

of all strategical thought, and above all in the "blood and iron" school of

Germany.

The process by which he reached his famous theory can be followed in his

classical work _On War_ and the _Notes_ regarding it which he left behind

him. In accordance with the philosophic fashion of his time he began by

trying to formulate an abstract idea of war. The definition he started with

was that "War is an act of violence to compel our opponent to do our will."

But that act of violence was not merely "the shock of armies," as

Montecuccoli had defined it a century and a half before. If the abstract

idea of war be followed to its logical conclusion, the act of violence must

be performed with the whole of the means at our disposal and with the

utmost exertion of our will. Consequently we get the conception of two

armed nations flinging themselves one upon the other, and continuing the

struggle with the utmost strength and energy they can command till one or

other is no longer capable of resistance. This Clausewitz called "Absolute

War." But his practical experience and ripe study of history told him at

once that "Real War" was something radically different. It was true, as he

said, that Napoleon's methods had approximated to the absolute and had

given some colour to the use of the absolute idea as a working theory. "But

shall we," he acutely asks, "rest satisfied with this idea and judge all

wars by it however much they may differ from it--shall we deduce from it

all the requirements of theory? We must decide the point, for we can say

nothing trustworthy about a war plan until we have made up our minds

whether war should only be of this kind or whether it may be of another

kind." He saw at once that a theory formed upon the abstract or absolute

idea of war would not cover the ground, and therefore failed to give what

was required for practical purposes. It would exclude almost the whole of

war from Alexander's time to Napoleon's. And what guarantee was there that

the next war would confirm to the Napoleonic type and accommodate itself to

the abstract theory? "This theory," he says, "is still quite powerless

against the force of circumstances." And so it proved, for the wars of the

middle nineteenth century did in fact revert to the pre-Napoleonic type.

In short, Clausewitz's difficulty in adopting his abstract theory as a

working rule was that his practical mind could not forget that war had not

begun with the Revolutionary era, nor was it likely to end with it. If that

era had changed the conduct of war, it must be presumed that war would

change again with other times and other conditions. A theory of war which

did not allow for this and did not cover all that had gone before was no

theory at all. If a theory of war was to be of any use as a practical guide

it must cover and explain not only the extreme manifestation of hostility

which he himself had witnessed, but every manifestation that had occurred

in the past or was likely to recur in the future.

It was in casting about for the underlying causes of the oscillations

manifested in the energy and intensity of hostile relations that he found

his solution. His experience on the Staff, and his study of the inner

springs of war, told him it was never in fact a question of purely military

endeavour aiming always at the extreme of what was possible or expedient

from a purely military point of view. The energy exhibited would always be

modified by political considerations and by the depth of the national

interest in the object of the war. He saw that real war was in fact an

international relation which differed from other international relations

only in the method we adopted to achieve the object of our policy. So it

was he arrived at his famous theory--"that war is a mere continuation of

policy by other means."

At first sight there seems little enough in it. It may seem perhaps that we

have been watching a mountain in labour and nothing but a mouse has been

produced. But it is only upon some such simple, even obvious, formula that

any scientific system can be constructed with safety. We have only to

develop the meaning of this one to see how important and practical are the

guiding lines which flow from it.

With the conception of war as a continuation of political intercourse

before us, it is clear that everything which lies outside the political

conception, everything, that is, which is strictly peculiar to military and

naval operations, relates merely to the means which we use to achieve our

policy. Consequently, the first desideratum of a war plan is that the means

adopted must conflict as little as possible with the political conditions

from which the war springs. In practice, of course, as in all human

relations, there will be a compromise between the means and the end,

between the political and the military exigencies. But Clausewitz held that

policy must always be the master. The officer charged with the conduct of

the war may of course demand that the tendencies and views of policy shall

not be incompatible with the military means which are placed at his

disposal; but however strongly this demand may react on policy in

particular cases, military action must still be regarded only as a

manifestation of policy. It must never supersede policy. The policy is

always the object; war is only the means by which we obtain the object, and

the means must always keep the end in view.

The practical importance of this conception will now become clear. It will

be seen to afford the logical or theoretical exposition of what we began by

stating in its purely concrete form. When a Chief of Staff is asked for a

war plan he must not say we will make war in such and such a way because it

was Napoleon's or Moltke's way. He will ask what is the political object of

the war, what are the political conditions, and how much does the question

at issue mean respectively to us and to our adversary. It is these

considerations which determine the nature of the war. This primordial

question settled, he will be in a position to say whether the war is of the

same nature as those in which Napoleon's and Moltke's methods were

successful, or whether it is of another nature in which those methods

failed. He will then design and offer a war plan, not because it has the

hall-mark of this or that great master of war, but because it is one that

has been proved to fit the kind of war in hand. To assume that one method

of conducting war will suit all kinds of war is to fall a victim to

abstract theory, and not to be a prophet of reality, as the narrowest

disciples of the Napoleonic school are inclined to see themselves.

Hence, says Clausewitz, the first, the greatest and most critical decision

upon which the Statesman and the General have to exercise their judgment is

to determine the nature of the war, to be sure they do not mistake it for

something nor seek to make of it something which from its inherent

conditions it can never be. "This," he declares, "is the first and the most

far-reaching of all strategical questions."

The first value, then, of his theory of war is that it gives a clear line

on which we may proceed to determine the nature of a war in which we are

about to engage, and to ensure that we do not try to apply to one nature of

war any particular course of operations simply because they have proved

successful in another nature of war. It is only, he insists, by regarding

war not as an independent thing but as a political instrument that we can

read aright the lessons of history and understand for our practical

guidance how wars must differ in character according to the nature of the

motives and circumstances from which they proceed. This conception, he

claims, is the first ray of light to guide us to a true theory of war and

thereby enable us to classify wars and distinguish them one from another.

Jomini, his great contemporary and rival, though proceeding by a less

philosophical but no less lucid method, entirely endorses this view. A

Swiss soldier of fortune, his experience was much the same as that of

Clausewitz. It was obtained mainly on the Staff of Marshal Ney and

subsequently on the Russian headquarter Staff. He reached no definite

theory of war, but his fundamental conclusions were the same. The first

chapter of his final work, _Précis de l'art de la Guerre_, is devoted to

"La Politique de la Guerre." In it he classifies wars into nine categories

according to their political object, and he lays it down as a base

proposition "That these different kinds of war will have more or less

influence on the nature of the operations which will be demanded to attain

the end in view, on the amount of energy that must be put forth, and on the

extent of the undertakings in which we must engage." "There will," he adds,

"be a great difference in the operations according to the risks we have to

run."

Both men, therefore, though on details of means they were often widely

opposed, are agreed that the fundamental conception of war is political.

Both of course agree that if we isolate in our mind the forces engaged in

any theatre of war the abstract conception reappears. So far as those

forces are concerned, war is a question of fighting in which each

belligerent should endeavour by all means at his command and with all his

energy to destroy the other. But even so they may find that certain means

are barred to them for political reasons, and at any moment the fortune of

war or a development of the political conditions with which it is entangled

may throw them back upon the fundamental political theory.

That theory it will be unprofitable to labour further at this point. Let it

suffice for the present to mark that it gives us a conception of war as an

exertion of violence to secure a political end which we desire to attain,

and that from this broad and simple formula we are able to deduce at once

that wars will vary according to the nature of the end and the intensity of

our desire to attain it. Here we may leave it to gather force and coherence

as we examine the practical considerations which are its immediate outcome.

* * * * *

CHAPTER TWO

NATURES OF WARS--

OFFENSIVE AND DEFENSIVE

* * * * *

Having determined that wars must vary in character according to the nature

and importance of their object, we are faced with the difficulty that the

variations will be of infinite number and of all degrees of distinction. So

complex indeed is the graduation presented that at first sight it appears

scarcely possible to make it the basis of practical study. But on further

examination it will be seen that by applying the usual analytical method

the whole subject is susceptible of much simplification. We must in short

attempt to reach some system of classification; that is, we must see if it

is not possible to group the variations into some well-founded categories.

With a subject so complex and intangible the grouping must of course be to

some extent arbitrary, and in some places the lines of demarcation will be

shadowy; but if classification has been found possible and helpful in

Zoology or Botany, with the infinite and minute individual variations with

which they have to deal, it should be no less possible and helpful in the

study of war.

The political theory of war will at any rate give us two broad and

well-marked classifications. The first is simple and well known, depending

on whether the political object of the war is positive or negative. If it

be positive--that is, if our aim is to wrest something from the enemy--then

our war in its main lines will be offensive. If, on the other hand, our aim

be negative, and we simply seek to prevent the enemy wresting some

advantage to our detriment, then the war in its general direction will be

defensive.

It is only as a broad conception that this classification has value. Though

it fixes the general trend of our operations, it will not in itself affect

their character. For a maritime Power at least it is obvious that this must

be so. For in any circumstances it is impossible for such a Power either to

establish its defence or develop fully its offence without securing a

working control of the sea by aggressive action against the enemy's fleets.

Furthermore, we have always found that however strictly our aim may be

defensive, the most effective means of securing it has been by

counter-attack over-sea, either to support an ally directly or to deprive

our enemy of his colonial possessions. Neither category, then, excludes the

use of offensive operations nor the idea of overthrowing our enemy so far

as is necessary to gain our end. In neither case does the conception lead

us eventually to any other objective than the enemy's armed forces, and

particularly his naval forces. The only real difference is this--that if

our object be positive our general plan must be offensive, and we should at

least open with a true offensive movement; whereas if our object be

negative our general plan will be preventive, and we may bide our time for

our counter-attack. To this extent our action must always tend to the

offensive. For counter-attack is the soul of defence. Defence is not a

passive attitude, for that is the negation of war. Rightly conceived, it is

an attitude of alert expectation. We wait for the moment when the enemy

shall expose himself to a counter-stroke, the success of which will so far

cripple him as to render us relatively strong enough to pass to the

offensive ourselves.

From these considerations it will appear that, real and logical as the

classification is, to give it the designation "offensive and defensive" is

objectionable from every point of view. To begin with, it does not

emphasise what the real and logical distinction is. It suggests that the

basis of the classification is not so much a difference of object as a

difference in the means employed to achieve the object. Consequently we

find ourselves continually struggling with the false assumption that

positive war means using attack, and negative war being content with

defence.

That is confusing enough, but a second objection to the designation is far

more serious and more fertile of error. For the classification "offensive

and defensive" implies that offensive and defensive are mutually exclusive

ideas, whereas the truth is, and it is a fundamental truth of war, that

they are mutually complementary. All war and every form of it must be both

offensive and defensive. No matter how clear our positive aim nor how high

our offensive spirit, we cannot develop an aggressive line of strategy to

the full without the support of the defensive on all but the main lines of

operation. In tactics it is the same. The most convinced devotee of attack

admits the spade as well as the rifle. And even when it comes to men and

material, we know that without a certain amount of protection neither

ships, guns, nor men can develop their utmost energy and endurance in

striking power. There is never, in fact, a clean choice between attack and

defence. In aggressive operations the question always is, how far must

defence enter into the methods we employ in order to enable us to do the

utmost within our resources to break or paralyse the strength of the enemy.

So also with defence. Even in its most legitimate use, it must always be

supplemented by attack. Even behind the walls of a fortress men know that

sooner or later the place must fall unless by counter-attack on the enemy's

siege works or communications they can cripple his power of attack.

It would seem, therefore, that it were better to lay aside the designation

"offensive and defensive" altogether and substitute the terms "positive and

negative." But here again we are confronted with a difficulty. There have

been many wars in which positive methods have been used all through to

secure a negative end, and such wars will not sit easily in either class.

For instance, in the War of Spanish Succession our object was mainly to

prevent the Mediterranean becoming a French lake by the union of the French

and Spanish crowns, but the method by which we succeeded in achieving our

end was to seize the naval positions of Gibraltar and Minorca, and so in

practice our method was positive. Again, in the late Russo-Japanese War the

main object of Japan was to prevent Korea being absorbed by Russia. That

aim was preventive and negative. But the only effective way of securing her

aim was to take Korea herself, and so for her the war was in practice

positive.

On the other hand, we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that in the majority

of wars the side with the positive object has acted generally on the

offensive and the other generally on the defensive. Unpractical therefore

as the distinction seems to be, it is impossible to dismiss it without

inquiring why this was so, and it is in this inquiry that the practical

results of the classification will be found to lie--that is, it forces us

to analyse the comparative advantages of offence and defence. A clear

apprehension of their relative possibilities is the corner stone of

strategical study.

Now the advantages of the offensive are patent and admitted. It is only the

offensive that can produce positive results, while the strength and energy

which are born of the moral stimulation of attack are of a practical value

that outweighs almost every other consideration. Every man of spirit would

desire to use the offensive whether his object were positive or negative,

and yet there are a number of cases in which some of the most energetic

masters of war have chosen the defensive, and chosen with success. They

have chosen it when they have found themselves inferior in physical force

to their enemy, and when they believed that no amount of aggressive spirit

could redress that inferiority.

Obviously, then, for all the inferiority of the defensive as a drastic form

of war it must have some inherent advantage which the offensive does not

enjoy. In war we adopt every method for which we have sufficient strength.

If, then, we adopt the less desirable method of defence, it must be either

that we have not sufficient strength for offence, or that the defence gives

us some special strength for the attainment of our object.

What, then, are these elements of strength? It is very necessary to

inquire, not only that we may know that if for a time we are forced back

upon the defensive all is not lost, but also that we may judge with how

much daring we should push our offensive to prevent the enemy securing the

advantages of defence.

As a general principle we all know that possession is nine points of the

law. It is easier to keep money in our pocket than to take it from another

man's. If one man would rob another he must be the stronger or better armed

unless he can do it by dexterity or stealth, and there lies one of the

advantages of offence. The side which takes the initiative has usually the

better chance of securing advantage by dexterity or stealth. But it is not

always so. If either by land or sea we can take a defensive position so

good that it cannot be turned and must be broken down before our enemy can

reach his objective, then the advantage of dexterity and stealth passes to

us. We choose our own ground for the trial of strength. We are hidden on

familiar ground; he is exposed on ground that is less familiar. We can lay

traps and prepare surprises by counter-attack, when he is most dangerously

exposed. Hence the paradoxical doctrine that where defence is sound and

well designed the advantage of surprise is against the attack.

It will be seen therefore that whatever advantages lie in defence they

depend on the preservation of the offensive spirit. Its essence is the

counter-attack--waiting deliberately for a chance to strike--not cowering

in inactivity. Defence is a condition of restrained activity--not a mere

condition of rest. Its real weakness is that if unduly prolonged it tends

to deaden the spirit of offence. This is a truth so vital that some

authorities in their eagerness to enforce it have travestied it into the

misleading maxim, "That attack is the best defence." Hence again an

amateurish notion that defence is always stupid or pusillanimous, leading

always to defeat, and that what is called "the military spirit" means

nothing but taking the offensive. Nothing is further from the teaching or

the practice of the best masters. Like Wellington at Torres Vedras, they

all at times used the defensive till the elements of strength inherent in

that form of war, as opposed to the exhausting strain inherent in the form

that they had fixed upon their opponents, lifted them to a position where

they in their turn were relatively strong enough to use the more exhausting

form.

The confusion of thought which has led to the misconceptions about defence

as a method of war is due to several obvious causes. Counter-attacks from a

general defensive attitude have been regarded as a true offensive, as, for

instance, in Frederick the Great's best-known operations, or in Admiral

Tegetthoff's brilliant counterstroke at Lissa, or our own operations

against the Spanish Armada. Again, the defensive has acquired an ill name

by its being confused with a wrongly arrested offensive, where the superior

Power with the positive object lacked the spirit to use his material

superiority with sufficient activity and perseverance. Against such a Power

an inferior enemy can always redress his inferiority by passing to a bold

and quick offensive, thus acquiring a momentum both moral and physical

which more than compensates his lack of weight. The defensive has also

failed by the choice of a bad position which the enemy was able to turn or

avoid. A defensive attitude is nothing at all, its elements of strength

entirely disappear, unless it is such that the enemy must break it down by

force before he can reach his ultimate objective. Even more often has it

failed when the belligerent adopting it, finding he has no available

defensive position which will bar the enemy's progress, attempts to guard

every possible line of attack. The result is of course that by attenuating

his force he only accentuates his inferiority.

Clear and well proven as these considerations are for land warfare, their

application to the sea is not so obvious. It will be objected that at sea

there is no defensive. This is generally true for tactics, but even so not

universally true. Defensive tactical positions are possible at sea, as in

defended anchorages. These were always a reality, and the mine has

increased their possibilities. In the latest developments of naval warfare

we have seen the Japanese at the Elliot Islands preparing a real defensive

position to cover the landing of their Second Army in the Liaotung

Peninsula. Strategically the proposition is not true at all. A strategical

defensive has been quite as common at sea as on land, and our own gravest

problems have often been how to break down such an attitude when our enemy

assumed it. It usually meant that the enemy remained in his own waters and

near his own bases, where it was almost impossible for us to attack him

with decisive result, and whence he always threatened us with counterattack

at moments of exhaustion, as the Dutch did at Sole Bay and in the Medway.

The difficulty of dealing decisively with an enemy who adopted this course

was realised by our service very early, and from first to last one of our

chief preoccupations was to prevent the enemy availing himself of this

device and to force him to fight in the open, or at least to get between

him and his base and force an action there.

Probably the most remarkable manifestation of the advantages that may be

derived in suitable conditions from a strategical defensive is also to be

found in the late Russo-Japanese War. In the final crisis of the naval

struggle the Japanese fleet was able to take advantage of a defensive

attitude in its own waters which the Russian Baltic fleet would have to

break down to attain its end, and the result was the most decisive naval

victory ever recorded.

The deterrent power of active and dexterous operations from such a position

was well known to our old tradition. The device was used several times,

particularly in our home waters, to prevent a fleet, which for the time we

were locally too weak to destroy, from carrying out the work assigned to

it. A typical position of the kind was off Scilly, and it was proved again

and again that even a superior fleet could not hope to effect anything in

the Channel till the fleet off Scilly had been brought to decisive action.

But the essence of the device was the preservation of the aggressive spirit

in its most daring form. For success it depended on at least the will to

seize every occasion for bold and harassing counter-attacks such as Drake

and his colleagues struck at the Armada.

To submit to blockade in order to engage the attention of a superior

enemy's fleet is another form of defensive, but one that is almost wholly

evil. For a short time it may do good by permitting offensive operations

elsewhere which otherwise would be impossible. But if prolonged, it will

sooner or later destroy the spirit of your force and render it incapable of

effective aggression.

The conclusion then is that although for the practical purpose of framing

or appreciating plans of war the classification of wars into offensive and

defensive is of little use, a clear apprehension of the inherent relative

advantages of offence and defence is essential. We must realise that in

certain cases, provided always we preserve the aggressive spirit, the

defensive will enable an inferior force to achieve points when the

offensive would probably lead to its destruction. But the elements of

strength depend entirely on the will and insight to deal rapid blows in the

enemy's unguarded moments. So soon as the defensive ceases to be regarded

as a means of fostering power to strike and of reducing the enemy's power

of attack it loses all its strength. It ceases to be even a suspended

activity, and anything that is not activity is not war.

With these general indications of the relative advantages of offence and

defence we may leave the subject for the present. It is possible of course

to catalogue the advantages and disadvantages of each form, but any such

bald statement--without concrete examples to explain the meaning--must

always appear controversial and is apt to mislead. It is better to reserve

their fuller consideration till we come to deal with strategical operations

and are able to note their actual effect upon the conduct of war in its

various forms. Leaving therefore our first classification of wars into

offensive and defensive we will pass on to the second, which is the only

one of real practical importance.

* * * * *

CHAPTER THREE

NATURES OF WARS--

LIMITED AND UNLIMITED

* * * * *

The second classification to which we are led by the political theory of

war, is one which Clausewitz was the first to formulate and one to which he

came to attach the highest importance. It becomes necessary therefore to

examine his views in some detail--not because there is any need to regard a

continental soldier, however distinguished, as an indispensable authority

for a maritime nation. The reason is quite the reverse. It is because a

careful examination of his doctrine on this point will lay open what are

the radical and essential differences between the German or Continental

School of Strategy and the British or Maritime School--that is, our own

traditional School, which too many writers both at home and abroad quietly

assume to have no existence. The evil tendency of that assumption cannot be

too strongly emphasised, and the main purpose of this and the following

chapters will be to show how and why even the greatest of the continental

strategists fell short of realising fully the characteristic conception of

the British tradition.

By the classification in question Clausewitz distinguished wars into those

with a "Limited" object and those whose object was "Unlimited." Such a

classification was entirely characteristic of him, for it rested not alone

upon the material nature of the object, but on certain moral considerations

to which he was the first to attach their real value in war. Other writers

such as Jomini had attempted to classify wars by the special purpose for

which they were fought, but Clausewitz's long course of study convinced him

that such a distinction was unphilosophical and bore no just relation to

any tenable theory of war. Whether, that is, a war was positive or negative

mattered much, but its special purpose, whether, for instance, according to

Jomini's system, it was a war "to assert rights" or "to assist an ally" or

"to acquire territory," mattered not at all.

Whatever the object, the vital and paramount question was the intensity

with which the spirit of the nation was absorbed in its attainment. The

real point to determine in approaching any war plan was what did the object

mean to the two belligerents, what sacrifices would they make for it, what

risks were they prepared to run? It was thus he stated his view. "The

smaller the sacrifice we demand from our opponent, the smaller presumably

will be the means of resistance he will employ, and the smaller his means,

the smaller will ours be required to be. Similarly the smaller our

political object, the less value shall we set upon it and the more easily

we shall be induced to abandon it." Thus the political object of the war,

its original motive, will not only determine for both belligerents

reciprocally the aim of the force they use, but it will also be the

standard of the intensity of the efforts they will make. So he concludes

there may be wars of all degrees of importance and energy from a war of

extermination down to the use of an army of observation. So also in the

naval sphere there may be a life and death struggle for maritime supremacy

or hostilities which never rise beyond a blockade.

Such a view of the subject was of course a wide departure from the theory

of "Absolute War" on which Clausewitz had started working. Under that

theory "Absolute War" was the ideal form to which all war ought to attain,

and those which fell short of it were imperfect wars cramped by a lack of

true military spirit. But so soon as he had seized the fact that in actual

life the moral factor always must override the purely military factor, he

saw that he had been working on too narrow a basis--a basis that was purely

theoretical in that it ignored the human factor. He began to perceive that

it was logically unsound to assume as the foundation of a strategical

system that there was one pattern to which all wars ought to conform. In

the light of his full and final apprehension of the value of the human

factor he saw wars falling into two well-marked categories, each of which

would legitimately be approached in a radically different manner, and not

necessarily on the lines of "Absolute War."

He saw that there was one class of war where the political object was of so

vital an importance to both belligerents that they would tend to fight to

the utmost limit of their endurance to secure it. But there was another

class where the object was of less importance, that is to say, where its

value to one or both the belligerents was not so great as to be worth

unlimited sacrifices of blood and treasure. It was these two kinds of war

he designated provisionally "Unlimited" and "Limited," by which he meant

not that you were not to exert the force employed with all the vigour you

could develop, but that there might be a limit beyond which it would be bad

policy to spend that vigour, a point at which, long before your force was

exhausted or even fully developed, it would be wiser to abandon your object

rather than to spend more upon it.

This distinction it is very necessary to grasp quite clearly, for it is

often superficially confused with the distinction already referred to,

which Clausewitz drew in the earlier part of his work--that is, the

distinction between what he called the character of modern war and the

character of the wars which preceded the Napoleonic era. It will be

remembered he insisted that the wars of his own time had been wars between

armed nations with a tendency to throw the whole weight of the nation into

the fighting line, whereas in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries wars

were waged by standing armies and not by the whole nation in arms. The

distinction of course is real and of far-reaching consequences, but it has

no relation to the distinction between "Limited" and "Unlimited" war. War

may be waged on the Napoleonic system either for a limited or an unlimited

object.

A modern instance will serve to clear the field. The recent Russo-Japanese

War was fought for a limited object--the assertion of certain claims over

territory which formed no part of the possessions of either belligerent.

Hostilities were conducted on entirely modern lines by two armed nations

and not by standing armies alone. But in the case of one belligerent her

interest in the object was so limited as to cause her to abandon it long

before her whole force as an armed nation was exhausted or even put forth.

The expense of life and treasure which the struggle was involving was

beyond what the object was worth.

This second distinction--that is, between Limited and Unlimited

wars--Clausewitz regarded as of greater importance than his previous one

founded on the negative or positive nature of the object. He was long in

reaching it. His great work _On War_ as he left it proceeds almost entirely

on the conception of offensive or defensive as applied to the Napoleonic

ideal of absolute war. The new idea came to him towards the end in the full

maturity of his prolonged study, and it came to him in endeavouring to

apply his strategical speculations to the practical process of framing a

war plan in anticipation of a threatened breach with France. It was only in

his final section _On War Plans_ that he began to deal with it. By that

time he had grasped the first practical result to which his theory led. He

saw that the distinction between Limited and Unlimited war connoted a

cardinal distinction in the methods of waging it. When the object was

unlimited, and would consequently call forth your enemy's whole war power,

it was evident that no firm decision of the struggle could be reached till

his war power was entirely crushed. Unless you had a reasonable hope of

being able to do this it was bad policy to seek your end by force--that is,

you ought not to go to war. In the case of a limited object, however, the

complete destruction of the enemy's armed force was beyond what was

necessary. Clearly you could achieve your end if you could seize the

object, and by availing yourself of the elements of strength inherent in

the defensive could set up such a situation that it would cost the enemy

more to turn you out than the object was worth to him.

Here then was a wide difference in the fundamental postulate of your war

plan. In the case of an unlimited war your main strategical offensive must

be directed against the armed forces of the enemy; in the case of a limited

war, even where its object was positive, it need not be. If conditions were

favourable, it would suffice to make the object itself the objective of

your main strategical offensive. Clearly, then, he had reached a

theoretical distinction which modified his whole conception of strategy. No

longer is there logically but one kind of war, the Absolute, and no longer

is there but one legitimate objective, the enemy's armed forces. Being

sound theory, it of course had an immediate practical value, for obviously

it was a distinction from which the actual work of framing a war plan must

take its departure.

A curious corroboration of the soundness of these views is that Jomini

reached an almost identical standpoint independently and by an entirely

different road. His method was severely concrete, based on the comparison

of observed facts, but it brought him as surely as the abstract method of

his rival to the conclusion that there were two distinct classes of object.

"They are of two different kinds," he says, "one which may be called

territorial or geographical ... the other on the contrary consists

exclusively in the destruction or disorganisation of the enemy's forces

without concerning yourself with geographical points of any kind." It is

under the first category of his first main classification "Of offensive

wars to assert rights," that he deals with what Clausewitz would call

"Limited Wars." Citing as an example Frederick the Great's war for the

conquest of Silesia, he says, "In such a war ... the offensive operations

ought to be proportional to the end in view. The first move is naturally to

occupy the provinces claimed" (not, be it noted, to direct your blow at the

enemy's main force). "Afterwards," he proceeds, "you can push the offensive

according to circumstances and your relative strength in order to obtain

the desired cession by menacing the enemy at home." Here we have

Clausewitz's whole doctrine of "Limited War"; firstly, the primary or

territorial stage, in which you endeavour to occupy the geographical

object, and then the secondary or coercive stage, in which you seek by

exerting general pressure upon your enemy to force him to accept the

adverse situation you have set up.

Such a method of making war obviously differs in a fundamental manner from

that which Napoleon habitually adopted, and yet we have it presented by

Jomini and Clausewitz, the two apostles of the Napoleonic method. The

explanation is, of course, that both of them had seen too much not to know

that Napoleon's method was only applicable when you could command a real

physical or moral preponderance. Given such a preponderance, both were

staunch for the use of extreme means in Napoleon's manner. It is not as

something better than the higher road that they commend the lower one, but

being veteran staff-officers and not mere theorists, they knew well that a

belligerent must sometimes find the higher road beyond his strength, or

beyond the effort which the spirit of the nation is prepared to make for

the end in view, and like the practical men they were, they set themselves

to study the potentialities of the lower road should hard necessity force

them to travel it. They found that these potentialities in certain

circumstances were great. As an example of a case where the lower form was

more appropriate Jomini cites Napoleon's campaign against Russia in 1812.

In his opinion it would have been better if Napoleon had been satisfied to

begin on the lower method with a limited territorial object, and he

attributes his failure to the abuse of a method which, however well suited

to his wars in Germany, was incapable of achieving success in the

conditions presented by a war with Russia.

Seeing how high was Napoleon's opinion of Jomini as a master of the science

of war, it is curious how his views on the two natures of wars have been

ignored in the present day. It is even more curious in the case of

Clausewitz, since we know that in the plenitude of his powers he came to

regard this classification as the master-key of the subject. The

explanation is that the distinction is not very clearly formulated in his

first seven books, which alone he left in anything like a finished

condition. It was not till he came to write his eighth book _On War Plans_

that he saw the vital importance of the distinction round which he had been

hovering. In that book the distinction is clearly laid down, but the book

unhappily was never completed. With his manuscript, however, he left a

"Note" warning us against regarding his earlier books as a full

presentation of his developed ideas. From the note it is also evident that

he thought the classification on which he had lighted was of the utmost

importance, that he believed it would clear up all the difficulties which

he had encountered in his earlier books--difficulties which he had come to

see arose from a too exclusive consideration of the Napoleonic method of

conducting war. "I look upon the first six books," he wrote in 1827, "as

only a mass of material which is still in a manner without form and which

has still to be revised again. In this revision the two kinds of wars will

be kept more distinctly in view all through, and thereby all ideas will

gain in clearness, in precision, and in exactness of application."

Evidently he had grown dissatisfied with the theory of Absolute War on

which he had started. His new discovery had convinced him that that theory

would not serve as a standard for all natures of wars. "Shall we," he asks

in his final book, "shall we now rest satisfied with this idea and by it

judge of all wars, however much they may differ?"[2] He answers his

question in the negative. "You cannot determine the requirements of all

wars from the Napoleonic type. Keep that type and its absolute method

before you to use _when you can_ or _when you must_, but keep equally

before you that there are two main natures of war."

[2] Clausewitz, On War, Book viii, chap, ii

In his note written at this time, when the distinction first came to him,

he defines these two natures of war as follows: "First, those in which the

object is the _overthrow of the enemy_, whether it be we aim at his

political destruction or merely at disarming him and forcing him to

conclude peace on our terms; and secondly, those in which our object is

_merely to make some conquests on the frontiers of his country_, either for

the purpose of retaining them permanently or of turning them to account as

a matter of exchange in settling terms of peace."[3] It was in his eighth

book that he intended, had he lived, to have worked out the comprehensive

idea he had conceived. Of that book he says, "The chief object will be to

make good the two points of view above mentioned, by which everything will

be simplified and at the same time be given the breath of life. I hope in

this book to iron out many creases in the heads of strategists and

statesmen, and at least to show the object of action and the real point to

be considered in war."[4]

[3] Ibid, Preparatory Notice, p. vii.

[4] Ibid, p. viii

That hope was never realised, and that perhaps is why his penetrating

analysis has been so much ignored. The eighth book as we have it is only a

fragment. In the spring of 1830--an anxious moment, when it seemed that

Prussia would require all her best for another struggle single-handed with

France--he was called away to an active command. What he left of the book

on "War Plans" he describes as "merely a track roughly cleared, as it were,

through the mass, in order to ascertain the points of greatest moment." It

was his intention, he says, to "carry the spirit of these ideas into his

first six books"--to put the crown on his work, in fact, by elaborating and

insisting upon his two great propositions, viz. that war was a form of

policy, and that being so it might be Limited or Unlimited.

The extent to which he would have infused his new idea into the whole every

one is at liberty to judge for himself; but this indisputable fact remains.

In the winter in view of the threatening attitude of France in regard to

Belgium he drew up a war plan, and it was designed not on the Napoleonic

method of making the enemy's armed force the main strategical objective,

but on seizing a limited territorial object and forcing a disadvantageous

counter-offensive upon the French. The revolutionary movement throughout

Europe had broken the Holy Alliance to pieces. Not only did Prussia find

herself almost single-handed against France, but she herself was sapped by

revolution. To adopt the higher form of war and seek to destroy the armed

force of the enemy was beyond her power. But she could still use the lower

form, and by seizing Belgium she could herself force so exhausting a task

on France that success was well within her strength. It was exactly so we

endeavoured to begin the Seven Years' War; and it was exactly so the

Japanese successfully conducted their war with Russia; and what is more

striking, it was on similar lines that in 1859 Moltke in similar

circumstances drew up his first war plan against France. His idea at that

time was on the lines which Jomini held should have been Napoleon's in

1812. It was not to strike directly at Paris or the French main army, but

to occupy Alsace-Lorraine and hold that territory till altered conditions

should give him the necessary preponderance for proceeding to the higher

form or forcing a favourable peace.

In conclusion, then, we have to note that the matured fruit of the

Napoleonic period was a theory of war based not on the single absolute

idea, but on the dual distinction of Limited and Unlimited. Whatever

practical importance we may attach to the distinction, so much must be

admitted on the clear and emphatic pronouncements of Clausewitz and Jomini.

The practical importance is another matter. It may fairly be argued that in

continental warfare--in spite of the instances quoted by both the classical

writers--it is not very great, for reasons that will appear directly. But

it must be remembered that continental warfare is not the only form in

which great international issues are decided. Standing at the final point

which Clausewitz and Jomini reached, we are indeed only on the threshold of

the subject. We have to begin where they left off and inquire what their

ideas have to tell for the modern conditions of worldwide imperial States,

where the sea becomes a direct and vital factor.

* * * * *

CHAPTER FOUR

LIMITED WAR AND MARITIME EMPIRES--

Development of Clausewitz's and Jomini's

Theory of a Limited Territorial Object, and Its

Application to Modern Imperial Conditions

* * * * *

The German war plans already cited, which were based respectively on the

occupation of Belgium and Alsace-Lorraine, and Jomini's remarks on

Napoleon's disastrous Russian campaign serve well to show the point to

which continental strategists have advanced along the road which Clausewitz

was the first to indicate clearly. We have now to consider its application

to modern imperial conditions, and above all where the maritime element

forcibly asserts itself. We shall then see how small that advance has been

compared with its far-reaching effects for a maritime and above all an

insular Power.

It is clear that Clausewitz himself never apprehended the full significance

of his brilliant theory. His outlook was still purely continental, and the

limitations of continental warfare tend to veil the fuller meaning of the

principle he had framed. Had he lived, there is little doubt he would have

worked it out to its logical conclusion, but his death condemned his theory

of limited war to remain in the inchoate condition in which he had left it.

It will be observed, as was natural enough, that all through his work

Clausewitz had in his mind war between two contiguous or at least adjacent

continental States, and a moment's consideration will show that in that

type of war the principle of the limited object can rarely if ever assert

itself in perfect precision. Clausewitz himself put it quite clearly.

Assuming a case where "the overthrow of the enemy"--that is, unlimited

war--is beyond our strength, he points out that we need not therefore

necessarily act on the defensive. Our action may still be positive and

offensive, but the object can be nothing more than "the conquest of part of

the enemy's country." Such a conquest he knew might so far weaken your

enemy or strengthen your own position as to enable you to secure a

satisfactory peace. The path of history is indeed strewn with such cases.

But he was careful to point out that such a form of war was open to the

gravest objections. Once you had occupied the territory you aimed at, your

offensive action was, as a rule, arrested. A defensive attitude had to be

assumed, and such an arrest of offensive action he had previously shown was

inherently vicious, if only for moral reasons. Added to this you might find

that in your effort to occupy the territorial object you had so

irretrievably separated your striking force from your home-defence force as

to be in no position to meet your enemy if he was able to retort by acting

on unlimited lines with a stroke at your heart. A case in point was the

Austerlitz campaign, where Austria's object was to wrest North Italy from

Napoleon's empire. She sent her main army under the Archduke Charles to

seize the territory she desired. Napoleon immediately struck at Vienna,

destroyed her home army, and occupied the capital before the Archduke could

turn to bar his way.

The argument is this: that, as all strategic attack tends to leave points

of your own uncovered, it always involves greater or less provision for

their defence. It is obvious, therefore, that if we are aiming at a limited

territorial object the proportion of defence required will tend to be much

greater than if we are directing our attack on the main forces of the

enemy. In unlimited war our attack will itself tend to defend everything

elsewhere, by forcing the enemy to concentrate against our attack. Whether

the limited form is justifiable or not therefore depends, as Clausewitz

points out, on the geographical position of the object.

So far British experience is with him, but he then goes on to say the more

closely the territory in question is an annex of our own the safer is this

form of war, because then our offensive action will the more surely cover

our home country. As a case in point he cites Frederick the Great's opening

of the Seven Years' War with the occupation of Saxony--a piece of work

which materially strengthened Prussian defence. Of the British opening in

Canada he says nothing. His outlook was too exclusively continental for it

to occur to him to test his doctrine with a conspicuously successful case

in which the territory aimed at was distant from the home territory and in

no way covered it. Had he done so he must have seen how much stronger an

example of the strength of limited war was the case of Canada than the case

of Saxony. Moreover, he would have seen that the difficulties, which in

spite of his faith in his discovery accompanied his attempt to apply it,

arose from the fact that the examples he selected were not really examples

at all.

When he conceived the idea, the only kind of limited object he had in his

mind was, to use his own words, "some conquests on the frontiers of the

enemy's country," such as Silesia and Saxony for Frederick the Great,

Belgium in his own war plan, and Alsace-Lorraine in that of Moltke. Now it

is obvious that such objects are not truly limited, for two reasons. In the

first place, such territory is usually an organic part of your enemy's

country, or otherwise of so much importance to him that he will be willing

to use unlimited effort to retain it. In the second place, there will be no

strategical obstacle to his being able to use his whole force to that end.

To satisfy the full conception of a limited object, one of two conditions

is essential. Firstly, it must be not merely limited in area, but of really

limited political importance; and secondly, it must be so situated as to be

strategically isolated or to be capable of being reduced to practical

isolation by strategical operations. Unless this condition exists, it is in

the power of either belligerent, as Clausewitz himself saw, to pass to

unlimited war if he so desires, and, ignoring the territorial objective, to

strike at the heart of his enemy and force him to desist.

If, then, we only regard war between contiguous continental States, in

which the object is the conquest of territory on either of their frontiers,

we get no real generic difference between limited and unlimited war. The

line between them is in any case too shadowy or unstable to give a

classification of any solidity. It is a difference of degree rather than of

kind. If, on the other hand, we extend our view to wars between worldwide

empires, the distinction at once becomes organic. Possessions which lie

oversea or at the extremities of vast areas of imperfectly settled

territory are in an entirely different category from those limited objects

which Clausewitz contemplated. History shows that they can never have the

political importance of objects which are organically part of the European

system, and it shows further that they can be isolated by naval action

sufficiently to set up the conditions of true limited war.

Jomini approaches the point, but without clearly detaching it. In his

chapter "On Great Invasions and Distant Expeditions," he points out how

unsafe it is to take the conditions of war between contiguous States and

apply them crudely to cases where the belligerents are separated by large

areas of land or sea. He hovers round the sea factor, feeling how great a

difference it makes, but without getting close to the real distinction. His

conception of the inter-action of fleets and armies never rises above their

actual co-operation in touch one with the other in a distant theatre. He

has in mind the assistance which the British fleet afforded Wellington in

the Peninsula, and Napoleon's dreams of Asiatic conquest, pronouncing such

distant invasions as impossible in modern times except perhaps in

combination with a powerful fleet that could provide the army of invasion

with successive advanced bases. Of the paramount value of the fleet's

isolating and preventive functions he gives no hint.

Even when he deals with oversea expeditions, as he does at some length, his

grip of the point is no closer. It is indeed significant of how entirely

continental thought had failed to penetrate the subject that in devoting

over thirty pages to an enumeration of the principles of oversea

expeditions, he, like Clausewitz, does not so much as mention the conquest

of Canada; and yet it is the leading case of a weak military Power

succeeding by the use of the limited form of war in forcing its will upon a

strong one, and succeeding because it was able by naval action to secure

its home defence and isolate the territorial object.

For our ideas of true limited objects, therefore, we must leave the

continental theatres and turn to mixed or maritime wars. We have to look to

such cases as Canada and Havana in the Seven Years' War, and Cuba in the

Spanish-American War, cases in which complete isolation of the object by

naval action was possible, or to such examples as the Crimea and Korea,

where sufficient isolation was attainable by naval action owing to the

length and difficulty of the enemy's land communications and to the

strategical situation of the territory at stake.

These examples will also serve to illustrate and enforce the second

essential of this kind of war. As has been already said, for a true limited

object we must have not only the power of isolation, but also the power by

a secure home defence of barring an unlimited counterstroke. In all the

above cases this condition existed. In all of them the belligerents had no

contiguous frontiers, and this point is vital. For it is obvious that if

two belligerents have a common frontier, it is open to the superior of

them, no matter how distant or how easy to isolate the limited object may

be, to pass at will to unlimited war by invasion. This process is even

possible when the belligerents are separated by a neutral State, since the

territory of a weak neutral will be violated if the object be of sufficient

importance, or if the neutral be too strong to coerce, there still remains

the possibility that his alliance may be secured.

We come, then, to this final proposition--that limited war is only

permanently possible to island Powers or between Powers which are separated

by sea, and then only when the Power desiring limited war is able to

command the sea to such a degree as to be able not only to isolate the

distant object, but also to render impossible the invasion of his home

territory.

Here, then, we reach the true meaning and highest military value of what we

call the command of the sea, and here we touch the secret of England's

success against Powers so greatly superior to herself in military strength.

It is only fitting that such a secret should have been first penetrated by

an Englishman. For so it was, though it must be said that except in the

light of Clausewitz's doctrine the full meaning of Bacon's famous aphorism

is not revealed. "This much is certain," said the great Elizabethan on the

experience of our first imperial war; "he that commands the sea is at great

liberty and may take as much or as little of the war as he will, whereas

those that be strongest by land are many times nevertheless in great

straits." It would be difficult to state more pithily the ultimate

significance of Clausewitz's doctrine. Its cardinal truth is clearly

indicated--that limited wars do not turn upon the armed strength of the

belligerents, but upon the amount of that strength which they are able or

willing to bring to bear at the decisive point.

It is much to be regretted that Clausewitz did not live to see with Bacon's

eyes and to work out the full comprehensiveness of his doctrine. His

ambition was to formulate a theory which would explain all wars. He

believed he had done so, and yet it is clear he never knew how complete was

his success, nor how wide was the field he had covered. To the end it would

seem he was unaware that he had found an explanation of one of the most

inscrutable problems in history--the expansion of England--at least so far

as it has been due to successful war. That a small country with a weak army

should have been able to gather to herself the most desirable regions of

the earth, and to gather them at the expense of the greatest military

Powers, is a paradox to which such Powers find it hard to be reconciled.

The phenomenon seemed always a matter of chance-an accident without any

foundation in the essential constants of war. It remained for Clausewitz,

unknown to himself, to discover that explanation, and he reveals it to us

in the inherent strength of limited war when means and conditions are

favourable for its use.

We find, then, if we take a wider view than was open to Clausewitz and

submit his latest ideas to the test of present imperial conditions, so far

from failing to cover the ground they gain a fuller meaning and a firmer

basis. Apply them to maritime warfare and it becomes clear that his

distinction between limited and unlimited war does not rest alone on the

moral factor. A war may be limited not only because the importance of the

object is too limited to call forth the whole national force, but also

because the sea may be made to present an insuperable physical obstacle to

the whole national force being brought to bear. That is to say, a war may

be limited physically by the strategical isolation of the object, as well

as morally by its comparative unimportance.

* * * * *

CHAPTER FIVE

WARS OF INTERVENTION--

LIMITED INTERFERENCE IN UNLIMITED WAR

* * * * *

Before leaving the general consideration of limited war, we have still to

deal with a form of it that has not yet been mentioned. Clausewitz gave it

provisionally the name of "War limited by contingent," and could find no

place for it in his system. It appeared to him to differ essentially from

war limited by its political object, or as Jomini put it, war with a

territorial object. Yet it had to be taken into account and explained, if

only for the part it had played in European history.

For us it calls for the most careful examination, not only because it

baffled the great German strategist to reconcile it with his theory of war,

but also because it is the form in which Great Britain most successfully

demonstrated the potentiality for direct continental interference of a

small army acting in conjunction with a dominant fleet.

The combined operations which were the normal expression of the British

method of making war on the limited basis were of two main classes.

Firstly, there were those designed purely for the conquest of the objects

for which we went to war, which were usually colonial or distant oversea

territory; and secondly, operations more or less upon the European seaboard

designed not for permanent conquest, but as a method of disturbing our

enemy's plans and strengthening the hands of our allies and our own

position. Such operations might take the form of insignificant coastal

diversions, or they might rise through all degrees of importance till, as

in Wellington's operations in the Peninsula, they became indistinguishable

in form from regular continental warfare.

It would seem, therefore, that these operations were distinguished not so

much by the nature of the object as by the fact that we devoted to them,

not the whole of our military strength, but only a certain part of it which

was known as our "disposal force." Consequently, they appear to call for

some such special classification, and to fall naturally into the category

which Clausewitz called "War limited by contingent."

It was a nature of war well enough known in another form on the Continent.

During the eighteenth century there had been a large number of cases of war

actually limited by contingent--that is, cases where a country not having a

vital interest in the object made war by furnishing the chief belligerent

with an auxiliary force of a stipulated strength.

It was in the sixth chapter of his last book that Clausewitz intended to

deal with this anomalous form of hostility. His untimely death, however,

has left us with no more than a fragment, in which he confesses that such

cases are "embarrassing to his theory." If, he adds, the auxiliary force

were placed unreservedly at the disposal of the chief belligerent, the

problem would be simple enough. It would then, in effect, be the same thing

as unlimited war with the aid of a subsidised force. But in fact, as he

observes, this seldom happened, for the contingent was always more or less

controlled in accordance with the special political aims of the Government

which furnished it. Consequently, the only conclusion he succeeded in

reaching was that it was a form of war that had to be taken into account,

and that it was a form of limited war that appeared to differ essentially

from war limited by object. We are left, in fact, with an impression that

there must be two kinds of limited war.

But if we pursue his historical method and examine the cases in which this

nature of war was successful, and those in which it was unsuccessful, we

shall find that wherever success is taken as an index of its legitimate

employment, the practical distinction between the two kinds of limited war

tends to disappear. The indications are that where the essential factors

which justify the use of war limited by object are present in war limited

by contingent, then that form of war tends to succeed, but not otherwise.

We are brought, in fact, to this proposition, that the distinction "Limited

by contingent" is not one that is inherent in war, and is quite out of line

with the theory in hand--that, in reality, it is not a _form_ of war, but a

_method_ which may be employed either for limited or unlimited war. In

other words, war limited by contingent, if it is to be regarded as a

legitimate form of war at all, must take frankly the one shape or the

other. Either the contingent must act as an organic unit of the force

making unlimited war without any reservations whatever, or else it should

be given a definite territorial object, with an independent organisation

and an independent limited function.

Our own experience seems to indicate that war by contingent or war with "a

disposal force" attains the highest success when it approaches most closely

to true limited war--that is, as in the case of the Peninsula and the

Crimea, where its object is to wrest or secure from the enemy a definite

piece of territory that to a greater or less extent can be isolated by

naval action. Its operative power, in fact, appears to bear some direct

relation to the intimacy with which naval and military action can be

combined to give the contingent a weight and mobility that are beyond its

intrinsic power.

If, then, we would unravel the difficulties of war limited by contingent,

it seems necessary to distinguish between the continental and the British

form of it. The continental form, as we have seen, differs but little in

conception from unlimited war. The contingent is furnished at least

ostensibly with the idea that it is to be used by the chief belligerent to

assist him in overthrowing the common enemy, and that its objective will be

the enemy's organised forces or his capital. Or it may be that the

contingent is to be used as an army of observation to prevent a

counterstroke, so as to facilitate and secure the main offensive movement

of the chief belligerent. In either case, however small may be our

contribution to the allied force, we are using the unlimited form and

aiming at an unlimited and not a mere territorial object.

If now we turn to British experience of war limited by contingent, we find

that the continental form has frequently been used, but we also find it

almost invariably accompanied by a popular repugnance, as though there were

something in it antagonistic to the national instinct. A leading case is

the assistance we sent to Frederick the Great in the Seven Years' War. At

the opening of the war, so great was the popular repugnance that the

measure was found impossible, and it was not till Frederick's dazzling

resistance to the Catholic powers had clothed him with the glory of a

Protestant hero, that Pitt could do what he wanted. The old religious fire

was stirred. The most potent of all national instincts kindled the people

to a generous warmth which overcame their inborn antipathy to continental

operations, and it was possible to send a substantial contingent to

Frederick's assistance. In the end the support fully achieved its purpose,

but it must be noted that even in this case the operations were limited not

only by contingent but also by object. It is true that Frederick was

engaged in an unlimited war in which the continued existence of Prussia was

at stake, and that the British force was an organic element in his war

plan. Nevertheless, it formed part of a British subsidised army under

Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, who though nominated by Frederick was a

British commander-in-chief. His army was in organisation entirely distinct

from that of Frederick, and it was assigned the very definite and limited

function of preventing the French occupying Hanover and so turning the

Prussian right flank. Finally it must be noted that its ability to perform

this function was due to the fact that the theatre of operations assigned

to it was such that in no probable event could it lose touch with the sea,

nor could the enemy cut its lines of supply and retreat.

These features of the enterprise should be noted. They differentiate it

from our earlier use of war limited by contingent in the continental

manner, of which Marlborough's campaigns were typical, and they exhibit the

special form which Marlborough would have chosen had political exigencies

permitted and which was to become characteristic of British effort from

Pitt's time onward. In the method of our greatest War Minister we have not

only the limit by contingent but also the limit of a definite and

independent function, and finally we have touch with the sea. This is the

really vital factor, and upon it, as will presently appear, depends the

strength of the method.

In the earlier part of the Great War we employed the same form in our

operations in North-Western Europe. There we had also the limited function

of securing Holland, and also complete touch with the sea, but our theatre

of operations was not independent. Intimate concerted action with other

forces was involved, and the result in every case was failure. Later on in

Sicily, where absolute isolation was attainable, the strength of the method

enabled us to achieve a lasting result with very slender means. But the

result was purely defensive. It was not till the Peninsular War developed

that we found a theatre for war limited by contingent in which all the

conditions that make for success were present. Even there so long as our

army was regarded as a contingent auxiliary to the Spanish army the usual

failure ensued. Only in Portugal, the defence of which was a true limited

object, and where we had a sea-girt theatre independent of extraneous

allies, was success achieved from the first. So strong was the method here,

and so exhausting the method which it forced on the enemy, that the local

balance of force was eventually reversed and we were able to pass to a

drastic offensive.

The real secret of Wellington's success--apart from his own genius--was

that in perfect conditions he was applying the limited form to an unlimited

war. Our object was unlimited. It was nothing less than the overthrow of

Napoleon. Complete success at sea had failed to do it, but that success had

given us the power of applying the limited form, which was the most

decisive form of offence within our means. Its substantial contribution to

the final achievement of the object is now universally recognised.

The general result, then, of these considerations is that war by contingent

in the continental form seldom or never differs generically from unlimited

war, for the conditions required by limited war are seldom or never

present. But what may be called the British or maritime form is in fact the

application of the limited method to the unlimited form, as ancillary to

the larger operations of our allies--a method which has usually been open

to us because the control of the sea has enabled us to select a theatre in

effect truly limited.[5]

[5] Wellington's view of the essential factor was expressed to Rear

Admiral Martin, who was sent to Spain by the Admiralty to confer with him

in September 1813. "If anyone," he said, "wishes to know the history of

this war, I will tell them it is our maritime superiority gives me the

power of maintaining my army while the enemy are unable to do so."

(_Letters of Sir T. Byam Martin_) [Navy Records Society], ii, p. 499.

But what if the conditions of the struggle in which we wish to intervene

are such that no truly limited theatre is available? In that case we have

to choose between placing a contingent frankly at the disposal of our ally,

or confining ourselves to coastal diversion, as we did at Frederick the

Great's request in the early campaigns of the Seven Years' War. Such

operations can seldom be satisfactory to either party. The small positive

results of our efforts to intervene in this way have indeed done more than

anything to discredit this form of war, and to brand it as unworthy of a

first-class Power. Yet the fact remains that all the great continental

masters of war have feared or valued British intervention of this character

even in the most unfavourable conditions. It was because they looked for

its effects rather in the threat than in the performance. They did not

reckon for positive results at all. So long as such intervention took an

amphibious form they knew its disturbing effect upon a European situation

was always out of all proportion to the intrinsic strength employed or the

positive results it could give. Its operative action was that it threatened

positive results unless it were strongly met. Its effect, in short, was

negative. Its value lay in its power of containing force greater than its

own. That is all that can be claimed for it, but it may be all that is

required. It is not the most drastic method of intervention, but it has

proved itself the most drastic for a Power whose forces are not adapted for

the higher method. Frederick the Great was the first great soldier to

recognise it, and Napoleon was the last. For years he shut his eyes to it,

laughed at it, covered it with a contempt that grew ever more irritable. In

1805 he called Craig's expedition a "pygmy combination," yet the

preparation of another combined force for an entirely different destination

caused him to see the first as an advance guard of a movement he could not

ignore, and he sacrificed his fleet in an impotent effort to deal with it.

It was not, however, till four years later that he was forced to place on

record his recognition of the principle. Then, curiously enough, he was

convinced by an expedition which we have come to regard as above all others

condemnatory of amphibious operations against the Continent. The Walcheren

expedition is now usually held as the leading case of fatuous war

administration. Historians can find no words too bad for it. They ignore

the fact that it was a step--the final and most difficult step--in our

post-Trafalgar policy of using the army to perfect our command of the sea

against a fleet acting stubbornly on the defensive. It began with

Copenhagen in 1807. It failed at the Dardanelles because fleet and army

were separated; it succeeded at Lisbon and at Cadiz by demonstration alone.

Walcheren, long contemplated, had been put off till the last as the most

formidable and the least pressing. Napoleon had been looking for the

attempt ever since the idea was first broached in this country, but as time

passed and the blow did not fall, the danger came to be more and more

ignored. Finally, the moment came when he was heavily engaged in Austria

and forced to call up the bulk of his strength to deal with the Archduke

Charles. The risks were still great, but the British Government faced them

boldly with open eyes. It was now or never. They were bent on developing

their utmost military strength in the Peninsula, and so long as a potent

and growing fleet remained in the North Sea it would always act as an

increasing drag on such development. The prospective gain of success was in

the eyes of the Government out of all proportion to the probable loss by

failure. So when Napoleon least expected it they determined to act, and

caught him napping. The defences of Antwerp had been left incomplete. There

was no army to meet the blow--nothing but a polyglot rabble without staff

or even officers. For a week at least success was in our hands. Napoleon's

fleet only escaped by twenty-four hours, and yet the failure was not only

complete but disastrous. Still so entirely were the causes of failure

accidental, and so near had it come to success, that Napoleon received a

thorough shock and looked for a quick repetition of the attempt. So

seriously indeed did he regard his narrow escape that he found himself

driven to reconsider his whole system of home defence. Not only did he deem

it necessary to spend large sums in increasing the fixed defences of

Antwerp and Toulon, but his Director of Conscription was called upon to

work out a scheme for providing a permanent force of no less than 300,000

men from the National Guard to defend the French coasts. "With 30,000 men

in transports at the Downs," the Emperor wrote, "the English can paralyse

300,000 of my army, and that will reduce us to the rank of a second-class

Power."[6]

[6] _Correspondance de Napoléon_, xix, 421, 4 September.

The concentration of the British efforts in the Peninsula apparently

rendered the realisation of this project unnecessary--that is, our line of

operation was declared and the threat ceased. But none the less Napoleon's

recognition of the principle remains on record--not in one of his speeches

made for some ulterior purpose, but in a staff order to the principal

officer concerned.

It is generally held that modern developments in military organisation and

transport will enable a great continental Power to ignore such threats.

Napoleon ignored them in the past, but only to verify the truth that in war

to ignore a threat is too often to create an opportunity. Such

opportunities may occur late or early. As both Lord Ligonier and Wolfe laid

it down for such operations, surprise is not necessarily to be looked for

at the beginning. We have usually had to create or wait for our

opportunity--too often because we were either not ready or not bold enough

to seize the first that occurred.

The cases in which such intervention has been most potent have been of two

classes. Firstly, there is the intrusion into a war plan which our enemy

has designed without allowing for our intervention, and to which he is

irrevocably committed by his opening movements. Secondly, there is

intervention to deprive the enemy of the fruits of victory. This form finds

its efficacy in the principle that unlimited wars are not always decided by

the destruction of armies. There usually remains the difficult work of

conquering the people afterwards with an exhausted army. The intrusion of a

small fresh force from the sea in such cases may suffice to turn the scale,

as it did in the Peninsula, and as, in the opinion of some high

authorities, it might have done in France in 1871.

Such a suggestion will appear to be almost heretical as sinning against the

principle which condemns a strategical reserve. We say that the whole

available force should be developed for the vital period of the struggle.

No one can be found to dispute it nowadays. It is too obviously true when

it is a question of a conflict between organised forces, but in the absence

of all proof we are entitled to doubt whether it is true for that

exhausting and demoralising period which lies beyond the shock of armies.

* * * * *

CHAPTER SIX

CONDITIONS OF STRENGTH IN LIMITED WAR

* * * * *

The elements of strength in limited war are closely analogous to those

generally inherent in defence. That is to say, that as a correct use of

defence will sometimes enable an inferior force to gain its end against a

superior one, so are there instances in which the correct use of the

limited form of war has enabled a weak military Power to attain success

against a much stronger one, and these instances are too numerous to permit

us to regard the results as accidental.

An obvious element of strength is that where the geographical conditions

are favourable we are able by the use of our navy to restrict the amount of

force our army will have to deal with. We can in fact bring up our fleet to

redress the adverse balance of our land force. But apart from this very

practical reason there is another, which is rooted in the first principles

of strategy.

It is that limited war permits the use of the defensive without its usual

drawbacks to a degree that is impossible in unlimited war. These drawbacks

are chiefly that it tends to surrender the initiative to the enemy and that

it deprives us of the moral exhilaration of the offensive. But in limited

war, as we shall see, this need not be the case, and if without making

these sacrifices we are able to act mainly on the defensive our position

becomes exceedingly strong.

The proposition really admits of no doubt. For even if we be not in

whole-hearted agreement with Clausewitz's doctrine of the strength of

defence, still we may at least accept Moltke's modification of it. He held

that the strongest form of war--that is, the form which economically makes

for the highest development of strength in a given force--is strategic

offensive combined with tactical defensive. Now these are in effect the

conditions which limited war should give--that is, if the theatre and

method be rightly chosen. Let it be remembered that the use of this form of

war presupposes that we are able by superior readiness or mobility or by

being more conveniently situated to establish ourselves in the territorial

object before our opponent can gather strength to prevent us. This done, we

have the initiative, and the enemy being unable by hypothesis to attack us

at home, must conform to our opening by endeavouring to turn us out. We are

in a position to meet his attack on ground of our own choice and to avail

ourselves of such opportunities of counter-attack as his distant and

therefore exhausting offensive movements are likely to offer. Assuming, as

in our own case we always must assume, that the territorial object is

sea-girt and our enemy is not able to command the sea, such opportunities

are certain to present themselves, and even if they are not used will

greatly embarrass the main attack--as was abundantly shown in the Russian

nervousness during their advance into the Liaotung Peninsula, due to the

fear of a counter-stroke from the Gulf of Pe-chi-li.

The actual situation which this method of procedure sets up is that our

major strategy is offensive--that is, our main movement is positive, having

for its aim the occupation of the territorial object. The minor strategy

that follows should be in its general lines defensive, designed, so soon as

the enemy sets about dislodging us, to develop the utmost energy of

counter-attack which our force and opportunities justify.

Now if we consider that by universal agreement it is no longer possible in

the present conditions of land warfare to draw a line between tactics and

minor strategy, we have in our favour for all practical purposes the

identical position which Moltke regarded as constituting the strongest form

of war. That is to say, our major strategy is offensive and our minor

strategy is defensive.

If, then, the limited form of war has this element of strength over and

above the unlimited form, it must be correct to use it when we are not

strong enough to use the more exhausting form and when the object is

limited; just as much as it is correct to use the defensive when our object

is negative and we are too weak for the offensive. The point is of the

highest importance, for it is a direct negation of the current doctrine

that in war there can be but one legitimate object, the overthrow of the

enemy's means of resistance, and that the primary objective must always be

his armed forces. It raises in fact the whole question as to whether it is

not sometimes legitimate and even correct to aim directly at the ulterior

object of the war.

An impression appears to prevail--in spite of all that Clausewitz and

Jomini had to say on the point--that the question admits of only one

answer. Von der Goltz, for instance, is particularly emphatic in asserting

that the overthrow of the enemy must always be the object in modern war. He

lays it down as "the first principle of modern warfare," that "the

immediate objective against which all our efforts must be directed is the

hostile main army." Similarly Prince Kraft has the maxim that "the first

aim should be to overcome the enemy's army. Everything else, the occupation

of the country, &c., only comes in the second line."

It will be observed that he here admits that the process of occupying the

enemy's territory is an operation distinct from the overthrow of the

enemy's force. Von der Goltz goes further, and protests against the common

error of regarding the annihilation of the enemy's principal army as

synonymous with the complete attainment of the object. He is careful to

assert that the current doctrine only holds good "when the two belligerent

states are of approximately the same nature." If, then, there are cases in

which the occupation of territory must be undertaken as an operation

distinct from defeating the enemy's forces, and if in such cases the

conditions are such that we can occupy the territory with advantage without

first defeating the enemy, it is surely mere pedantry to insist that we

should put off till to-morrow what we can do better to-day. If the

occupation of the enemy's whole territory is involved, or even a

substantial part of it, the German principle of course holds good, but all

wars are not of that character.

Insistence on the principle of "overthrow," and even its exaggeration, was

of value, in its day, to prevent a recurrence to the old and discredited

methods. But its work is done, and blind adherence to it without regard to

the principles on which it rests tends to turn the art of war into mere

bludgeon play.

Clausewitz, at any rate, as General Von Caemmerer has pointed out,[7] was

far too practical a soldier to commit himself to so abstract a proposition

in all its modern crudity. If it were true, it would never be possible for

a weaker Power to make successful war against a stronger one in any cause

whatever--a conclusion abundantly refuted by historical experience. That

the higher form like the offensive is the more drastic is certain, if

conditions are suitable for its use, but Clausewitz, it must be remembered,

distinctly lays it down that such conditions presuppose in the belligerent

employing the higher form a great physical or moral superiority or a great

spirit of enterprise--an innate propensity for extreme hazards. Jomini did

not go even so far as this. He certainly would have ruled out "an innate

propensity to extreme hazards," for in his judgment it was this innate

propensity which led Napoleon to abuse the higher form to his own undoing.

So entirely indeed does history, no less than theory, fail to support the

idea of the one answer, that it would seem that even in Germany a reaction

to Clausewitz's real teaching is beginning. In expounding it Von Caemmerer

says, "Since the majority of the most prominent military authors of our

time uphold the principle that in war our efforts must always be directed

to their utmost limits and that a deliberate employment of lower means

betrays more or less weakness, I feel bound to declare that the wideness of

Clausewitz's views have inspired me with a high degree of admiration."

[7] _Development of Strategical Science._

Now what Clausewitz held precisely was this--that when the conditions are

not favourable for the use of the higher form, the seizure of a small part

of the enemy's territory may be regarded as a correct alternative to

destroying his armed forces. But he clearly regards this form of war only

as a make-shift. His purely continental outlook prevented his considering

that there might be cases where the object was actually so limited in

character that the lower form of war would be at once the more effective

and the more economical to use. In continental warfare, as we have seen,

such cases can hardly occur, but they tend to declare themselves strongly

when the maritime factor is introduced to any serious extent.

The tendency of British warfare to take the lower or limited form has

always been as clearly marked as is the opposite tendency on the Continent.

To attribute such a tendency, as is sometimes the fashion, to an inherent

lack of warlike spirit is sufficiently contradicted by the results it has

achieved. There is no reason indeed to put it down to anything but a

sagacious instinct for the kind of war that best accords with the

conditions of our existence. So strong has this instinct been that it has

led us usually to apply the lower form not only where the object of the war

was a well-defined territorial one, but to cases in which its correctness

was less obvious. As has been explained in the last chapter, we have

applied it, and applied it on the whole with success, when we have been

acting in concert with continental allies for an unlimited object--where,

that is, the common object has been the overthrow of the common enemy.

The choice between the two forms really depends upon the circumstances of

each case. We have to consider whether the political object is in fact

limited, whether if unlimited in the abstract it can be reduced to a

concrete object that is limited, and finally whether the strategical

conditions are such as lend themselves to the successful application of the

limited form.

What we require now is to determine those conditions with greater

exactness, and this will be best done by changing our method to the

concrete and taking a leading case.

The one which presents them in their clearest and simplest form is without

doubt the recent war between Russia and Japan. Here we have a particularly

striking example of a small Power having forced her will upon a much

greater Power without "overthrowing" her--that is, without having crushed

her power of resistance. That was entirely beyond the strength of Japan. So

manifest was the fact that everywhere upon the Continent, where the

overthrow of your enemy was regarded as the only admissible form of war,

the action of the Japanese in resorting to hostilities was regarded as

madness. Only in England, with her tradition and instinct for what an

island Power may achieve by the lower means, was Japan considered to have

any reasonable chance of success.

The case is particularly striking; for every one felt that the real object

of the war was in the abstract unlimited, that it was in fact to decide

whether Russia or Japan was to be the predominant power in the Far East.

Like the Franco-German War of 1870 it had all the aspect of what the

Germans call "a trial of strength." Such a war is one which above all

appears incapable of decision except by the complete overthrow of the one

Power or the other. There was no complication of alliances nor any

expectation of them. The Anglo-Japanese Treaty had isolated the struggle.

If ever issue hung on the sheer fighting force of the two belligerents it

would seem to have been this one. After the event we are inclined to

attribute the result to the moral qualities and superior training and

readiness of the victors. These qualities indeed played their part, and

they must not be minimised; but who will contend that if Japan had tried to

make her war with Russia, as Napoleon made his, she could have fared even

as well as he did? She had no such preponderance as Clausewitz laid down as

a condition precedent to attempting the overthrow of her enemy--the

employment of unlimited war.

Fortunately for her the circumstances did not call for the employment of

such extreme means. The political and geographical conditions were such

that she was able to reduce the intangible object of asserting her prestige

to the purely concrete form of a territorial objective. The penetration of

Russia into Manchuria threatened the absorption of Korea into the Russian

Empire, and this Japan regarded as fatal to her own position and future

development. Her power to maintain Korean integrity would be the outward

and visible sign of her ability to assert herself as a Pacific Power. Her

abstract quarrel with Russia could therefore be crystallised into a

concrete objective in the same way as the quarrel of the Western Powers

with Russia in 1854 crystallised into the concrete objective of Sebastopol.

In the Japanese case the immediate political object was exceptionally well

adapted for the use of limited war. Owing to the geographical position of

Korea and to the vast and undeveloped territories which separate it from

the centre of Russian power, it could be practically isolated by naval

action. Further than this, it fulfilled the condition to which Clausewitz

attached the greatest importance--that is to say, the seizure of the

particular object so far from weakening the home defence of Japan would

have the effect of greatly increasing the strength of her position. Though

offensive in effect and intention it was also, like Frederick's seizure of

Saxony, a sound piece of defensive work. So far from exposing her heart, it

served to cover it almost impregnably. The reason is plain. Owing to the

wide separation of the two Russian arsenals at Port Arthur and

Vladivostock, with a defile controlled by Japan interposed, the Russian

naval position was very faulty. The only way of correcting it was for

Russia to secure a base in the Straits of Korea, and for this she had been

striving by diplomatic means at Seoul for some time. Strategically the

integrity of Korea was for Japan very much what the integrity of the Low

Countries was for us, but in the case of the Low Countries, since they were

incapable of isolation, our power of direct action was always comparatively

weak. Portugal, with its unrivalled strategical harbour at Lisbon, was an

analogous case in our old oceanic wars, and since it was capable of being

in a measure isolated from the strength of our great rival by naval means

we were there almost uniformly successful. On the whole it must be said

that notwithstanding the success we achieved in our long series of wars

waged on a limited basis, in none of them were the conditions so favourable

for us as in this case they were for Japan. In none of them did our main

offensive movement so completely secure our home defence. Canada was as

eccentric as possible to our line of home defence, while in the Crimea so

completely did our offensive uncover the British Islands, that we had to

supplement our movement against the limited object by sending our main

fighting fleet to hold the exit of the Baltic against the danger of an

unlimited counter-stroke.[8]

[8] The strategical object with which the Baltic fleet was sent was

certainly to prevent a counter-stroke--that is, its main function in our

war plan was negative. Its positive function was minor and diversionary

only. It also had a political object as a demonstration to further our

efforts to form a Baltic coalition against Russia, which entirely failed.

Public opinion mistaking the whole situation expected direct positive

results from this fleet, even the capture of St. Petersburg. Such an

operation would have converted the war from a limited one to an unlimited

one. It would have meant the "overthrow of the enemy," a task quite

beyond the strength of the allies without the assistance of the Baltic

Powers, and even so their assistance would not have justified changing

the nature of the war, unless both Sweden and Russia had been ready to

make unlimited war and nothing was further from their intention.