All the armies and navies of the world are being equipped with more
and more “destructive” weapons. But does this insure a “terrific
and fearful slaughter” in battle? Assuredly not. It implies and
necessitates profound modifications in tactical formations and
movements—modifications similar in kind (though greater in degree) to
those already brought about by the long range repeating rifle and the
improved field artillery. Men are not going to march up in masses and
be mown down by machinery. If the effective range of these guns is,
for example, two miles, tactical maneuvers in the open will be made
at a greater distance from them. The storming of fortifications and
charges in the open ground will go out of fashion. They have, in fact,
been growing more and more infrequent ever since the improvements in
range and precision of firearms began. If a man who fought under John
Sobieski, Marlborough or the first Napoleon could be haled out of his
obliterated grave and shown a battle of to-day with all our murderous
weapons in full thunder, he would probably knuckle the leaf-mould out
of his eyes and say: “Yes, yes, it is most inspiring!—but where is the
enemy?”
It is a fact that in the battle of to-day the soldier seldom gets more
than a distant and transitory glimpse of the men whom he is fighting.
He is still supplied with the sabre if he is “horse,” with the bayonet
if he is “foot,” but the value of these weapons is a moral one. When
commanded to draw the one or “fix” the other he knows he is expected
to advance as far as he dares to go; but he knows, too, if he is not
a very raw recruit, that he will not get within sabring or bayoneting
distance of his antagonists—who will either break and run away or
drop so many of his comrades that he will himself break and run away.
In our civil war—and that is very ancient history to the long-range
tactician of to-day—it was my fortune to assist at a sufficing number
of assaults with bayonet and assaults with sabre, but I have never had
the gratification to see a half-dozen men, friends or enemies, who had
fallen by either the one weapon or the other. Whenever the opposing
lines actually met it was the rifle, the carbine, or the revolver
that did the work. In these days of “arms of precision” they do not
meet. There is reason, too, to suspect that, therefore, they do not
“get mad” and execute all the mischief that they are capable of. It is
certain that the machine gun will keep its temper under the severest
provocation.
Another great improvement in warfare is a mirror or screen which is
placed at the rear of heavy guns, reflecting everything in front. By
means of certain mechanism the gun can be trained upon anything so
reflected. This enables the gunners to keep out of danger in the bottom
of their well and so live to a green old age. The advantage to them
is considerable and too obvious to require exposition to anyone but
an agnostic; but whether in the long run their country will find any
profit in preserving the lives of men who are afraid to die for it—that
is another matter. It might be better to incur the expense entailed by
having relays of men to be killed in battle than to try to win battles
with men who know nothing of the spirit, enthusiasm and heroism that
come of peril.
All mechanical devices tend to make cowards of those whom they protect.
Men long accustomed to the security of even such slight earthworks
as are thrown up by armies operating against each other in the open
country lose something out of their general efficiency. The particular
thing that they lose is courage. In long sieges the sallies and
assaults are commonly feeble, spiritless affairs, easily repelled. So
manifestly does a soldier’s comparative safety indispose him to incur
even such perils as beset him in it that during the last years of our
civil war, when it was customary for armies in the field to cover their
fronts with breastworks, many intelligent officers, conceding the need
of some protection, yet made their works much slighter than was easily
possible. Except when the firing was heavy, close and continuous,
“head-logs” (for example) for the men to fire under were distinctly
demoralizing. The soldier who has least security is least reluctant to
forego what security he has. That is to say, he is the bravest.
Right sensibly General Miles once tried to call a halt in the progress
of military extravagance by condemning our enormous expenditures
for “disappearing guns.” The delicate and complicated mechanism for
pointing and lowering the gun will break down when it is in action
and deteriorate like a fish on the beach when it is not. During the
long decades of peace it will need expert attention, exercise enough
to wear it out, and constant renewal of its parts. The only merit of
these absurd Jack-in-the-box guns is their bankrupting cost. If we can
fool less wealthy nations into adopting them we shall have whatever
advantage accrues to the longest purse in a contest of purses. So
far, all other nations, rich and poor alike, have shown a thrifty
indisposition to engage in the peaceful strife.
We are told with, on the whole, sufficient reiteration, that this is
an age and this a country of “marvelous invention,” of “scientific
machinery,” and the rest of it. We accept the statement without
question, as the people of every former age have without question
believed it of themselves. God forbid that anyone should close his
ears to the cackle of his generation when it has laid its daily egg!
Nevertheless, there are things that mechanical ingenuity can not
profitably produce. One of them is the disappearing gun, another the
combination stop-watch and tack hammer.
Americans must learn, preferably in time of peace, that no people has a
monopoly of ingenuity and military aptitude. Great wars of the future,
like great wars of the past, will be conducted with an intelligence and
knowledge common to both belligerents, and with such appliances as both
possess. The art of attack and the art of defense will balance each
other as now, any advance in the first being always promptly met with a
corresponding advance in the second. Genius is of no country; it is not
peculiar to the United States.
It is not to be doubted that if it should be discovered that silver is
a better gun metal than any now in use, and some ingenious scoundrel
should invent a diamond-pointed shell of superior penetrating power,
these “weapons of precision and efficiency” would be adopted by all
the military powers. Their use would at least produce a gratifying
mortality among civilians who pay military appropriations; so something
would be gained. The purpose of modern artillery appears to be
slaughter of the taxpayer behind the gun.
If fifty years ago the leading nations of Europe and America had
united in making invention of offensive and defensive devices a
capital crime, they would during all this intervening time have been
on relatively the same military footing that they now are, and would
have been spared an expenditure of a mountain of money. In the mad
competition for primacy in war power not one of them has gained any
permanent advantage; the entire benefit of the “improvements” has gone
to the clever persons who have thought them out and been permitted to
patent them. Until these are forbidden by law to eat cake in the sweat
of the taxpayer’s face we must continue to clutch our purse and tremble
at their power. We are willing to admire their ingenuity, cheer their
patriotism and envy their lack of heart, but it would be better to take
them from their arms of precision to those of the public hangman.
The military inventor is said now to have thought out a missile that
will make a hole in any practicable armor plate as easily as you can
put a hot knife through a pat of butter. From all that can be learned
by way of the fan-light over the door of official secrecy it appears
to be a pointed steel bolt greased with graphite. Its performances
are said to be eminently satisfactory to the man behind the patent,
who is confident that it will serve the purpose of its being by
penetrating the United States Treasury. Well, here at least is “an
improvement in weapons of destruction,” to which the non-militant
taxpayer can accord a hearty welcome. If it is really irresistible to
armor, armor to resist it will go out of use and ships again “fight
in their shirtsleeves.” It will sadden us to renounce the familiar
550-dollars-a-ton steel plating endeared to us by a thousand tender
recollections of the assessment rate, but time heals all earthly
sorrow, and eventually we shall renew our joy in the blue of the skies,
the fragrance of the flowers, the dew-spangled meadows, the fluting
and warbling and trilling of the politicians. In the meantime, while
awaiting our perfect consolation, we may derive a minor comfort from
the high price of graphite.
When in personal collision, or imminent expectation of it, with a
gentleman cherishing the view that one is needless, one’s attention
does not wander from the business in hand to dwell upon the lilies and
languors of peace. One is interested in the proceedings, and if he
survive them experiences in the retrospection a pleasure that was not
discernible in the returning brave from the land where the Mauser and
the Kraag-Jorgensen conversed amicably without visible human agency
across a space of two statute miles. Crouching in the grass, under an
afflicting Spanish fire from somewhere, our soldiers at San Juan Hill
felt it a great hardship to be “decimated” in so inglorious a skirmish.
They did not know, poor fellows, that they were fighting a typical
modern battle. When, the situation having become intolerable, their
two divisions had charged and carried the trenches of the two or three
hundred Spaniards opposed to them, they had leisure to amend their
conception of war as a picturesque and glorious game.
In the elder day, before the invention of the Whitehead torpedo and
the high-power gun, the wooden war vessels of the period used to ram
each other, lie alongside, grapple, jam their guns into each other’s
ports, and send swarms of half-naked boarders on each other’s deck,
where they fought breast to breast and foot to foot like heroes. Dr.
Johnson described a sea voyage as “close confinement with a chance of
being drowned.” The sailor-militant has always experienced that double
disadvantage with the added chance of being smashed and burned. But
formerly the rigors of his lot were ameliorated by a sight of his
enemy and by some small opportunity of distinction in the neighborhood
of that gentleman’s throat. To-day he is denied the pleasure of
meeting him—never even so much as sees him unless fortunate enough to
make him take to his boats. As opportunity for personal adventure and
distinction a modern sea-fight is considerably inferior to a day in the
penitentiary. Like a land-fight, it has enough of danger to keep the
men awake, but for variety and excitement it is inferior to a combat
between an isosceles triangle and the fourth dimension.
When the patriot’s heart is duly fired by his newspaper and his
politician he will probably enlist henceforth, as he has done
heretofore, and be as ready to assist in covering the enemy’s half of
the landscape with a rain of bullets, falling where it shall please
Heaven, as his bellicose ancestor was to meet the foeman in the flesh
and engage him in personal combat; but it will be a stupid business,
despite all that the special correspondent can do for its celebration
by verbal fireworks. Tales of the “firing line” emanating from the
chimney corner of the future will urge the young male afield with a
weaker suasion. By the way, I do not remember to have heard the term
“firing line” during our civil war. We had the thing, of course, but
it did not last long enough (except in siege operations, when it was
called something else) to get a name. Troops on the “firing line”
either held their fire until the enemy signified a desire for it by
coming to get it, or they themselves advanced and served him with it
where he stood.
I should not like to say that this is an age of human cowardice; I say
only that the men of all civilized nations are taking a deal of pains
to invent offensive weapons that will wield themselves and defenses
that can take the place of the human breast. A modern battle is a
quarrel of skulkers trying to have all the killing done a long way from
their persons. They will attack at a distance; they will defend if
inaccessible. As much of the fighting as possible is done by machinery,
preferably automatic. When we shall so have perfected our arms of
precision and other destructive weapons that they will need no human
agency to start and keep them going, war will be foremost among the
arts of peace.
Meantime it is still a trifle perilous, sometimes fatal; those who
practice it must expect bloody noses and cracked crowns. It may
be to the advantage of our countrymen to know that if they have no
forethought but thrift they can have no safety but peace; that in the
school of emergency nothing is taught but how to weep; that there
are no effective substitutes for courage and devotion. America’s
best defenses are the breasts of American soldiers and the brains of
American commanders. Confidence in any “revolutionizing” device is a
fatal faith.
1899.