THE FORCES OPPOSED.
Here, then, at the beginning of August 1914, are the five great Powers
about to engage in war.
Russia, France, and Great Britain, whom we will call the Allies, are
upon one side; the German Empire and Austria-Hungary, whom we will
call the Germanic Powers, are upon the other.
We must at the outset, if we are to understand the war at all, see how
these two combatant groups stood in strength one against the other
when the war broke out. And to appreciate this contrast we must know
two things--their geographical situation, and their respective weight
in arms. For before we can judge the chances of two opponents in war,
we have to know how they stand physically one to the other upon the
surface of the earth, or we cannot judge how one will attack the
other, or how each will defend itself against the other. And we must
further be able to judge the numbers engaged both at the beginning of
the struggle and arriving in reinforcement as the struggle proceeds,
because upon those numbers will mainly depend the final result.
Having acquired these two fundamental pieces of information, we must
acquire a third, which is _the theories of war_ held upon either side,
and some summary showing which of these theories turned out in
practice to be right, and which wrong.
For, after a long peace, the fortune of the next war largely depends
upon which of various guesses as to the many changes that have taken
place in warfare and in weapons will be best supported by practice,
and what way of using new weapons will prove the most effective. Until
the test of war is applied, all this remains guess-work; but under the
conditions of war it ceases to be guess-work, and becomes either
corroborated by experience or exploded, as the case may be. And of two
opponents after a long peace, that one which has had the most
foresight and has guessed best what the effect of changes in armament
and the rest will effect in practice is that one who has the best
chance of victory.
We are going, then, in this Second Part, of the little book, to see,
first, the geographical position of the belligerents; secondly, their
effective numbers; and, thirdly, what theories of war each held, and
how far each was right or wrong.
(1) THE GEOGRAPHICAL POSITION OF THE BELLIGERENTS.
The position of the original belligerent countries (excluding Turkey)
upon the map of Europe was that which will be seen upon the
accompanying sketch map.
Of this belligerent area, which is surrounded by a thick black line,
the part left white represents the territory of the Allies at the
origin of the war--Great Britain, France, Russia, and Servia. This
reservation must, however, be made: that in the case of Russia only
the effective part is shown, and only the European part at that;
Arctic Russia and Siberia are omitted. The part lightly shaded with
cross lines represents the Germanic body--to wit, the German Empire
and Austria-Hungary.
1. The first thing that strikes the eye upon such a map is the great
size of the Germanic body.
[Illustration: Sketch 4.]
When one reads that "Germany" was being attacked by not only France
and England, but also Russia; when one reads further that in the Far
East, in Asia, Japan was putting in work for the Allies; and when one
goes on to read that Belgium added her effort of resistance to the
"German" invasion, one gets a false impression that one single nation
was fighting a vast coalition greatly superior to it. Most people had
an impression of that kind, in this country at least, at the outset of
the war. It was this impression that led to the equally false
impression that "Germany" must necessarily be beaten, and probably
quickly beaten.
The truth was, of course, that we were fighting something very much
bigger than "Germany." We set out to fight something more than twice
as big as Germany in area, and very nearly twice as big as the German
Empire in mere numbers. For what we set out to fight was not the
German Empire, but the German Empire _plus_ the whole of the dominions
governed by the Hapsburg dynasty at Vienna.
How weighty this Germanic body was geographically is still more
clearly seen if we remember that Russia north of St. Petersburg is
almost deserted of inhabitants, and that the true European areas of
population which are in conflict--that is, the fairly well populated
areas--are more accurately represented by a modification of the map
on page 81 in some such form as that on page 84, where the comparative
density of population is represented by the comparative distances
between the parallel cross-lines.
2. The next thing that strikes one is the position of the neutral
countries. Supposing Belgium to have remained neutral, or, rather, to
have allowed German armies to pass over her soil without actively
resisting, the Germanic body would have been free to trade with
neutral countries, and to receive support from their commerce, and to
get goods through them over the whole of their western front, with the
exception of the tiny section which stands for the frontier common to
France and Germany. On the north, supposing the Baltic to be open, the
Germanic body had a vast open frontier of hundreds of miles, and
though Russia closed most of the eastern side, all the Roumanian
frontier was open, and so was the frontier of the Adriatic, right away
from the Italian border to Cattaro. So was the Swiss frontier and the
Italian.
[Illustration: Sketch 5.]
Indeed, if we draw the Germanic body by itself surrounded by a
frontier of dots, as in the accompanying sketch, and mark in a thick
line upon that frontier those parts which touched on enemy's
territory, and were therefore closed to supply, we shall be
immediately arrested by the comparatively small proportion of that
frontier which is thus closed.
[Illustration: Sketch 6.]
It is well to carry this in mind during the remainder of our study of
this war, because it has a great effect upon the fighting power of
Germany and Austria after a partial--but very partial--blockade is
established by the Allied and especially by the British naval power.
3. The third thing that strikes one in such a map of the belligerent
area is the way in which the Germanic body stands in the middle facing
its two groups of enemies East and West.
_The Geographical Advantages and Disadvantages of the Germanic Body_.
With this last point we can begin a comparison of the advantages and
disadvantages imposed by geographical conditions upon the two
opponents, and first of these we will consider the geographical
advantages and disadvantages of the Germanic body--that is, of the
Austrian and German Empires--passing next to the corresponding
advantages and disadvantages of the Allies.
The advantages proceeding from geographical position to Germany in
particular, and to the Germanic body as a whole, gravely outweigh the
disadvantages. We will consider the disadvantages first.
The chief disadvantage under which the Germanic body suffered in this
connection was that, from the outset of hostilities, it had to fight,
as the military phrase goes, upon two fronts. That is, the commanders
of the German and Austrian armies had to consider two separate
campaigns, to keep them distinct in their minds, and to co-ordinate
them so that they should not, by wasting too many men on the East or
the West, weaken themselves too much on the other side of the field.
To this disadvantage some have been inclined to add that the central
position of Austria and Germany in Europe helped the British and
Allied blockade (I repeat, a very partial, timid, and insufficient
blockade) of their commerce.
But this view is erroneous. The possibility of blockading
Austria-Hungary and Germany from imports across the ocean was due not
to their central but to their continental position; to the fact that
they were more remote from the ocean than France and Great Britain. It
had nothing to do with their central position between the two groups
of the Allies.
Supposing, for instance, that Germany and Austria-Hungary had stood
where Russia stands, and that Western Europe had been in alliance
against them. Then they would have been in no way central; their
position would have been an extreme position upon one side; and yet,
so far as blockading goes, the blockade of them would have been
infinitely easier.
Conversely, if Germany and Austria had been in the west, where Great
Britain and France are, their enemies lying to the east of them could
not have blockaded them at all.
As things are the blockade that has been established exists but is
partial. As will be seen upon the following sketch map, the British
Fleet, being sufficiently powerful, can search vessels the cargoes of
which might reach the Germanic body directly through the Strait of
Gibraltar (1), the Strait of Dover (2), or the North Sea between
Scotland and Norway (3). But it is unable to prevent supplies reaching
the Germanic body from Italy, whether by land or by sea (4), or
through Switzerland (5), or through Holland (6), or through Denmark
(7), or across the frontier of Roumania (8); or, so long as the German
Fleet is strongest in the Baltic, by way of Norway and Sweden across
the Baltic (9).
[Illustration: Sketch 7.]
The blockading fleet is even embarrassed as to the imports the
Germanic body receives indirectly through neutral countries--that is,
imports not produced in the importing countries themselves, but
provided through the neutral countries as middlemen.
It is embarrassed in three ways.
(_a_) Because it does not want to offend the European neutral
countries, which count in the general European balance of power.
(_b_) Because it does not wish to offend Powers outside Europe which
are neutral in this war, and particularly the United States. Such
great neutral Powers are very valuable not only for their moral
support if it can be obtained, but on account of their great financial
resources untouched by this prolonged struggle, and, what lies behind
these, their power of producing materials which the Allies need just
as much as Austria and Germany do.
(_c_) Because, even if you watch the supplies of contraband to
neutrals, and propose to stop supplies obviously destined for German
use, you cannot prevent Germany from buying the same material "made
up" by the neutral: for example, an Italian firm can import copper ore
quite straightforwardly, smelt it, and offer the metal in the open
market. There is nothing to prevent a German merchant entering that
market and purchasing, unless Italy forbids all export of copper,
which it is perfectly free not to do.
To leave this side question of blockade, and to return to the relative
advantages and disadvantages of our enemy's central position, we may
repeat as a summary of its disadvantages the single truth that it
compels our enemy to fight upon two fronts.
All the rest is advantage.
It is an advantage that Germany and Austria-Hungary, as a corollary to
their common central position, are in some part of similar race and
altogether of a common historical experience. For more than a hundred
years every part of the area dominated by the Germanic body--with the
exception of Bosnia and Alsace-Lorraine--has had a fairly intimate
acquaintance with the other part. The Magyars of Hungary, the Poles of
Galicia, of Posen, of Thorn, the Croats of the Adriatic border, the
Czechs of Bohemia, have nothing in race or language in common with
German-speaking Vienna or German-speaking Berlin. But they have the
experience of generations uniting them with Vienna and with Berlin.
In administration, and to some extent in social life, a common
atmosphere spreads over this area, nearly all of which, as I have
said, has had something in common for a hundred years, and much of
which has had something in common for a thousand.
In a word, as compared with the Allies, the Germanic central body in
Europe has a certain advantage of moral homogeneity, especially as the
governing body throughout is German-speaking and German in feeling.
That is the first point of advantage--a moral one.
The second is more material. The Governments of the two countries,
their means of communication and of supply, are all in touch one with
another. Those governments are working in one field within a ring
fence, and working for a common object. They are not only spiritually
in touch; they are physically in touch. An administrator in Berlin can
take the night express after dinner and breakfast with his
collaborator in Vienna the next morning.
It so happens, also, that the communications of the two Germanic
empires are exactly suited to their central position. There is
sufficient fast communication from north to south to serve all the
purposes necessary to the intellectual conduct of a war; there is a
most admirable communication from east to west for the material
conduct of that war upon two fronts. Whenever it may be necessary to
move troops from the French frontier to the Russian, or from the
Russian to the French, or for Germany to borrow Hungarian cavalry for
the Rhine, or for Austria to borrow German army corps to protect
Galicia, all that is needed is three or four days in which to entrain
and move these great masses of men. There is no area in Europe which
is better suited by nature for thus fighting upon two land frontiers
than is the area of the combined Austrian and German Empire.
With these three points, then--the great area of our enemy in Europe,
his advantage through neutral frontiers, and his advantage in
homogeneity of position between distant and morally divided
Allies--you have the chief marks of the geographical position he
occupies, in so far as this is the great central position of
continental Europe.
But it so happens that the Germanic body in general, and the German
Empire in particular, suffer from grave geographical disadvantages
attached to their political character. And of these I will make my
next points.
The Germanic body as a whole suffers by its geographical disposition,
coupled with its political constitution, a grave disadvantage in its
struggle against the Allies, particularly towards the East, because
just that part of it which is thrust out and especially assailable by
Russia happens to be the part most likely to be disaffected to the
whole interests of the Germanic body; and how this works I will
proceed to explain.
Here are two oblongs--A, left blank, and B, lightly shaded. Supposing
these two oblongs combined to represent the area of two countries
which are in alliance, and which are further so situated that B is the
weaker Power to the alliance both (1) in his military strength, and
(2) in his tenacity of purpose. Next grant that B is divided by the
dotted line, CD, into two halves--B not being one homogeneous State,
but two States, B1 and B2.
Next let it be granted that while B1 is more likely to remain attached
in its alliance to A, B2 is more separate from the alliance in moral
tendency, and is also materially the weaker half of B. Finally, let
the whole group, AB, be subject to the attack of enemies from the
right and from the left (from the right along the arrows XX, and from
the left along the arrows YY) by two groups of enemies represented by
the areas M and N respectively.
[Illustration: Sketch 8.]
It is obvious that in such a situation, if A is the chief object of
attack, and is the Power which has both provoked the conflict and made
itself the chief object of assault by M and N, A is by this
arrangement in a position _politically_ weak.
That is, the strategical position of A is gravely embarrassed by the
way in which his ally, B, separated into the two halves, B1 and B2,
stands with regard to himself. B2 is isolated and thrust outward. The
enemy, M, upon the right, attacking along the lines XX, may be able to
give B2 a very bad time before he gets into the area of B1, and long
before he gets into the area of the stronger Power, A. It is open to M
so to harass B2 that B2 is prepared to break with B1 and give up the
war; or, if the bond between B2 and B1 is strong enough, to persuade
B1 to give up the struggle at the same time that he does. And if B2 is
thus harassed to the breaking-point, the whole alliance, A plus B,
will lose the men and materials and wealth represented by B2, and
_may_ lose the whole shaded area, B, leaving A to support singly for
the future the combined attacks of M and N along the lines of attack,
XX and YY.
Now, that diagram accurately represents the political embarrassment in
strategy of the German-Austro-Hungarian alliance. B1 is Austria and
Bohemia; B2 is Hungary; A is the German Empire; M is the Russians; N
is the Allies in the West. With a geographical arrangement such as
that of the Germanic alliance, a comparatively small proportion of the
Russian forces detached to harry the Hungarian plain can make the
Hungarians, who have little moral attachment to the Austrians and none
whatever to the Germans, abandon the struggle to save themselves;
while it is possible that this outlier, being thus detached, will drag
with it its fellow-half, the Austrian half of the dual monarchy, cause
the Government of the dual monarchy to sue for peace, and leave the
German Empire isolated to support the undivided attention of the
Russians from the East and of the French from the West.
It is clear that if a strong Power, A, allied with and dependent for
large resources in men upon a weaker Power, B, is attacked from the
left and from the right, the ideal arrangement for the strong Power,
A, would be something in the nature of the following diagram (Sketch
9), where the weaker Power stands protected in the territory of the
stronger Power, and where of the two halves of the weaker Power, B2,
the less certain half, is especially protected from attack.
[Illustration: Sketch 9.]
Were Switzerland, Alsace-Lorraine, and the Rhineland, upon the one
hand, the Hungarian plain, Russian Poland, and East Prussia, upon the
other hand, united in one strong, patriotic, homogeneous
German-speaking group with the Government of Berlin and the Baltic
plain, and were Bavaria, Switzerland, the Tyrol, Bohemia, to
constitute the weaker and less certain ally, while the least certain
half of that uncertain ally lay in Eastern Bohemia and in what is now
Lower Austria, well defended from attack upon the East, the conditions
would be exactly reversed, and the Austro-German alliance would be
geographically and politically of the stronger sort. As it is, the
combined accidents of geography and political circumstance make it
peculiarly vulnerable.
[Illustration: Sketch 10.]
Having already considered in a diagram the way in which the
geographical disposition of Austria-Hungary weakens Germany in the
face of the Allies, let us translate that diagram into terms of actual
political geography. These two oblongs, with their separate parts,
are, as a fact, as follows: Where A is the German Empire, the shaded
portion, B, is Austria-Hungary, and this last divided into B1, the
more certain Austrian part, and B2, the less certain exposed
Hungarian part, the latter of which is only protected from Russian
assault by the Carpathian range of mountains, CCC, with its passes at
DDD. M, the enemy on the right, Russia, is attacking the alliance, AB,
along XX; while the enemy on the left, N, France and her Allies, is
attacking along the lines YY.
Hungary, B2, is not only geographically an outlier, but politically is
the weakest link in the chain of the Austro-Germanic alliance. The
area of Hungary is almost denuded of men, for most of these have been
called up to defend Germany, A, and in particular to prevent the
invasion of Germany's territory in Silesia at S. The one defence
Hungary has against being raided and persuaded to an already tempting
peace is the barrier of the Carpathian mountains, CCC. When or if the
passes shall be in Russian possession and the Russian cavalry reappear
upon the Hungarian side of the hills, the first great political
embarrassment of the enemy will have begun--I mean the first great
political embarrassment to his strategy.
(_a_) Shall he try to defend those passes above all? Then he must
detach German corps, and detach them very far from the areas which are
vital to the core of the alliance--that is, to the German Empire, A.
(_b_) Shall he use only Hungarian troops to defend Hungary? Then he
emphasizes the peculiar moral isolation of Hungary, and leaves her
inclined, if things go ill, to make a separate peace.
(_c_) Shall he abandon Hungary? And let the Russians do what they will
with the passes over the Carpathians and raid the Hungarian plain at
large? Then he loses a grave proportion of his next year's wheat, much
of his dwindling horse supply, his almost strangled sources of petrol.
He tempts Roumania to come in (for a great sweep of Eastern Hungary is
nationally Roumanian); and he loses the control in men and financial
resources of one-half of his Allies if the danger and the distress
persuade Hungary to stand out. For the Hungarians have no quarrel
except from their desire to dominate the southern Slavs; to fight
Austria's battles means very little to them, and to fight Germany's
battles means nothing at all.
There is, of course, much more than this. If Hungary dropped out,
could Austria remain? Would not the Government at Vienna, rather than
lose the dual monarchy, follow Hungary's lead? In that case, the
Germanic alliance would lose at one stroke eleven-twenty-fifths of its
men. It would lose more than half of its reserves of men, for the
Austrian reserve is, paradoxically enough, larger than the German
reserve, though not such good material.
Admire how in every way this geographical and political problem of
Hungary confuses the strategical plan of the German General Staff!
They cannot here act upon pure strategics. They _cannot_ treat the
area of operations like a chessboard, and consider the unique object
of inflicting a military defeat upon the Russians. Their inability to
do so proceeds from the fact that this great awkward salient,
Hungarian territory, is not politically subject to Berlin, is not in
spiritual union with Berlin; may be denuded of men to save Berlin, and
is the most exposed of all our enemy's territory to attack. Throughout
the war it will be found that this problem perpetually presents itself
to the Great General Staff of the Prussians: "How can we save Hungary
without weakening our Eastern line? If we abandon Hungary, how are we
to maintain our effectives?"
Such, in detail, is the political embarrassment to German strategy
produced by the geographical situation and the political traditions of
Hungary itself, and of Hungary's connection with the Hapsburgs at
Vienna. Let us now turn to the even more important embarrassment
caused to German strategy by the corner positions of the four
essential areas of German territory.
This last political weakness attached to geographical condition
concerns the German Empire alone.
Let us suppose a Power concerned to defend itself against invasion and
situated between two groups of enemies, from the left and from the
right, we will again call that Power A, the enemy upon the right M,
and the enemy upon the left N, the first attacking along the lines XX,
and the second along the lines YY.
Let us suppose that A has _political_ reasons for particularly
desiring to save from invasion four districts, the importance of
which I have indicated on Sketch 12 by shading, and which I have
numbered 1, 2, 3, 4.
[Illustration: Sketch 11.]
Let us suppose that those four districts happen to lie at the four
exposed corners of the area which A has to defend. The Government of A
knows it to be essential to success in the war that his territory
should not be invaded. Or, at least, if it is invaded, it must not,
under peril of collapse, be invaded in the shaded areas.
It is apparent upon the very face of such a diagram, that with the
all-important shaded areas situated in the corners of his
quadrilateral, A is heavily embarrassed. He must disperse his forces
in order to protect all four. If wastage of men compels him to
shorten his line on the right against M, he will be immediately
anxious as to whether he can dare sacrifice 4 to save 2, or whether he
should run the dreadful risk of sacrificing 2 to save 4.
[Illustration: Sketch 12.]
If wastage compels him to shorten his defensive line upon the left, he
is in a similar quandary between 1 and 3.
The whole situation is one in which he is quite certain that a
defensive war, long before he is pushed to extremities, will compel
him to "scrap" one of the four corners, yet each one is, for some
political reason, especially dear to him and even perhaps necessary to
him. Each he desires, with alternating anxieties and indecisions, to
preserve at all costs from invasion; yet he cannot, as he is forced
upon the defensive, preserve all four.
Here, again, the ideal situation for him would be to possess against
the invader some such arrangement as is suggested by Sketch 11. In
this arrangement, if one were compelled unfortunately to consider four
special districts as more important than the mass of one's territory,
one would have the advantage of knowing that they were clearly
distinguishable into less and more important, and the further
advantage of knowing that the more important the territory was, the
more central it was and the better protected against invasion.
Thus, in this diagram, the government of the general oblong, A, may
distinguish four special zones, the protection of which from invasion
is important, but which vary in the degree of their importance. The
least important is the outermost, 1; the more important is an inner
one, 2; still more important is 3; and most important of all is the
black core of the whole.
Some such arrangement has been the salvation of France time and time
again, notably in the Spanish wars, and in the wars of Louis XIV., and
in the wars of the Revolution. To some extent you have seen the same
thing in the present war.
To save Paris was exceedingly important, next came the zone outside
Paris, and so on up to the frontier.
But with the modern German Empire it is exactly the other way, and the
situation is that which we found in Sketch 12; the four external
corners are the essentials which must be preserved from invasion, and
if any one of them goes, the whole political situation is at once in
grave peril.
The strategical position of modern Germany is embarrassed because each
of these four corners must be saved by the armies. 1 is
Belgium--before the war indifferent to Germany, but now destined to be
vital to her position--2 is East Prussia, 3 is Alsace-Lorraine, 4 is
Silesia, and the German commanders, as well as the German Government,
must remain to the last moment--if once they are thrown on the
defensive--in grave indecision as to which of the four can best be
spared when invasion threatens; or else, as is more probable, they
must disperse their forces in the attempt to hold all four at once. It
is a situation which has but rarely occurred before in the history of
war, and which has always proved disastrous.
Germany then must--once she is in Belgium--hold on to Belgium, or she
is in peril; she must hold on to East Prussia, or she is in peril; she
must hold on to Alsace-Lorraine, or she is in peril; and she must hold
on to Silesia, or it is all up with her. If there were some common
strategical factor binding these four areas together, so that the
defence of one should involve and aid the defence of all, the
difficulties thus imposed upon German strategy would be greatly
lessened. Though even then the mere having to defend four outlying
corners instead of a centre would produce confusion and embarrassment
the moment numerical inferiority had appeared upon the side of the
defence. But, as a fact, there is no such common factor.
Alsace-Lorraine and Belgium, East Prussia and Silesia, stand
strategically badly separated one from the other. Even the two on the
East and the two on the West, though apparently forming pairs upon the
map, are not dependent on one system of communications, and are cut
off from each other by territory difficult or hostile, while between
the Eastern and the Western group there is a space of five hundred
miles.
Let us, before discussing the political embarrassment to strategy
produced by these four widely distant and quite separate areas,
translate the diagram in the terms of a sketch map.
On the following sketch map, Belgium, Alsace-Lorraine, East Prussia,
and Silesia are shaded, as were the four corners of the diagram. No. 1
is Belgium, 2 is East Prussia, 3 is Alsace-Lorraine, 4 is Silesia. The
area occupied by the German Empire, including its present occupation
of Belgium, is marked by the broad outline; and the areas shaded
represent, not the exact limits of the four territories that are so
important, but those portions of them which are essential: the
non-Polish portion of Silesia, the non-Polish portion of East Prussia,
the plain of Belgium, and all Alsace-Lorraine.
[Illustration: Sketch 13.]
Now the reason that each of these must at all costs be preserved from
invasion is, as I have said, different in each case, and we shall do
well to examine what those reasons are; for upon them depends the
political hesitation they inevitably, cause to arise in the plans of
the Great General Staff.
1. _Belgium._ The military annexation of Belgium has been a result of
the war, and, from the German point of view, an unexpected result.
Germany both hoped and expected that her armies would pass through
Belgium as they did, in fact, pass through Luxembourg. The resistance
of Belgium produced the military annexation of that country; the reign
of terror exercised therein has immobilized about 100,000 of the
German troops who would otherwise be free for the front; the checking
of the advance into France has turned the German general political
objective against England, and, to put the matter in the vaguest but
most fundamental terms, the German mind has gradually come, since
October, to regard the retention of Belgium as something quite
essential. And this because:--(_a_) It gives a most weighty asset in
the bargaining for peace. (_b_) It gives a seaboard against England.
(_c_) It provides ample munition, house-room, and transport facility,
without which the campaign in North-eastern France could hardly be
prolonged. (_d_) It puts Holland at the mercy of Germany, for she can,
by retaining Belgium, strangle Dutch trade, if she chooses to divert
her carriage of goods through Belgian ports. (_e_) It is a specific
conquest; the Government will be able to say to the German people, "It
is true we had to give up this or that, but Belgium is a definite new
territory, the occupation of which and the proposed annexation of
which is a proof of victory." (_f_) The retention of Belgium has been
particularly laid down as the cause of quarrel between Great Britain
and Germany; to retain Belgium is to mark that score against what is
now the special enemy of Germany in the German mind. (_g_) Antwerp is
the natural port for all the centre of Europe in commerce westward
over the ocean. (_h_) With Belgium may go the Belgian colonies--that
is, the Congo--for the possession of which Germany has worked
ceaselessly year in and year out during the last fifteen years by a
steady and highly subsidized propaganda against the Belgian
administration. She has done it through conscious and unconscious
agents; by playing upon the cupidity of French and British
Parliamentarians, of rum shippers, upon religious differences, and
upon every agency to her hand.
We may take it, then, that the retention of Belgium is in German eyes
now quite indispensable. "If I abandon Belgium," she says, "it is much
more than a strategic retreat; it is a political confession of
failure, and the moral support behind me at home will break down."
If I were writing not of calculable considerations, but of other and
stronger forces, I should add that to withdraw from Belgium, where so
many women and children have been massacred, so many jewels of the
past befouled or destroyed, so wanton an attack upon Christ and His
Church delivered, would be a loss of Pagan prestige intolerably
strong, and a triumph of all that against which Prussia set out to
war.
2. _Alsace-Lorraine._ But Alsace-Lorraine is also "indispensable." We
have seen on an earlier page what the retention of that territory
means. Alsace-Lorraine is the symbol of the old victory. It is the
German-speaking land which the amazingly unreal superstitions of
German academic pedantry discovered to be something sacredly necessary
to the unity of an ideal Germany, though the people inhabiting it
desired nothing better than the destruction of the Prussian name. It
is more than that. It is the bastion beyond the Rhine which keeps the
Rhine close covered; it is the two great historic fortresses of
Strassburg and Metz which are the challenge Germany has thrown down
against European tradition and the civilization of the West; it is
something which has become knit up with the whole German soul, and to
abandon it is like a man abandoning his title or his name, or
surrendering his sword. Through what must not the German mind pass
before its directors would consent to the sacrifice of such a
fundamentally symbolic possession? There is defeat in the very
suggestion; and the very suggestion, though it has already occurred to
the Great General Staff, and has already, I believe, been mentioned in
one proposal for peace, would be intolerable to the mass of the
enemy's opinion.
3. _East Prussia._ East Prussia is sacred in another, but also an
intense fashion. It is the very kernel of the Prussian monarchy. When
Berlin was but a market town for the Electors of Brandenburg, those
same Electors had contrived that East Prussia, which was outside the
empire, should be recognized as a kingdom. Frederick the Great's
father, while of Brandenburg an Elector, was in Prussia proper a king,
a man who had emancipated that cradle of the Prussian power. The
province in all save its southern belt (which is Polish) is the very
essence of Prussian society: a mass of serfs, technically free,
economically abject, governed by those squires who own them, their
goods, and what might be their soil. The Russians wasted East Prussia
in their first invasion, and they did well though they paid so heavy a
price, for to wound East Prussia was to wound the very soul of that
which now governs the German Empire. When the landed proprietors fled
before the Russian invasion, and when there fled with them the
townsfolk, the serfs rose and looted the country houses. In a way
quite different from Belgium, quite different from Alsace-Lorraine,
East Prussia is essential. Forces will and must be sent periodically
to defend that territory, however urgently they may be needed
elsewhere, as the pressure upon Germany increases. The German
commanders, if they forget East Prussia for a moment in the
consideration of the other essential points, will, the moment their
eyes are turned upon East Prussia again, remember with violent emotion
all that the province means to the reigning dynasty and its
supporters, and they will do anything rather than let that frontier
go. The memory of the first invasion is too acute, the terror of its
repetition too poignant, to permit its abandonment.
4. _Silesia._ Silesia, for quite other reasons (and remember that
these different reasons for defending such various points are the
essence of the embarrassment in which German strategy will find
itself), must be saved. It has been insisted over and over again in
these pages what Silesia means. Its meaning is twofold. If Silesia
goes, the safest, the most remote from the sea, the most independent
of imports of the German industrial regions, is gone. Silesia is,
again, the country of the great proprietors. Amuse yourselves by
remembering the names of Pless and of Lichnowsky. There are dozens of
others. But, most important of all, Silesia is what Belgium is not,
what Alsace-Lorraine is not, what East Prussia is not--it is the
strategic key. Who holds Silesia commands the twin divergent roads to
Berlin northwards, to Vienna southwards. Who holds Silesia holds the
Moravian Gate. Who holds Silesia turns the line of the Oder, and
passes behind the barrier fortresses which Germany has built upon her
Eastern front. Who holds Silesia strikes his wedge in between the
German-speaking north and the German-speaking south, and joins hands
with the Slavs of Bohemia. Not that we should exaggerate the Slav
factor, for religion and centuries of varying culture disturb its
unity. But it is something. The Russian forces are Slav; the
resurrection of Poland has been promised; the Czechs are not
submissive to the German claim of natural mastery, and whoever holds
Silesia throws a bridge between Slav and Slav if his aims are an
extension of power in that race. For a hundred reasons Silesia must be
saved.
* * * * *
Now put yourself in the position of the men who must make a decision
between these four outliers--Belgium, Alsace-Lorraine, East Prussia,
and Silesia--and understand the hesitation such divergent aims impose
upon them. Hardly are they prepared to sacrifice one of the four when
the defensive problem becomes acute, but its claims will be pressed in
every conceivable manner--by public sentiment, by economic
considerations, by mere strategy, by a political tradition, by the
influence of men powerful with the Prussian monarchy, whose homes and
wealth are threatened. "If I am to hold Belgium, I must give up
Alsace. How dare I do that? To save Silesia I must expose East
Prussia. How dare I? I am at bay, and the East must at all costs be
saved. I will hold Prussia and Silesia, but to withdraw from Belgium
and from beyond the Rhine is defeat." The whole thing is an embroglio.
That conclusion is necessary and inexorable. It would not appear at
all until, or if, numerical weakness imposed on the enemy a gradual
concentration of the defensive; but once that numerical weakness has
come, the fatal choices must be made. It may be that a strict, silent,
and virile resolution, such as saved France this summer, a
preparedness for particular sacrifices calculated beforehand, will
determine first some one retirement and then another. It may
be--though it is not in the modern Prussian temperament--that a
defensive as prolonged as possible will be attempted even with
inferior numbers, and that, as circumstances may dictate,
Alsace-Lorraine or Belgium, Silesia or East Prussia will be the first
to be deliberately sacrificed; but one must be, and, it would seem,
another after, and in the difficulty of choice a wound to the German
strategy will come.
The four corners are differently defensible--Alsace-Lorraine and
Belgium only by artifice, and with great numbers of men; Silesia only
so long as Austria (and Hungary) stand firm. East Prussia has her
natural arrangement of lakes to make invasion tedious, and to permit
defence with small numbers.
Between the two groups, Eastern and Western, is all the space of
Germany--the space separating Aberdeen from London. Between each part
of each pair, in spite of an excellent railway system, is the block in
the one case of the Ardennes and the Eifel, in the other of empty,
ill-communicated Poland. But each is strategically a separate thing;
the political value of each a separate thing; the embarrassment
between all four insuperable.
Such is the situation imposed by the geography of the European
continent upon our enemies, with the opportunities and the drawbacks
which that situation affords and imposes.
I repeat, upon the balance, our enemies had geographical opportunities
far superior to our own.
Our power of partial blockade (to which I will return in a moment) is
more than counterbalanced by the separation which Nature has
determined between the two groups of Allies. The ice of the North, the
Narrows of the Dardanelles, establish this, as do the Narrows of the
Scandinavian Straits.
The necessity of fighting upon two fronts, to which our enemies are
compelled, is more than compensated by that natural arrangement of the
Danube valley and of the Baltic plain which adds to the advantage of a
central situation the power of rapid communication between East and
West; while the chief embarrassment of our enemies in their
geographical arrangement, which is the outlying situation of Hungary
coupled with the presence of four vital regions at the four external
corners of the German Empire, is rather political than geographical in
nature.
I will now turn to the converse advantages and disadvantages afforded
and imposed by geographical conditions upon the Allies.
_The Geographical Advantages and Disadvantages of the Allies._
It has been apparent from the above in what way the geographical
circumstance of Germany and Austria-Hungary advantaged and
disadvantaged those two empires in the course of a war against East
and West.
Let us next see how the Allies were advantaged and disadvantaged by
their position.
1. The first great disadvantage which the Allies most obviously suffer
is their separation one from the other by the Germanic mass.
The same central position which gives Germany and Austria-Hungary
their power of close intercommunion, of exactly coordinating all their
movements, of using their armies like one army, and of dealing with
rapidity alternate blows eastward and westward, produces contrary
effects in the case of the Allies. Even if hourly communication were
possible by telegraph between the two main groups, French and Russian,
that would not be at all the same thing as personal, sustained, and
continuous contact such as is enjoyed by the group of their enemies.
But, as a fact, even the very imperfect and indirect kind of contact
which can be established by telegraphing over great distances is
largely lacking. The French and the Russians are in touch. The
commanders can and do pursue a combined plan. But the communication of
results and the corresponding arrangement of new dispositions are
necessarily slow and gravely interrupted. Indeed, it is, as we shall
see in a moment, one of the main effects of geography upon this
campaign that Russia must suffer during all its early stages a very
severe isolation.
In general, the Allies as a whole suffer from the necessity under
which they find themselves of working in two fields, remote the one
from the other by a distance of some six hundred miles, not even
connected by sea, and geographically most unfortunately independent.
2. A second geographical disadvantage of the Allies consists in the
fact that one of them, Great Britain, is in the main a maritime Power.
That this has great compensating advantages we shall also see, but for
the moment we are taking the disadvantages separately, and, so
counting them one by one, we must recognize that England's being an
island (her social structure industrialized and free from
conscription, her interests not only those of Europe but those of such
a commercial scattered empire as is always characteristic of secure
maritime Powers) produces, in several of its aspects, a geographical
weakness to the Allied position, and that for several reasons, which I
will now tabulate:--
(_a_) The position of England in the past, her very security as an
island, has led her to reject the conception of universal service. She
could only, at the outset of hostilities, provide a small
Expeditionary Force, the equivalent at the most of a thirtieth of the
Allied forces.
(_b_) Her reserves in men who could approach the continental field in,
say, the first year, even under the most vigorous efforts, would never
reach anything like the numbers that could be afforded by a conscript
nation. The very maximum that can be or is hoped for by the most
sanguine is the putting into the field, after at least a year of war,
of less than three-sixteenths of the total Allied forces, although her
population is larger than that of France, and more than a third that
of the enemy.
(_c_) She is compelled to garrison and defend, and in places to
police, dependencies the population of which will in some cases
furnish no addition to the forces of the Allies, and in all cases
furnish but a small proportion.
(_d_) The isolation of her territory by the sea, coupled with her
large population and its industrial character, makes Britain
potentially the most vulnerable point in the alliance.
So long as her fleet is certainly superior to that of the enemy, and
has only to meet oversea attack, this vulnerability is but little
felt; but once let her position at sea be lost, or even left
undecided, or once let the indiscriminate destruction of commercial
marine be seriously begun, and she is at the mercy of that enemy. For
she cannot feed herself save by supplies from without, and she cannot
take part in the supplying of armies with men and munitions upon the
continent.
(_e_) She is open to fear aggression upon any one of her independent
colonies oversea, and yet she is not able to draw upon them for the
whole of their potential strength, or, indeed, for more than a very
small proportion of it. In other words, the British Fleet guarantees
some fifteen million of European race beyond the seas from attack by
the enemy, but cannot draw from these fifteen million more than an
insignificant fraction of the million of men and more which, fully
armed, they might furnish; nor has she any control over their finance,
so as to be able to count upon the full weight of their wealth; nor
can she claim their resources in goods and munitions. She can only
obtain these by paying for them.
There is here a very striking contrast between her position and that
of the Germanic Powers.
(_f_) Her isolation and maritime supremacy, coupled with her
industrial character, make her during the strain of equipment the
workshop of the Allies. That this is a great advantage is evident; but
the disadvantage attaching to it is that very large proportions of her
manhood are necessarily withdrawn from the field for the purposes of
her shipbuilding, her communications, her manufactory of arms and all
kinds of supplies, her seafaring work, both civil and military.
Of the two other main Allies, the French disadvantage may be thus
summarized, and it is slight:--
(_a_) The French political frontier, as established since the defeat
of the French in 1871, is an open frontier. It has no natural features
upon which the defensive can rely. In the lack of this the French
fortified at very heavy expense that portion of their frontier which
faced their certain enemy, and established a line from Verdun to
Belfort calculated to check the first movement of his offensive. But
all the two hundred miles to the north of this, the whole line between
Verdun and the North Sea, was virtually open. There were, indeed,
certain fortified places upon that line, but they formed no
consecutive system, and, as their armaments grew old, they were not
brought up to date. The truth is, that the defence of France upon this
frontier was really left to the co-operation of Belgium. If, as was
believed to be almost certain, Prussian morals being what they are,
the Prussian guarantee to respect Belgian neutrality would be torn up
at the outbreak of war, then three great fortresses--Liege, Namur, and
Antwerp--would hold up the enemy's advance in this quarter, and
perform the function of delay which the obsolete armament of the
north-eastern French frontier could not perform. We shall see, when we
come to the conflicting theories of warfare held by the various
belligerents, what a grievous miscalculation this was, and how largely
it accounted for the first disasters of the war. But, at any rate, let
us remember, as our first point, the absence of any natural line of
defence in France as against a German invasion, remembering, also,
that the French would necessarily, at the beginning of any war, be
upon the defensive on account of their inferior numbers. Had France,
for instance, had along her frontiers, and just within them, such a
line as Germany possesses in the Rhine, she would have fallen back at
the outset upon that line. But she has no such advantage.
(_b_) The second disadvantage of the French geographically is one
immixed with political considerations. The French have for centuries
produced, and have for two thousand years believed in, central
government. For at least three hundred years all the life of the
nation has centred upon Paris; all the railways and all the great
system of roads and most of the waterways of the north similarly have
Paris for their nucleus. Now, this central ganglion of the whole
French organism is but 120 miles from the frontier, ten days' easy
marching. An enemy coming in from the north-east not only finds no
natural obstacle in his way, but has Paris as nearly within his grasp
as, say, Cologne is within the grasp of a French invasion of North
Germany. This feature has had the most important consequences upon the
whole of French history. It was particularly the determining point of
1870.
To meet the handicap, the French of our generation have combined two
policies.
First, they have fortified the whole region of Paris so thoroughly
that it has sometimes been called "a fortified province;" an area of
nearly thirty miles across at its narrowest, and of something like
from seven to eight hundred square miles, is comprised within this
plan.
The weakness of this in the face of modern fire will again be dealt
with when we come to the conflicting theories upon war established
during the long peace.
Secondly, the French established a policy whereby, if Paris were
menaced in a future campaign, the Government should abandon that
central point, and, in spite of the grave inconvenience proceeding
from the way in which all material communications centred upon the
capital and all established offices were grouped there, would withdraw
the whole central system of government to Bordeaux, and leave Paris to
defend itself, precisely as though it were of no more importance than
any other fortified point. They would recognize the strategic values
of the district; they would deliberately sacrifice its political and
sentimental value. They would never again run the risk of losing a
campaign because one particular area of the national soil happened to
be occupied. The plans of their armies and the instructions of their
Staff particularly warned commanders against disturbing any defensive
scheme by too great an anxiety to save Paris.
If this were the disadvantage geographically of France, what was that
of Russia?
Russia's geographical disadvantage was twofold. First, she had no
outlet to an open sea in Europe save through the arctic port of
Archangel. This port was naturally closed for nearly half the year,
and how long it might be artificially kept partially open by
ice-breakers it remained for the war to prove. But even if it were
kept open the whole year in this precarious fashion, it lay on the
farther side of hundreds of miles of waste and deserted land connected
only with the active centre of Russia by one narrow-gauge line of
railway with very little rolling stock. The great eastern port of
Vladivostok was nearly as heavily handicapped, and its immense
distance from the scene of operations in the West, with which it was
only connected by a line six thousand miles long, was another
drawback. Russia might, indeed, by the favour of neutrals or of
Allies, use warm water ports. If the Turks should remain neutral and
permit supply to reach her through the Dardanelles, the Black Sea
ports were open all the year round, and Port Arthur (nearly as far off
as Vladivostok) was also open in the Far East. But the Baltic, in a
war with Germany, was closed to her. Certain goods from outside could
reach her from Scandinavia, round by land along the north of the
Baltic, but very slowly and at great expense. It so happened also
that, as the war proceeded, this question of supply became
unexpectedly important, because all parties found the expenditure of
heavy artillery high-explosive ammunition far larger than had been
calculated for, and Russia was particularly weak therein and dependent
upon the West. This disadvantage under which Russia lay was largely
the cause of her embarrassment, and of the prolongation of hostilities
in the winter that followed the declaration of war.
The fact that Russia was ill supplied with railways, and hardly
supplied at all with hard roads (in a climate where the thaw turned
her deep soil into a mass of mud) is political rather than
geographical, but it must be remembered in connection with this
difficulty of supply.
If these, then, were the various disadvantages which geographical
conditions had imposed upon the Allies, what were the corresponding
advantages?
They were considerable, and may be thus tabulated:--
1. The western Allies stood between their enemies and the ocean. If
they could maintain superiority at sea through the great size and
efficiency of the British Fleet, and through its additional power when
combined with the French, they could at the least embarrass, and
perhaps ultimately starve out the enemy in certain essential materials
of war. They could not reduce the enemy to famine, for with care his
territories, so long as they were not ravaged, would be just
self-supporting. The nitrates for his explosives the enemy could also
command, and, in unlimited quantity, iron and coal. But the raw
material of textiles for his clothing, cotton for his explosives,
copper for his shell, cartridge cases, and electrical instruments,
antimony for the hardening of the lead necessary to his small-arm
ammunition, to some extent petrol for his aeroplanes and his
motor-cars, and india-rubber for his tyres and other parts of
machinery, he must obtain from abroad. That he would be able in part
to obtain these through the good offices of neutrals was probable; but
the Allied fleets in the West would certainly closely watch the extent
of neutral imports, and attempt, with however much difficulty and with
however partial success, to prevent those neutrals acting as a mere
highroad by which such goods could pass into Germany and Austria. They
would hardly allow, especially in the later phases of the war, Italy
and Switzerland, Holland and Scandinavia, to act as open avenues for
the supply of the Germanic body. Though they would have to go warily,
and would find it essential to remain at peace with the nations whose
commerce they thus hampered and in some sense controlled, the Allies
in the West could in some measure, greater or less, embarrass the
enemy in these matters.
Conversely, they could supply themselves freely with tropical and
neutral goods, and even with munitions of war obtained from across the
ocean, from Africa and from America.
So long as North-western France and the ports of Great Britain were
free from the enemy this partial blockade would endure, and this
freedom of supply for France and Britain from overseas would also
endure.
2. The Allies had further the geographical advantage of marine
transport for their troops--an important advantage to the French, who
had a recruiting ground in North Africa, and to the British, who had a
recruiting ground in their dominions oversea, and, above all, an
advantage in that it permitted the constant reinforcement of the
continental armies by increasing contingents arriving from these
islands.
* * * * *
Of geographical advantages attaching to the position of Russia only
one can be discovered, and it consists in the immense extent and unity
of the Russian Empire. This permitted operations upon a western front
from the Baltic to the Carpathians, or rather to the Roumanian border,
which vast line could never be firmly held against them by the enemy
when once the Russians had trained and equipped a superior number of
men. The German forces were sufficient, as events proved, long to
maintain a strict cordon upon the shorter front between the Swiss
frontiers and the sea, but upon the other side of the great field,
between the Baltic and the Carpathians, they could never hope to
establish one continued wall of resistance.
(2) THE OPPOSING STRENGTHS.
When nations go to war their probable fortunes, other things being
equal, are to be measured in numbers.
Other things being equal, the numbers one party can bring against the
other in men, coupled with the numbers of weapons, munitions, and
other material, will decide the issue.
But in European civilization other things are more or less equal.
Civilian historians are fond of explaining military results in many
other ways, particularly in terms of moral values that will flatter
the reader. But a military history, however elementary, is compelled
to recognize the truth that normally modern war in Europe has followed
the course of numbers.
Among the very first, therefore, of the tasks set us in examining the
great struggle is a general appreciation of the numbers that were
about to meet in battle, and of their respective preparation in
material.
More than the most general numbers--more than brief, round
statements--I shall not attempt. I shall not do more than state upon
such grounds as I can discover proportions in the terms of single
units--as, to say that one nation stood to another in its immediate
armed men as eight to five, or as two to twenty. Neither shall I give
positive numbers in less than the large fractions of a million. But,
even with such large outlines alone before one, the task is
extraordinarily difficult.
It will almost certainly be found, when full details are available
after the war, that the most careful estimates have been grievously
erroneous in some particular. Almost every statement of fact in this
department can be reasonably challenged, and the evidence upon matters
which in civilian life are amply recorded and easily ascertainable is,
in this department, everywhere purposely confused or falsified.
To the difficulty provided by the desire for concealment necessary in
all military organization, one must add the difficulty presented by
the cross categories peculiar to this calculation. You have to
consider not only the distinction between active and reserve, but also
between men and munitions, between munitions available according to
one theory of war, and munitions available according to another. You
have to modify statical conclusions by dynamic considerations (thus
you have to modify the original numbers by the rate of wastage, and
the whole calculus varies progressively with the lapse of time as the
war proceeds).
In spite of these difficulties, I believe it to be possible to put
before the general reader a clear and simple table of the numbers a
knowledge of which any judgment of the war involves, and to be fairly
certain that this table will, when full details are available, be
discovered not too inaccurate.
We must begin by distinguishing between the two sets of numbers with
which we have to deal--the numbers of men, and the amount of munitions
which these men have to use.
The third essential element, equipment, we need not separately
consider, because, when one says "men" in talking of military affairs,
one only means equipped, trained, and organized men, for no others can
be usefully present in the field.
Let us start, then, with some estimate of the number of men who are
about to take part in battle; let us take for our limits the
convenient limits of a year, and let us divide that space of time
arbitrarily into three parts or periods.
There was a first period in which the nations opposed brought into the
field the men available in the first few weeks for immediate action.
It is not possible to set a precise limit, and to say, "This period
covers the first six" or "the first eight weeks;" but we can say
roughly that, when we are speaking of this first period, we mean the
time during which men for whom the equipment was all ready, whose
progress and munitioning had all been organized, were being as rapidly
as possible brought into play. Such an estimate is not equivalent to
an estimate of the very first numbers that met in the shock of battle;
those numbers were far smaller, and differed according to the rate of
mobilization and the intention of the various parties. The estimate is
only that of the total number which the various parties could, and
therefore did, bring into play before men not hitherto trained as
soldiers, or trained but not believed to be required in the course of
the campaign--according as that campaign had been variously foreseen
by various governments--came in to swell the figures.
The conclusion of this first period would come, of course, gradually
in the case of every combatant, and would come more rapidly in the
case of some than in the case of others. But we are fairly safe if we
take the general turning-point from the first period to the second to
be the month of October 1914. The second period had begun for
some--notably for Germany--with the first days of that month; it had
already appeared for all, especially for England, before the beginning
of November.
The second period is marked for all the combatants by the bringing
into play of such forces as, for various reasons, the Government of
each had once hoped would not be required. The German Empire might
have marked them as not required, in the reasonable hope that victory
would be quickly assured. The British Government might, from a very
different standpoint, have believed them not to be required, because
it regarded the work of its continental Allies as sufficient to gain
the common object, etc. But in the case of all, however various the
motives, the particular mark of this second period is the straining to
put into the field newly trained and equipped bodies which in the
first period were, it was imagined, neither needed nor perhaps
available.
This second period merges very gradually into the third, or final,
period, which is that of the last effort possible to the belligerents.
There comes a moment before the end of the first year when, in the
case of most of the belligerents, every man who is available at all
has been equipped, trained, and put forward, and after which there is
nothing left but the successive batches of yearly recruits growing up
from boyhood to manhood.
Although Britain is in a peculiar position, and Russia, through her
tardiness in equipment, in a peculiar position of another kind, yet
one may fairly say that the vague margin between the second period of
growth and the third period of finality appears roughly somewhere
round the month of June. It will fall earlier with Germany, a good
deal earlier with France; but from the middle of May at earliest to
the end of June at latest may be said to mark the entry of the
numerical factor into its third and final phase.
Let us take these three periods one by one.
The first period is by far the most important to our judgment of the
campaign; a misapprehension of it has warped most political statements
made in this country, and most contemporary judgments of the war as a
whole. It is impossible to get our view of the great European
struggle--of its nature in the bulk--other than fantastically wrong,
if we misapprehend the opening numbers with which it was waged.
There are three ways of getting at those numbers.
The first and worst way is the consulting of general statistics
published before the war broke out. Thus we may see in almanacs the
French army put down as a little over four million, the German at the
same amount, the Russian at about five million, and so forth.
These figures have no relation to reality, because they omit a hundred
modifying considerations--such as the age of the reserves, the degree
of training of the reserves, the organization prepared for the
enrolment of untrained men, etc. The only element in them which is of
real value is the statistics--when we can obtain them--of men actually
present with the colours before mobilization, to which one may add,
perhaps--or at any rate in the case of France and Germany--the numbers
of the _active_ reserve immediately behind the conscript army in
peace.
The second method, which is better, but imperfect, is that which has
particularly appealed to technical writers. It consists in numbering
_units_; in noting the headquarters and the tale of army corps and of
independent divisions.
The fault of this method is twofold. First, that only actual
experience can tell one whether units are really being maintained
during peace at full strength; and secondly, that only actual
experience discovers how many new units can and will be created when
war is joined. In other words, the fault of this method (necessary
though it is as an adjunct to all military calculations) lies in its
divorce from the reality of numbers.
At the end of the retreat from Moscow each army corps of the Grand
Army still preserved its name, each regiment its nominal identity. And
the roll was called by Ney, for instance, before the Beresina,
division by division and regiment by regiment, and even in the
regiments company by company; but in most of these last there was no
one to answer, and there is a story of one regiment for which one
surviving man answered with regularity until he also died. What fights
is numbers of living men--not headings; and if five army corps are
present, each having lost two-fifths of its men, three full army corps
are a match for them.
The third method is that of commonsense. We must deduce from the
results obtained, from the fronts covered, from the energy remaining
after known losses, from the reports of intelligence, from the avenues
of communication available, what least and what largest numbers can be
present. We must correct such conclusions by our previous knowledge of
the way in which each service regards its strength, which most depends
upon reserves, how each uses his depots and drafts, what machinery it
has for training the untrained and for equipping them. This
complicated survey taken, we can arrive at general figures.[1]
Using that method, and applying it to the present campaign, I think we
shall get something like the following.
_The Figures of the First Period, say to October 1-31, 1914._
Germany put across the Rhine in the first period (without counting a
certain small proportion of Hungarian cavalry and Austrian artillery)
rather more than two and a quarter million men. She put into the
Eastern field first a quarter of a million, which rapidly grew to half
a million, and before the end of October to nearly a million; a
balance of rather more than another million she used for filling gaps
and for keeping her strength at the full, and also in particular
cases (as in her violent attempt to break out through Flanders, or
rather the beginning of that attempt) for the immediate reinforcement
of a fighting line. Say that Germany put into the field altogether
five million men in the first period, and you are saying too much. Say
that she put into the field altogether in the first period four and a
quarter million men, and you are saying probably somewhat too little.
France met the very first shock with about a million men, which
gradually grew in the fighting line to about a million and a half.
Here the limit of the French force immediately upon the front will
probably be set. The numbers continued to swell long before the end of
the first period and well on into the second, but they were kept in
reserve. Counting the men drafted in to supply losses and the reserve,
it is not unwise to put at about two and a half million men the
ultimate French figure, of which one and a half million formed, before
the end of the first period, the immediate fighting force.
Austria was ordered by the Germans to put into the field, as an
initial body to check any Russian advance and to confuse the beginning
of Russian concentration, about a million men; which in the first
period very rapidly grew to two million, and probably before the end
of the first period to about two million and a half.
Russia put into the field during the first weeks of the war some
million and a quarter, which grew during the first period (that is,
before the coming of winter had created a very serious handicap, to
which allusion will presently be made) to perhaps two million and a
half at the very most. I put that number as an outside limit.
Servia, of men actually present and able to fight, we may set down at
a quarter of a million; and Belgium, if we like, at one hundred
thousand--though the Belgian service being still in a state of
transition, and the degree of training very varied within it, that
minor point is disputable. Indeed it is better, in taking a general
survey, to consider only the five Great Powers concerned.
Of these the fifth, Great Britain, though destined to exercise by sea
power and by her recruiting field a very great ultimate effect upon
the war, could only provide, in this first period upon the Continent,
an average of one hundred thousand men. To begin with, some
seventy-five thousand, dwindling through losses to little more than
fifty thousand, replenished and increased to about one hundred and
twenty-five thousand, and approaching, as the end of the first period
was reached, one hundred and fifty thousand men actually present upon
the front.
We can now set down these figures in the shape of simple units, and
see how the numerical chances stood at the opening of the campaign.
The enemy sets out with =32= men, of whom he bids =10= men against the
Russians, and sends =22= against the French. The Russians meet the
=10= men with about =12=, and the French meet the =22= with about
=10=; but as they have not the whole =22= to meet in the first shock,
they are struck rather in the proportion of =10= to =16= or =17=,
while the presence of the British contingent makes them rather more
than =101/2=. But these initial figures rapidly change with the growth
of the armies, and before the first period is over the Germans have
=22= in the West against =15= French and =1= British, making =16=;
while in the East the Russian =12= has grown to, say, =24=, but the
Austro-Germans in the East, against those =24=, have grown to be quite
=32=. And there is the numerical situation of the first period
clearly, and I think accurately, put, _supposing the wastage to be
equal in proportion throughout all the armies_. The importance of
appreciating these figures is that they permit us to understand why
the enemy was morally certain of winning, quite apart from his right
judgment on certain disputed theories of war (to which I shall turn in
a moment), and quite apart from his heavy secret munitioning, which
was of such effect in the earlier part of the campaign. He was ready
with forces which he knew would be overwhelming, and how superior he
was thus numerically in that first period can best be appreciated, I
think, by a glance at the diagram on the next page.
[Illustration: Sketch 14.]
It is no wonder that he made certain of a decisive success in the
West, and of the indefinite holding up or pushing back of the Russian
forces in the East. It is no wonder that he confidently expected a
complete victory before the winter, and the signing of peace before
the end of the year. To that end all his munitioning, and even the
details of his tactics, were directed.
_The Figures of the Second Period, say to April 15-June 1, 1915._
The second period saw in the West, and, in the enemy's case, a very
great change proceeding by a number of minute steps, but fairly rapid
in character.
The French numbers could not grow very rapidly, because the French had
armed every available man. They could bring in a certain number of
volunteers; but neither was it useful to equip the most of the older
men, nor could they be spared from those duties behind the front line
which the much larger population of the enemy entrusted to men who,
for the most part, had received no regular training. The French did,
however, in this second period, gradually grow to some two and a half
million men, behind which, ready to come in for the final period, were
about a third of a million young recruits.
Great Britain discovered a prodigious effort. She had already,
comparatively early in the second period, put across the sea nearly
half a million men, and drafts were perpetually arriving as the second
period came to a close; while behind the army actually upon the
Continent very large bodies--probably another million in
number--hastily trained indeed, and presented with a grave problem in
the matter of officering, but of excellent material and _moral_, were
ready to appear, before the end of the second period or at its close,
the moment their equipment should be furnished. Counting the British
effort and the French together, one may say that, without regard to
wastage, the Allies in the West grew in the second period from the
original 16 to over 30, and might grow even before the second period
was over to 35 or even more.
On the enemy's side (neglecting wastage for the moment) there were the
simplest elements of growth. Each Power had docketed every untrained
man, knew his medical condition, where to find him, where and how to
train him. The German Empire had during peace taken about one-half of
its young men for soldiers. It had in pure theory five million
untrained men in the reserve, excluding the sick, and those not
physically efficient for service.
In practice, however, a very large proportion of men, even of the
efficients, must be kept behind for civilian work; and in an
industrial country such as Germany, mainly urban in population, this
proportion is particularly large. We are safe in saying that the
German army would not be reinforced during the second period by more
than two and a half million men. These were trained in batches of some
800,000 each; the equipment had long been ready for them, and they
appeared mainly as drafts for filling gaps, but partly as new
formations in groups--the first going in or before November, the
second in or before February. A third and last group was expected to
have finished this rather elementary training somewhere about the end
of April, so that May would complete the second period in the German
forces.
Austria-Hungary, by an easily appreciable paradox, possessed, though
but 80 per cent. of the Germans in population, a larger available
untrained reserve. This was because that empire trained a smaller
proportion of its population by far than did the Germans. It is
probable that Austria-Hungary was able to train and put forward during
the second period some three million men.
It is a great error, into which most critics have fallen, to
underestimate or to neglect the Austro-Hungarian factor in the enemy's
alliance. Without thus nearly doubling her numbers, Germany could not
have fought France and Russia at all, and a very striking feature of
all the earlier weeks of 1915 was the presence in the Carpathians of
increasing Austro-Hungarian numbers, which checked for more than three
months all the Russian efforts upon that front.
Say that Austria-Hungary nearly doubled her effectives (apart from
wastage) in this second period, and you will not be far wrong.
Russia, which upon paper could almost indefinitely increase during the
second period her numbers in the field, suffered with the advent of
winter an unexpected blow. Her equipment, and in particular her
munitioning (that is, her provision of missiles, and in especial of
heavy shell), must in the main come from abroad. Now the German
command of the Baltic created a complete blockade on the eastern
frontier of Russia, save upon the short Roumanian frontier; and the
entry of Turkey into the campaign on the side of the enemy, which
marked the second period, completed that blockade upon the south, and
shut upon Russia the gate of the Dardanelles. The port of Archangel in
the north was ice-bound, or with great difficulty kept partially open
by ice-breakers, and was in any case only connected with Russia by one
narrow-gauge and lengthy line; while the only remaining port of
Vladivostok was six thousand miles away, and closed also during a part
of the winter.
In this situation it was impossible for the great reserves of men
which Russia counted on to be put into the field, and the Russians
remained throughout the whole of this second period but little
stronger than they had been at the end of the first. If we set them
down at perhaps somewhat over three millions (excluding wastage)
towards the end of this second period, we shall be near to a just
estimate.
We can now sum up and say that, _apart from wastage_, the forces
arrayed against each other after this full development should have
been about 120 men for the central powers of the enemy--35 (and
perhaps ultimately 40) men against them upon the West, and, until
sufficient Russian equipment could at least be found, only some 30 men
against them upon the East.
Luckily such figures are wholly changed by the enormous rate of the
enemy's wastage. The Russians had lost men almost as rapidly as the
enemy, but the Russian losses could be and were made good. The
handicap of the blockade under which Russia suffered permitted her to
maintain only a certain number at the front, but she could continually
draft in support of those numbers; and though she lost in the first
seven months of the war quite four hundred thousand in prisoners, and
perhaps three-quarters of a million in other casualties, her strength
of somewhat over three millions was maintained at the close of the
first period.
In the same way drafts had further maintained the British numbers. The
French had lost not more than one-fifth of a million in prisoners, and
perhaps a third of a million or a little more in killed and
permanently disabled--that is, unable to return to the fighting line.
In the case of both the French and the British sanitary conditions
were excellent.
You have, then, quite 35 for your number in the West, and quite 33 for
your number in the East of the Allied forces at the end of the winter;
but of your enemy forces you may safely deduct 45-50 might be a truer
estimate; and it is remarkable that those who have watched the matter
carefully at the front are inclined to set the total enemy losses
higher than do the critics working at home. But call it only 45 (of
which 5 are prisoners), and you have against the 68 Allies in East and
West no more at the end of this second period than 75 of the enemy.
The following diagram illustrates in graphic form the change that six
months have produced.
[Illustration: Sketch 15.]
In other words, at the end of the winter and with the beginning of the
spring, although the enemy still has a numerical preponderance, it is
no longer the overwhelming thing it was when the war began, and that
change in numbers explains the whole change in the campaign.
The enemy was certain of winning mainly because he was fighting more
than equal in the East, and at first nearly two to one, later quite
four to three, in the West. Those are the conditions of the late
summer of 1914. 1915, before it was a third over, had seen the numbers
nearly equalized. With the summer of 1915 we might hope to see the
numbers at last reversed, and, after so many perilous months, a total
(not local) numerical majority at last appearing upon the side of the
Allies. If ever this condition shall arrive before the enemy can
accomplish a decisive result in either field the tide will have
turned.
The third period belongs at the moment of writing to the future. All
we can say of it is that it presents for the enemy no considerable
field of recruitment; but while in the West it offers no increase to
the French, it does offer another five units at least, and possibly
another six or eight, to the British; and to the Russians, if the
blockade can be pierced at any point, or if the change of weather,
coupled with the broadening of the gauge of the railway to Archangel,
permits large imports, an almost indefinite increase in
number--certainly an increase of two millions, or twenty of the units
we were dealing with in the figures given above.
So much, then, for the numerical factor in men which dominates the
whole campaign.
When we turn from this to the second factor--that of munitions--we
discover something which can be dealt with far more briefly, but which
follows very much the same line.
The enemy in the first period of the war had, if anything, an even
greater superiority in munitioning than in men. This superiority was
due to two distinct causes. In the first place, as we shall see in a
few pages, his theory upon a number of military details was well
founded; in the second place, _he made war at his own chosen moment,
after three years of determined and largely secret preparation_.
As to the first point:--
We may take as a particular example of these theories of war the
enemies' reliance upon heavy artillery--and in particular upon the
power of the modern high explosive and the big howitzer--to destroy
permanent fortification rapidly, and to have an effect in the field,
particularly in the preparation of an assault, which the military
theories of the Allies had wrongly underestimated. It is but one
example out of many. It must serve for the rest, and it will be dealt
with more fully in the next section. The Germans to some extent, and
much more the Austrians, prepared an immensely greater provision of
heavy ammunition than their opponents, and entered the field with
large pieces of a calibre and in number quite beyond anything that
their opponents had at the outset of the campaign.
As to the second point:--
No peaceful nations, no nations not designing a war at their own hour,
lock up armament which may be rendered obsolete, or, in equipment more
extensive than the reasonable chances of a campaign may demand, the
public resources which it can use on what it regards as more useful
things. Such nations, to use a just metaphor, "insure" against war at
what they think a reasonable rate. But if some one Government in
Europe is anarchic in its morals, and proposes, while professing
peace, to declare war at an hour and a day chosen by itself, it will
obviously have an overwhelming advantage in this respect. The energy
and the money which it devotes to the single object of preparation
cannot possibly be wasted; and, if its sudden aggression is not fixed
too far ahead, will not run the risk of being sunk in obsolete
weapons.
Now it is clearly demonstrable from the coincidence of dates, from the
exact time required for a special effort of this kind, and from the
rate at which munitions and equipment were accumulated, that the
Government at Berlin came to a decision in the month of July 1911 to
force war upon Russia and upon France immediately after the harvest of
1914; and of a score of indications which all converge upon these
dates, not one fails to strike them exactly by more than a few weeks
in the matter of preparation, by more than a few days in the date at
which war was declared.
Under those circumstances, Berlin with her ally at Vienna had the
immense numerical advantage over the French and the Russians when war
was suddenly forced upon those countries on the 31st of July last
year.
But, as in the case of men, the advantage would only be overwhelming
during the first period. The very fact that the war had to be won
quickly involved an immense expenditure of heavy ammunition in the
earlier part of it, and this expenditure, if it were not successful,
would be a waste.
It takes about five months to produce a heavy piece, and the rate of
production of heavy ammunition, though slow, is measurable. At the
moment of writing this, towards the close of the second period, the
balance is not yet redressed, but it is in a fair way to be redressed.
The imperfect and too tardy blockade to which the enemy is somewhat
timidly subjected is a factor in aid of this; and we may be fairly
confident that, if a third period is reached before the enemy shall
have the advantage of a decision, there will be a preponderance of
munitioning upon the Allied side in the West and the East which will
be, if anything, of superior importance to the approaching
preponderance in numbers.
Having thus briefly surveyed the opposing strength of either
combatant, checked and measured as it varied with the progress of the
war, we will turn to the _moral_ opposition of military theory
between the one party and the other, and show how here again that,
_save in the most important matter of all, grand strategy_, the enemy
was on the highroad to the victory which he confidently and, for that
matter, reasonably expected.
(3) THE CONFLICTING THEORIES OF WAR.
The long peace which the most civilized parts of Europe had enjoyed
for now a generation left more and more uncertain the value of
theories upon the conduct of war, which theories had for the most part
developed as mere hypotheses untested by experience during that
considerable period. The South African and the Manchurian war had
indeed proved certain theories sound and others unsound, so far as
their experience went; but they were fought under conditions very
different from those of an European campaign, and the progress of
material science was so rapid in the years just preceding the great
European conflict that the mass of debated theories still remained
untried at its outbreak.
The war in its first six months thoroughly tested these theories, and
proved, for the greater part of them, which were sound in practice and
which unsound. I will tabulate them here, and beg the special
attention of the reader, because upon the accuracy of these forecasts
the first fortunes of the war depended.
I. A German theory maintained that, with the organization of and the
particular type of discipline in the German service, attacks could be
delivered in much closer formation than either the French or the
English believed to be possible.
The point is this: After a certain proportion of losses inflicted
within a certain limit of time, troops break or are brought to a
standstill. That was the universal experience of all past war. When
the troops that are attacking break or are brought to a standstill,
the attack fails. But what you cannot determine until you test the
matter in actual war is what numbers of losses in what time will thus
destroy an offensive movement. You cannot determine it, because the
chief element in the calculation is the state of the soldier's mind,
and that is not a measurable thing. One had only the lessons of the
past to help one.
The advantages of attacking in close formation are threefold.
(_a_) You launch your attack with the least possible delay. It is
evident that spreading troops out from the column to the line takes
time, and that the more extended your line the more time you consume
before you can strike.
[Illustration: Sketch 16.]
If I have here a hundred units advancing in a column towards the place
where they are to attack (and to advance in column is necessary,
because a broad line cannot long keep together), then it is evident
that if I launched them to the attack thus:--
[Illustration: Sketch 17.]
packed close together, I get them into that formation much more
quickly than if, before attacking, I have to spread them out thus:--
[Illustration: Sketch 18.]
(_b_) The blow which I deliver has also evidently more weight upon it
at a given point. If I am attacking a hundred yards of front with a
hundred units of man and missile power, I shall do that front more
harm in a given time than if I am attacking with only fifty such
units.
(_c_) In particular circumstances, where troops _have_ to advance on a
narrow front, as in carrying a bridge or causeway or a street or any
other kind of defile, my troops, if they can stand close formation and
the corresponding punishment it entails, will be more likely to
succeed than troops not used to or not able to bear such close
formation. Now, such conditions are very numerous in war. Troops are
often compelled, if they are to succeed, to rush narrow gaps of this
kind, and their ability to do so is a great element in tactical
success.
I have here used the phrase "if they can stand close formation and the
corresponding punishment it entails," and that is the whole point.
There are circumstances--perhaps, on the whole, the most numerous of
all the various circumstances in war--in which close formation, if it
can be used, is obviously an advantage; but it is equally self-evident
that the losses of troops in close formation will be heavier than
their losses in extended order. A group is a better target than a
number of dispersed, scattered points.
Now, the Germans maintained in this connection not only, as I have
said, that they could get their men to stand the punishment involved
in close formation, but also that:--
(_a_) The great rapidity of such attacks would make the _total_ and
_final_ wastage less than was expected, and further:--
(_b_) That the heavy wastage, such as it was, was worth while, because
it would lead to very rapid strategical decision as well as tactical.
In other words, because once you had got your men to stand these heavy
_local_ losses and to suffer heavy _initial_ wastage, you would win
your campaign in a short time, so that the high-rate wastage not being
prolonged need not be feared.
Well, in the matter of this theory, the war conclusively proved the
following points:--
(_a_) The Germans were right and the Allies were wrong with regard to
the mere possibility of using close formations. The German temper,
coupled with the type of discipline in the modern German service, did
prove capable of compelling men to stand losses out of all proportion
to what the Allies expected they could stand, and yet to continue to
advance neither broken nor brought to a standstill. But--
(_b_) The war also proved that, upon the whole, and taking the
operations in their entirety, such formations were an error. In case
after case, a swarm of Germans advancing against inferior numbers got
home after a third, a half, or even more than a half of their men had
fallen in the first few minutes of the rush. But in many, many more
cases this tactical experiment failed. Those who can speak as
eye-witnesses tell us that, though the occasions on which such attacks
actually broke were much rarer than was expected before the war began,
yet the occasions on which the attack was thrown into hopeless
confusion, and in which the few members of it that got home had lost
all power to do harm to the defenders, were so numerous that the
experiment must be regarded as, upon the whole, a failure. It may be
one that no troops but Germans could employ. It is certainly not one
which any troops, after the experience of this war, will copy.
(_c_) Further, the war proved even more conclusively that the wastage
was not worth while. The immense expense in men only succeeded where
there was an overwhelming superiority in number. The strategical
result was not arrived at quickly (as the Germans had expected)
through this tactical method, and after six months of war, the enemy
had thrown away more than twice and nearly three times as many men as
he need have sacrificed had he judged sanely the length of time over
which operations might last.
II. Another German theory had maintained that modern high explosives
fired from howitzers and the accuracy of their aim controlled by
aircraft would rapidly and promptly dominate permanent fortification.
This theory requires explanation. Its partial success in practice was
the most startling discovery and the most unpleasant one to the Allies
of the early part of the war.
In the old days, say up to ten years ago or less, permanent
fortification mounting heavy guns was impregnable to direct assault if
it were properly held and properly munitioned. It could hold out for
months. Its heavy guns had a range superior to any movable guns that
could be brought against it--indeed, so very heavily superior that
movable guns, even if they were howitzers, would be smashed or their
crews destroyed long before the fortress was seriously damaged by
them.
A howitzer is but a form of mortar, and all such pieces are designed
to lob a projectile instead of throwing it. The advantage of using
these instruments when you are besieging permanent works is that you
can hide them behind an obstacle, such as a hill, and that the heavy
gun in the fortress cannot get its shell on to them because that shell
has a flatter trajectory. The disadvantage is that the howitzer has a
very much shorter range than the gun size for size.
[Illustration: Sketch 19.]
Here is a diagram showing how necessarily true this is. The howitzer,
lobbing its shell with a comparatively small charge, has the advantage
of being able to hide behind a steep bit of ground, but on such a
trajectory the range is short. The gun in the fortress does not lob
its shell, but throws it. The course of the gun shell is much more
straight. It therefore can only hit the howitzer and its crew
indirectly by exploding its shell just above them. Until recently, the
gun was master of the howitzer for three reasons:--
First, because the largest howitzers capable of movement and of being
brought up against any fortress and shifted from one place of
concealment to another were so small that their range was
insignificant. Therefore the circumference on which they could be used
was also a small one; their opportunities for hiding were consequently
reduced; the chances of their emplacement being immediately spotted
from the fortress were correspondingly high, and the big gun in the
fortress was pretty certain to overwhelm the majority of them at least.
It is evident that the circumference {~GREEK SMALL LETTER
ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER BETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~} offers
far more chances of hiding than the circumference ABC, but a still more
powerful factor in favour of the new big howitzer is the practical one
that at very great ranges in our climate the chances of spotting a
particular place are extremely small. Secondly, because the explosives
used, even when they landed and during the short time that the howitzer
remained undiscovered and unheard, were not sufficiently powerful nor,
with the small howitzers then in existence, sufficiently large in
amount in each shell to destroy permanent fortification. Thirdly,
because the effect of the aim is always doubtful. You are firing at
something well above yourself, and you could not tell very exactly
where your howitzer shell had fallen.
[Illustration: Sketch 20.]
What has modified all this in the last few years is--
First, the successful bringing into the field of very large howitzers,
which, though they do lob their shells, lob them over a very great
distance. The Austrians have produced howitzers of from 11 to 12
inches in calibre, which, huge as they are, can be moved about in the
field and fired from any fairly steady ground; and the Germans have
probably produced (though I cannot find actual proof that they have
used them with effect) howitzers of more than 16 inches calibre, to be
moved, presumably, only upon rails. But 11-inch was quite enough to
change all the old conditions. It must be remembered that a gun varies
as the _cube_ of its calibre. A 12-inch piece is not twice as powerful
as a 6-inch. It is _eight times_ as powerful. The howitzer could now
fire from an immense distance. The circumference on which it worked
was very much larger; its opportunities for finding suitable steep
cover far greater. Its opportunities for moving, if it was endangered
by being spotted, were also far greater; and the chances of the gun in
the fortress knocking it out were enormously diminished.
Secondly, the high explosives of recent years, coupled with the vast
size of this new mobile howitzer shell, is capable, when the howitzer
shell strikes modern fortification, of doing grievous damage which,
repeated over several days, turns the fort into a mass of ruins.
Thirdly, the difficulty of accurate aiming over such distances and of
locating your hits so that they destroy the comparative small area of
the fort is got over by the use of aircraft, which fly above the fort,
note the hits, and signal the results.
Now, the Germans maintained that under these quite recently modified
conditions not even the best handled and heaviest gunned permanent
fort could hold out more than a few days. The French believed that it
could, and they trusted in the stopping power not only of individual
works (such as the fortress of Manonvilliers on the frontier), but
more especially of great rings of forts, such as surround Liege,
Namur, Verdun, etc., and enclose an area within the security of which
large bodies of troops can be held ready, armies which no one would
dare to leave behind them without having first reduced them to
surrender.
The very first days of the war proved that the German theory was right
and the French wrong. The French theory, upon which such enormous
funds had been expended, had been perfectly right until within quite
recent years the conditions had changed. Port Arthur, for instance,
only ten years ago, could hold out for months and months. In this war
no individual fort has held out for more than eleven days.
It might be imagined under such circumstances that the very existence
of fortresses was doomed; yet we note that Verdun continues to make a
big bulge in the German line four months after the first shots fell on
its forts, and that the Germans are actively restoring the great
Belgian rings they have captured at Liege, Antwerp, and Namur.
Why is this? It is because another German theory has proved right in
practice.
III. This German theory which has proved right in practice is what may
be called "the mobile defence of a fortress." It proposes no longer to
defend upon expensive permanent works precisely located upon the map,
but upon a number of improvised batteries in which heavy guns can move
somewhat behind field-works concealed as much as possible, numerous
and constructed rapidly under the conditions of the campaign. Such
works dotted round the area you desire to defend are quite a different
thing to reduce from isolated, restricted, permanent forts. In the
first place, the enemy does not know where they are; in the second
place, you can make new ones at short notice; in the third place, if a
howitzer does spot your heavy gun, you can move it or its neighbours
to a new position; in the fourth place, the circumference you are
defending is much larger, and the corresponding area that the
besiegers have to search with their fire more extended. Thus, in the
old forts round Verdun, about a dozen permanent works absolutely fixed
and ascertainable upon the map, and covering altogether but a few
acres, constituted the defence of the town. Before September was out
the heavy guns had been moved to trenches far advanced into the field
to the north and east, temporary rails had been laid down to permit
their lateral movement--that is, to let them shift from a place where
they had perhaps been spotted to a new place, under cover of darkness,
and the sectors thus thrown out in front of the old fortifications in
this improvised mobile fashion were at least three times as long as
the line made by the ring of old forts, while the area that had to be
searched was perhaps a hundred times as large. For in the place of the
narrowly restricted permanent fort, with, say, ten heavy guns, you had
those same ten heavy guns dotted here and there in trenches rapidly
established in half a dozen separate, unknown, and concealed spots,
along perhaps a mile of wooded hill, and free to operate when moved
over perhaps double that front.
IV. _In Grand Strategy a German general theory of strategics was
opposed to a French general theory of strategics, and upon which of
the two should prove right depended, much more than on any of the
previous points, the ultimate issue of the campaign._
This is far the most important point for the reader's consideration.
It may be said with justice that no one can understand this war who
has not grasped the conflict between these two fundamental conceptions
of armed bodies in action, and the manner in which (by the narrowest
and most fortunate margin!) events in the first phase of the war
justified the French as against the German school.
I must therefore beg the reader's leave to go somewhat thoroughly into
the matter, for it is the foundation of all that will follow when we
come to the narration of events and the story of the Western battle
which began in the retreat from the Sambre and ended in the Battle of
the Marne.
The first postulate in all military problems is that, other things
being equal, numbers are the decisive factor in war. This does not
mean that absolute superiority of numbers decides a campaign
necessarily in favour of the superior power. What it means is that _in
any particular field_, if armament and discipline are more or less
equal on the two sides, the one that has been able to mass the greater
number _in that field_ will have the victory. He will disperse or
capture his enemy, or at the least he will pin him and take away his
_initiative_--of which word "initiative" more later. Now, this field
in which one party has the superior numbers can only be a portion of
the whole area of operations. But if it is what is called the decisive
portion, then he who has superior numbers _in the decisive time and
place_ will win not only there but everywhere. His local victory
involves consequent success along the whole of his line.
For instance, supposing five men are acting against three. Five is
more than three; and if the forces bear upon each other equally, the
five will defeat the three. But if the five are so badly handled that
they get arranged in groups of two, two, and one, and if the three are
so well handled that they strike swiftly at the first isolated two and
defeat them, thus bringing up the next isolated two, who are in their
turn defeated, the three will, at the end of the struggle, have only
one to deal with, and the five will have been beaten by the three
because, although five is larger than three, yet _in the decisive time
and place_ the three never have more than two against them. It may be
broadly laid down that the whole art of strategics consists for the
man with superior numbers in bringing all his numbers to bear, and for
the man with inferior numbers in attempting by his cunning to compel
his larger opponent to fight in separated portions, and to be defeated
in detail.
As in every art, the developments of these elementary first principles
become, with variations of time and place, indefinitely numerous and
various. Upon their variety depends all the interest of military
history. And there is one method in particular whereby the lesser
number may hope to pin and destroy the power of the greater upon which
the French tradition relied, and the value of which modern German
criticism refused.
Before going into that, however, we must appreciate the mental
qualities which led to the acceptance of the theory upon the one side
and its denial upon the other.
The fundamental contrast between the modern German military temper and
the age-long traditions of the French service consists in this: That
the German theory is based upon a presumption of superiority, moral,
material, and numerical. The theory of the French--as their national
temperament and their Roman tradition compel them--is based upon an
_envisagement_ of inferiority: moral, material, and numerical.
There pervades the whole of the modern German strategic school this
feeling: "I shall win if I act and feel as though I was bound to win."
There pervades the whole French school this sentiment: "I have a
better chance of winning if I am always chiefly considering how I
should act if I found myself inferior in numbers, in material, and
even in moral at any phase in the struggle, especially at its origins,
but even also towards its close."
This contrast appears in everything, from tactical details to the
largest strategical conception, and from things so vague and general
as the tone of military writings, to things so particular as the
instruction of the conscript in his barrack-room. The German soldier
is taught--or was--that victory was inevitable, and would be as swift
as it would be triumphant: the French soldier was taught that he had
before him a terrible and doubtful ordeal, one that would be long, one
in which he ran a fearful risk of defeat, and one in which he might,
even if victorious, have to wear down his enemy by the exercise of a
most burdensome tenacity. In the practice of the field, the contrast
appeared in the French use of a great reserve, and the German contempt
for such a precaution: in the elaborate thinking out of the use of a
reserve, which is the core of French military thought; in the
superficial treatment of the same, which is perhaps the chief defect
of Germany.
It would be of no purpose to debate here which of these two mental
attitudes, with all their consequences, is either morally the better
or in practice the more successful. The French and Latin tradition
seems to the German pusillanimous, and connected with that decadence
which he perceives in every expression of civilization from Athens to
Paris. The modern German conception seems to the French theatrical,
divorced from reality, and hence fundamentally weak. Either critic may
be right or either wrong. Our interest is to follow the particular
schemes developing from that tone of mind. We shall see how, in the
first phases of the war, the German conception strikingly justified
itself for more than ten days; how, after a fortnight, it was
embarrassed by its opponent; and how at the end of a month the German
initiative was lost under the success--only barely achieved after
dreadful risk--of the French plan.
That plan, inherited from the strategy of Napoleon, and designed in
particular to achieve the success of a smaller against a larger
number, may be most accurately defined as _the open strategic square_,
and its leading principle is "the method of detached reserves."
This strategic conception, which I shall now describe, and which (in a
diagram it is put far too simply) underlies the whole of the
complicated movements whereby the French staved off disaster in the
first weeks of the war, is one whose whole object it is to permit the
inferior number to bring up a _locally_ superior weight against a
_generally_ superior enemy in the decisive time and at the decisive
place.
Let us suppose that a general commanding _twelve_ large units--say,
twelve army corps--knows that he is in danger of being attacked by an
enemy commanding no less than _sixteen_ similar units.
Let us call the forces of the first or weaker general "White," and
those of the second or stronger general "Black."
It is manifest that if White were merely to deploy his line and await
the advance of Black thus,
[Illustration: Sketch 21.]
he would be outflanked and beaten; or, in the alternative, Black might
mass men against White's centre and pierce it, for Black is vastly
superior to White in numbers. White, therefore, must adopt some
special disposition in order to avoid immediate defeat.
Of such special dispositions one among many is the French Open
Strategic Square.
This disposition is as follows:--
White arranges his twelve units into four quarters of three each, and
places one quarter at each corner of a square thus:--
[Illustration: Sketch 22.]
We will give them titles, and call them A, B, C, and D.
If, as is most generally the case in a defensive campaign at its
opening, White cannot be certain from which exact direction the main
blow is coming, he may yet know that it is coming from some one
general direction, from one sector of the compass at least, and he
arranges his square to face towards that sector.
For instance, in the above diagram, he may not know whether the blow
is coming from the precise direction 1, or 2, or 3, but he knows that
it is coming somewhere within the sector XY.
Then he will draw up his square so that its various bodies all face
towards the average direction from which the blow may come.
The SIZE of his square--which is of great importance to the
result--he makes as restricted as possible, _subject to two prime
conditions_. These conditions are:--
First, that there shall be room for the troops composing each corner
to be deployed--that is, spread out for fighting. Secondly, that there
shall be room between any two corners (A and C, for instance) for a
third corner (D, for instance) to move in between them and spread out
for fighting in support of them. He makes his square as close and
restricted as possible, because his success depends--as will be seen
in a moment--upon the rapidity with which any one corner can come up
in support of the others. But he leaves enough room for the full
numbers to spread out for fighting, because otherwise he loses in
efficiency; and he leaves room enough between any two squares for a
third one to come in, because the whole point of the formation is the
aid each corner can bring to the others.
In this posture he awaits the enemy.
That enemy will necessarily come on in a lengthy line, lengthy in
proportion to the number of his units. For it is essential to the
general commanding _superior_ numbers to make the _whole_ of the
superior numbers tell, and this can only be done if they march along
parallel roads, and these roads are sufficiently wide apart for the
various columns to have plenty of room to deploy--that is, to spread
out into a fighting line--when the shock comes.
[Illustration: Sketch 23.]
This extended line of Black marching thus against White strikes White
first upon some one corner of his square. Suppose that corner to be
corner A. Then the position when contact is established and the first
serious fighting begins is what you will observe in the above diagram.
A is the corner (now spread out for fighting) which gets the first
shock.
Note you (for this is the crucial point of the whole business) that
upon the exposed corner A will fall a very dangerous task indeed. A
will certainly be attacked by forces superior to itself. Normally
forces more than half as large again as A will be near enough to A to
concentrate upon him in the first shock. The odds will be at least as
much as five to three, the Black units, 4, 5, and 6, will be right on
A, and 3 and 7 will be near enough to come in as well in the first day
or two of the combat, while possibly 2 may have a look in as well.
A, thus tackled, has become what may be called "the _operative corner_
of the square." It is his task "to retreat and hold the enemy" while
B, C, and D, "the masses of manoeuvre," swing up. But under that
simple phrase "operative corner" is hidden all the awful business of a
fighting retreat: it means leaving your wounded behind you, marching
night and day, with your men under the impression of defeat; leaving
your disabled guns behind you, keeping up liaison between all your
hurrying, retreating units, with a vast force pressing forward to your
destruction. A's entire force is deliberately imperilled in order to
achieve the success of the plan as a whole, and upon A's tenacity, as
will be seen in what follows, the success of that plan entirely
depends.
[Illustration: Sketch 24.]
Well, while A is thus retreating--say, from his old position at A_1 on
the foregoing diagram to such a position as A_2, with Black swarming
up to crush him--the other corners of the square, B, C, and D, receive
the order to "swing"--that is, to go forward inclining to the left or
the right according to the command given.
Mark clearly that, until the order is given, the general commanding
Black cannot possibly tell whether the "swing" will be directed to
the left or to the right. Either B will close up against A, C spread
out farther to the left, and D come in between A and C (which is a
"swing" to the left) as in Sketch 25, or C will close up against A, B
will spread well out to the right, and D come up between A and B, as
in Sketch 26 (which is a "swing" to the right).
[Illustration: Sketch 25.]
Until the "swing" actually begins, Black, the enemy, cannot possibly
tell whether it is his left-hand units (1 to 8) or his right-hand
units (9 to 16) which will be affected. One of the two ends of his
line will have to meet White's concentrated effort; the other will be
left out in the cold. Black cannot make dispositions on the one
hypothesis or on the other. Whichever he chose, White would, of
course, swing the other way and disconcert him.
Black, therefore, has to keep his line even until he knows which way
White is going to swing.
[Illustration: Sketch 26.]
Let us suppose that White swings to the left.
Mark what follows. The distances which White's units have got to go
are comparatively small. B will be up at A's side, and so will D in a
short time after the swing is over, and when the swing is completed,
the position is after this fashion. Black's numbers, 1 to 9 inclusive,
find themselves tackled by all Black's twelve. There is a superiority
of number against Black on his right, White's left, and the remaining
part of Black's line (10 to 16 inclusive), is out in the cold.
If it were a tactical problem, and all this were taking place in a
small field, Black's left wing, 10-16, would, of course, come up at
once and redress the balance. But being a strategical problem, and
involving very large numbers and very great distances, Black's left
wing, 10-16, can do nothing of the kind. For Black's left wing, 10-16,
_cannot possibly get up in time_. Long before it has arrived on the
scene, White's 12 will have broken Black's 9 along Black's right wing.
[Illustration: Sketch 27.]
There are three elements which impose this delay upon Black's left
wing.
First, to come round in aid of the right wing means the marching
forward of one unit after another, so that each shall overlap the
last, and so allow the whole lot to come up freely. This means that
the last unit will have to go forward six places before turning, and
that means several days' marching. For with very large bodies, and
with a matter of 100 miles to come up, all in one column, it would be
an endless business (Sketch 28).
[Illustration: Sketch 28.]
Next you have the delay caused by the _conversion of direction_
through a whole right angle. That cause of delay is serious. For when
you are dealing with very large bodies of men, such as half a dozen
army corps, to change suddenly from the direction S (see Sketch 29)
for which your Staff work was planned, and to break off at a moment's
notice in direction E, while you are on the march towards S, is
impossible. You have to think out a whole new set of dispositions,
and to re-order all your great body of men. White was under no such
compulsion, for though he had to swing, the swing faced the same
general direction as his original dispositions. And the size of the
units and the distances to be traversed--the fact that the problem is
strategical and not tactical--is the essence of the whole thing. If,
for instance, you have (as in Sketch 30) half a dozen, not army corps,
but mere battalions of 1,000 men, deployed over half a dozen miles of
ground, AB, and advancing in the direction SS, and they are suddenly
sent for in the direction E, it is simple enough. You form your 6,000
men into column; in a few hours' delay they go off in the direction
E, and when they get to the place where they are wanted, the column
can spread out quickly again on the front CD, and soon begin to take
part in the action. But when you are dealing with half a dozen army
corps--240,000 men--it is quite another matter. The turning of any one
of these great bodies through a whole right angle is a lengthy
business. You cannot put a quarter of a million men into one
column--they would take ages to deploy--so you must, as we have seen,
make each unit of them overlap the next before the turn can begin.
[Illustration: Sketch 29.]
[Illustration: Sketch 30.]
Nor is that all the delay involved. It would never do for these six
separate corps to come up in driblets and get defeated in detail; 10,
11, and 12 will have to wait until 13, 14, 15, and even 16, have got
up abreast of them--and that is the third cause of delay.
Here are three causes of delay which, between them and accumulated,
have disastrous effect; and in general we may be certain that where
very large bodies and very extensive stretches of territory are
concerned, that wing of Black which has been left out in the cold can
never come up in time to retrieve the situation created by White's
twelve pinning Black's engaged wing of only nine.
If the square has worked, and if the twelve White have pinned the
right-hand wing of Black, 1 to 9 inclusive, there is nothing for Black
to do but to order his right wing, 1 to 9, to retreat as fast as
possible before superior numbers, and to order his left wing, 10 to
16, to fall back at the same time and keep in line; and you then have
the singular spectacle of twelve men compelling the retreat of and
pursuing sixteen.
_That is exactly what happened in the first three weeks of active
operations in the West. The operative corner A in the annexed diagram
was the Franco-British force upon the Sambre. The retirement of that
operative corner and its holding of the enemy was what is called in
this country "The Retreat from Mons." BB are the "masses of manoeuvre"
behind A. The swinging up of these masses involving the retirement of
the whole was the Battle of the Marne._
[Illustration: Sketch 31.]
Now, it is evident that in all this everything depends upon the
tenacity and military value of the operative corner, which is exposed
and sacrificed that the whole scheme of the Open Square may work.
If that operative corner is destroyed as a force--is overwhelmed or
dispersed or surrounded--while it is fighting its great odds, the
whole square goes to pieces. Its centre is penetrated by the enemy,
and the army is in a far worse plight than if recourse had never been
had to the open strategic square at all. For if the operative corner,
A, is out of existence before the various bodies forming the
"manoeuvring mass" behind it have had time to "swing," then the enemy
will be right in their midst, and destroying, in overwhelming force,
these remaining _separated_ bodies in detail.
It was here that the German strategic theory contrasted so violently
with the French. The Germans maintained that an ordeal which Napoleon
might have been able to live through with his veterans and after
fifteen years of successful war, a modern conscript army, most of its
men just taken from civilian life and all of short service, would
never endure. They believed the operative corner would go to pieces
and either be pounded to disintegration, or outflanked, turned, and
caught in the first days of the shock before the rest of the square
had time to "work." The French believed the operative corner would
stand the shock, and, though losing heavily, would remain in being.
They believed that the operative corner of the square would, even
under modern short service and large quasi-civilian reserve
conditions, remain an army. They staked their whole campaign upon that
thesis, and they turned out to be right. But they only just barely won
through, and by the very narrowest margin. Proving right as they did,
however, the success of their strategical theory changed the whole
course of the war.
With this contrast of the great opposing theories considered, I come
to the conclusion of my Second Part, which examines the forces
opposed. I will now turn to the Third Part of my book, which concerns
the first actual operations from the Austrian note to the Battle of
the Marne.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Thus, after these lines were written, I had occasion in _Land and
Water_ to estimate the garrison of Przemysl before the figures were
known. The element wherewith to guide one's common sense was the known
perimeter to be defended; and arguing from this, I determined that a
minimum of not less than 100,000 men would capitulate. I further
conceived that the total losses could hardly be less than 40,000, and
I arrived at an original force of between three and four corps.
[Illustration: Sketch 32.]