PARIS
TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW SERIES
_DÆDALUS, or Science and the Future_
By J. B. S. Haldane
_ICARUS, or The Future of Science_
By the Hon. Bertrand Russell, F.R.S.
_THE MONGOL IN OUR MIDST_
By F. G. Crookshank, M.D. _Fully Illustrated_
_WIRELESS POSSIBILITIES_
By Prof. A. M. Low. _With four Diagrams_
_NARCISSUS, An Anatomy of Clothes_
By Gerald Heard. _Illustrated_
_TANTALUS, or The Future of Man_
By F. C. S. Schiller
_THE PASSING OF THE PHANTOMS_
By Prof. C. J. Patten, M.A., M.D., Sc.D., F.R.A.I.
_CALLINICUS, A Defence of Chemical Warfare_
By J. B. S. Haldane
_QUO VADIMUS? Some Glimpses of the Future_
By E. E. Fournier d’Albe, D.Sc., F.Inst.P.
_THE CONQUEST OF CANCER_
By H. W. S. Wright, M.S., F.R.C.S.
_HYPATIA, or Woman and Knowledge_
By Dora Russell (The Hon. Mrs. Bertrand Russell)
_LYSISTRATA, or Woman’s Future and Future Woman_
By A. M. Ludovici
_WHAT I BELIEVE_
By the Hon. Bertrand Russell, F.R.S.
_PERSEUS, or Of Dragons_
By H. F. Scott Stokes, M.A.
_THE FUTURE OF SEX_
By Rebecca West
_THE EVOCATION OF GENIUS_
By Alan Porter
_AESCULAPIUS, or Disease and The Man_
By F. G. Crookshank, M.D.
_PROTEUS, or The Future of Intelligence_
By Vernon Lee
_THAMYRIS, or Is there a Future for Poetry?_
By R. C. Trevelyan
_PROMETHEUS, or Biology and the Advancement of Man_
By H. S. Jennings
_PARIS, or The Future of War_
By Captain B. H. Liddell Hart
_Other Volumes in Preparation_
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
PARIS
OR
The Future of War
BY
CAPT. B. H. LIDDELL HART
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
681 FIFTH AVENUE
Copyright 1925
By E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
_All Rights Reserved_
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE FUTURE OF WAR 1
THE ORIGINS OF THE FALSE OBJECTIVE 10
PERMANENT NATIONAL OBJECTS 18
THE NATIONAL OBJECTIVE IN WAR 19
HISTORICAL EXAMPLES OF THE MORAL OBJECTIVE 23
THE MEANS TO THE MORAL OBJECTIVE 27
THE AIR WEAPON 37
OBJECTIONS TO THE AIR-ATTACK 43
ARE ARMIES AND NAVIES OBSOLETE? 53
THE NAVAL WEAPON 56
THE ARMY WEAPON 62
THE EVOLUTION OF “NEW MODEL” ARMIES 78
EPILOGUE 84
PARIS
THE FUTURE OF WAR
It is no purpose of this little book to discuss whether a repetition
of war is likely or unlikely, or to speculate on the dawn of universal
peace. The writer prefers to take his stand on universal experience, as
contained in history, observing that the path of history is strewn with
idealistic tombstones――the Holy Alliance, the mid-Victorian Manchester
School, the Hague Conventions. The Great Exhibition of 1851 was to
inaugurate a Golden Age, to be the concrete symbol of the millennium,
yet within a decade the four chief Powers in Europe had reconverted
their ploughshares into swords, and the North American continent was
torn by a fratricidal conflict. To abolish war we must remove its
cause, which lies in the imperfections of human nature. The way to
“peace on earth” is by the progressive and general growth of “good-will
towards men,” by a transformation of the spirit of man instead of
a futile attempt to bind his fists――cords from which he can easily
break free, if so disposed. This changed spirit must be world-wide,
for peace-loving nations, especially if prosperous and possessed of
rich territory who abandon their defences, invite and indeed provoke
aggression as much as a flock of well-nourished sheep with a lean and
hungry wolf in the fold. In the seventeenth century the Protestant
states of North Germany complaining that the expense of maintaining
armed forces exceeded the possible benefit of their protection, prated
thus――“let us behave with justice to all men, and all men will behave
with justice towards us.” They speedily found the fallacy of this faith
in an imperfect world, their protests of neutrality an inadequate
shield against the rapacity of their neighbours.
In the years immediately following the Great War, idealists thought to
cure the ills of the body politic, as well as human, by a monotonous
repetition of the jingle, “Day by day, and in every way, we are getting
better and better,” but disillusionment came, and the peoples of the
world are realizing that international Couéism is as futile to cure
real disease as its pseudo-medical counterpart.
Regarding war as a hard fact, as a doctor called in to a sick patient
views disease, our concern here is simply with the course of the
malady, our object being to gauge its future tendencies, in order, if
possible, to limit its ravages and by scientific treatment ensure the
speedy and complete recovery of the patient. As diagnosis comes before
treatment, the first step is to examine the patient, estimate the
gravity of his condition, and discover the seat of the trouble.
The Great War caused the direct sacrifice of eight million lives,
to which the British Isles alone contributed three-quarters of a
million. So ineffectual was the treatment prescribed by the military
practitioners who were called in that the illness took over four years
to run its course, during which the financial temperature mounted
daily, until for this country alone it reached a cost of £8,000,000 a
day. Our total war expenditure was nearly ten thousand million pounds;
our National Debt has been increased tenfold. Moreover, these long
years of strain and want so impaired the physical health of the peoples
that they fell an easy prey to epidemic diseases, and the influenza
scourge of 1918 and 1919 cost, among the civilian population of the
world, more than twice as many lives as were lost in battle.
It is surely clear that any further wars conducted on similar
methods must mean the breakdown of Western civilization. Is there an
alternative? To answer this question the obvious course is to ascertain
what were the foundations on which the military leaders of the Great
War built their doctrine of war, and then to examine these in the light
of reason and experience――as embodied in history. The traditional
military mind is notoriously sensitive to any breath of criticism,
and any attempt to tear aside the veil of its _mystery_ is apt to be
greeted by the cry of “sacrilege.” Occasionally some daring soldier
has done so――and has paid the penalty for exposing to lay eyes the
emptiness of the shrine. Thus Marshal Saxe in his eighteenth-century
_Reveries_ on the art of war, declared that “custom and prejudice
confirmed by ignorance are its sole foundation and support,” for which
temerity Carlyle, the disciple and mouthpiece of the Frederician
dogmas, poured scorn on his book as “a strange military farrago,
dictated, as I should think, under opium.”
Similarly, a generation before the Great War, Monsieur Bloch, the
civilian banker of Warsaw, forecast its nature with extraordinary
prescience, only to be ridiculed by the General Staffs of Europe. Yet
the stalemate that he predicted would arise from the clash of “nations
in arms” came true――with the sole difference that he underestimated
the blind obstinacy of the leaders and the passivity of the led in
continuing for four more years to run their heads against a brick wall.
Now, however, in these post-war years of disillusionment, is the
time to take stock of the exorbitant cost of the war in lives and
money, of the moral and economic exhaustion that is its fruit. Though
professional experience in any department of life is the way to
executive skill, concentration on technical problems has a notorious
tendency to narrow the vision. Hence, while paying tribute to the
professional ability shown in the later phases of the 1918 campaign, we
are justified, standing amid the _débris_, in questioning the strategic
aim and direction of the war.
What was the objective of the Allies’ strategy? The memoirs and
despatches of the responsible military leaders reveal that it was the
destruction of the enemy’s armed forces in the main theatre of war.
As the proverb tells us, it is no use crying over spilt milk, nor even
over spilt blood and money――the price for this empty triumph has been
paid by the ordinary citizens of the nations, yoked like “dumb, driven
oxen” to the chariot of Mars.
What we are concerned with is the future, and it is the worst of
omens that the orthodox military school, still generally in power as
the advisers of governments, cling obstinately to this dogma, blind
apparently to the futility of the Great War, both in its strategy
and its fruits. Of these military Bourbons, restored to the seats
of authority in most capitals, the saying may be echoed: “They have
learnt nothing and forgotten nothing”――if one may judge by the post-war
manuals of the various countries, and the utterances of generals and
admirals.
New weapons would seem to be regarded merely as an additional tap
through which the bath of blood can be filled all the sooner. Not long
ago, in _The Times_, a distinguished admiral argued that as “the first
and greatest principle of war” was the destruction of the armed forces
of the enemy, the only correct objective for aircraft in war must be
the enemy air-force.
Thus in this new element, the air, is to be reincarnated the Napoleonic
theory――for the doctrine on which the last war was fought, and the next
one will be if wisdom does not prevail, is the disastrous legacy of
the Corsican vampire, who drained the blood of Europe a century back.
From 1870 to 1918 the General Staffs of the Powers were obsessed with
the Napoleonic legend; instead of reconnoitring the future in the light
of universal history they were purely looking backward on a military
Sodom and Gomorrah, until, like Lot’s wife, they and their doctrines
became petrified.
What is the tenor of this doctrine? First, that there is only one true
objective in war――“the _destruction_ of the enemy’s main forces on the
battlefield.” Even the most hair-splitting partisan of the orthodox
school cannot dispute this statement without throwing overboard all the
textbooks and regulations produced by the General Staffs of Europe and
America for generations past. Second, that the means of gaining this
objective is to pile up greater numbers than the enemy. Obviously the
surest way to achieve this is to call up and put into the field the
whole manhood of a nation, and so has grown up as a complement to the
Napoleonic theory of the “objective” another equally short-sighted
dogma――that of the “nation in arms,” with its blind worship of quantity
rather than quality.
Pacifists are fond of talking about the “armaments race.” A curious
sort of race――for which ponderous cart-horses are bred instead of
steeple-chasers, and where the trainers clap “mass objective” blinkers
on the horses’ heads, while the jockeys ride looking back over their
shoulders. Then they wonder why instead of taking their fences freely
the poor horses fall at the first open ditch, and cannot be got out
under four years?
There would seem to be a slight hitch somewhere in this Napoleonic
doctrine.
THE ORIGINS OF THE FALSE OBJECTIVE
How arose this “blinkered” conception that the national goal in war
could be attained only by mass destruction, and how did it gain so firm
a hold on military thought? The decisive influence was exerted not
by Napoleon himself, though his practical example of the beneficent
results of “absolute war” was its inspiration, but by his great German
expositor, Carl von Clausewitz. He it was who, in the years succeeding
Waterloo, analysed, codified, and deified the Napoleonic method.
Clausewitz has been the master at whose feet have sat for a century the
military students of Europe. From him, the German Army in particular
drew the inspiration by which they evolved their stupendous, if
fundamentally unsound, structure of “the nation in arms.” It achieved
its triumph in 1870 and, as a result, all the Powers hurried to
imitate the model, and to revive with ever greater intensity the
Napoleonic tradition, until finally the gigantic edifice was put to an
extended test in the years 1914–1918――with the result that in its fall
it has brought low not only Germany, but, with it, the rest of Europe.
Thus, because of the unsoundness of their foundations, Clausewitz’s
theories have ended by bringing his Fatherland into a more impotent
and impoverished state even than when it was under the iron heel of
Napoleon. Clausewitz’s was truly “a house built on sand.”
Yet, despite his main miscalculations, he had a wider understanding of
the objects of war than most of his disciples. Clausewitz did at least
recognize the existence of other objectives besides the armed forces.
He enumerated three general objects――the military power, the country,
and the will of the enemy. But his vital mistake was to place “the
will” last in his list, instead of first and embracing all the others,
and to maintain that the destruction of the enemy’s main armies was the
best way to ensure the remaining objects. Similarly, the other most
famous military teacher of the century before the Great War, Marshal
Foch, admitted the existence and wisdom, under certain conditions, of
other means, but, as with Clausewitz, the reservations were forgotten,
and his disciples remembered only his assertion that “the true theory”
of war was “that of the absolute war which Napoleon had taught Europe.”
This was but human nature, for the followers of any great teacher
demand a single watchword, however narrow. The idea of preserving a
broad and balanced point of view is anathema to the mass, who crave
for a slogan and detest the complexities of independent thought. It
is not surprising that military thought in recent generations, in its
blind worship of the idol of “absolute war,” has poured scorn on the
objectives of Napoleon’s predecessors――curiously forgetting that they
at least gained the purpose of their policy, whereas his ended in ruin.
One and all spoke and wrote with contempt of these eighteenth-century
strategists, though they included such men as Marshal Saxe, whose
writings bear the impress of a mind perhaps more original and unbiased
by traditional prejudices than any in military history.
Here is how Foch, in his _Principes de Guerre_, contrasts the exponents
of the rival theories: “Marshal de Saxe, albeit a man of undeniable
ability, said: ‘I am not in favour of giving battle.... I am even
convinced that a clever general can wage war his _whole life_ without
being compelled to do so.’ Entering Saxony in 1806, Napoleon writes to
Marshal Soult: ‘There is nothing I desire so much as a great battle.’
The one wants to avoid battle his whole life; the other demands it at
the first opportunity.”
So that even a man of the intellectual calibre of Marshal Foch thinks
solely of the tangible proofs of military victory, with never a
reflection as to which of these two men best fulfilled ultimately the
national objective of an honourable, secure, and prosperous future.
We see him greeting with approval the dictum of Clausewitz: “Blood is
the price of victory. You must either resort to it or give up waging
war. All reasons of humanity which you might advance will only expose
you to being beaten by a less sentimental adversary.”
In the latter sentence we see the recurring delusion of the traditional
military mind that the opposition to the Napoleonic theory must
necessarily be dictated by mere sentimentalism. It disregards the
possibility that it may be due to a far-sighted political economy,
which does not lose sight of the post-war years. A prosperous and
secure peace is a better monument of victory than a pyramid of skulls.
There are signs, however, that Marshal Foch, in contrast to his
intellectual compeers, has gained from recent experience a wider
conception of the aims of war and the true objective of military
policy. In a statement since the War on the subject of air-power, he
gave the weighty and illuminating judgment that “The potentialities
of aircraft attack on a large scale are almost incalculable, but
it is clear that such attack, owing to its crushing _moral effect
on a nation, may impress public opinion to the point of disarming
the Government and thus become decisive_.” Here is a dramatic and
far-reaching break with the “armed forces” objective. Perhaps also
his connection with the Ruhr policy is evidence of a grasp of the
possibilities not only of war without bloodshed, but war without
hostilities――the objective, more effective than the enemy’s military
power, being control of the rival’s industrial resources.
“Saul is numbered with the prophets!” The champion and embodiment of
the Napoleonic doctrine appears to have cast it overboard. We see an
indisputable recognition that two other objectives exist――one moral,
the other economic.
If the conversion comes a little late, when we are enjoying the happy
and prosperous peace procured for us by the method of “absolute war” so
eloquently preached in pre-war years by this august teacher, it may at
least acquit us of _lèse-majesté_ in suggesting, that by their blind
worship of the Napoleonic idol, our recent military guides not only
narrowed and distorted their whole conception of war, but led us into
the morass――financial, commercial, and moral――wherein the nations of
Europe in greater or less degree are now engulfed――as was France after
Napoleon.
When the high priest of the orthodox faith begins to have doubts, the
moment is ripe for those who do not hold that the advent of Napoleon
was the Year One of military history, who are disciples of earlier
Great Captains, to endeavour, in all humility, to propound a wider and
more scientific conception of war and its true objective.
Thus, should the millennium of Universal Peace fail to arrive, and
nations still continue to settle by an appeal to force questions
which vitally affect their policy, it may be that they will learn
to wage war in a manner less injurious to the interwoven fabric of
modern civilization, and incidentally to their own prosperity and
ultimate security, than proved the case in the Great War of 1914–1918.
Security――yes, because the greater the injury inflicted, the deeper
are the sores of the body politic, and in these the toxins of revenge
fester.
But to achieve this more scientific and economic military policy it
is necessary that public opinion should be awakened not only to the
results but also to the false foundations of the present theory of war.
The saying that “the onlooker sees most of the game” is as true of
the broader aspects of war as of anything else, and in the unfettered
common sense of the intelligent citizen, and its reaction on those
entrusted with the military weapons, lies the quickest chance of
deliverance from this dogma――for military authority holds with Bishop
Warburton that “orthodoxy is my doxy――heterodoxy is another man’s doxy.”
Soldiers who refuse to bow in adoration of Napoleon and Clausewitz,
his prophet, are condemned as heretics, and the repression of the
“Protestants” has been made possible by the apathy of the public
towards military questions. Men of the Anglo-Saxon race are not willing
to hand over their religious or political conscience into the keeping
of “authority,” yet by their lack of interest in military questions
they do in fact relinquish any check on a policy which affects the
security of their lives and livelihoods to an even greater extent. For,
when war bursts upon the nation, it is the ordinary citizens who pay
the toll either with their lives or from their pockets. Only by taking
an active interest in the broad aspects of national defence, and so
regaining control of their military conscience, can they avoid being
driven like sheep to the shearer and slaughterhouse, as in the last war.
PERMANENT NATIONAL OBJECTS
If the citizens of a nation were asked what should be the general aim
of the national policy, they would reply, in tenor if not in exact
words, that it should be such as to guarantee them “an honourable,
prosperous, and secure existence.”
No normal citizen of a democracy would willingly imperil this by a
resort to war. Only when he considers, or it is suggested to him
convincingly, that his honour, prosperity, or security are endangered
by the policy of another nation, will he consent to the grave step of
making war.
THE NATIONAL OBJECTIVE IN WAR
When, however, the fateful decision for war has been taken, what does
common sense tell us should be the national objective? To ensure a
resumption and progressive continuance of what may be termed the
peace-time policy, with the shortest and least costly interruption of
the normal life of the country.
What stands in the way of this? The determination of the hostile nation
to enforce its contrary policy in defiance of our own aims and desires.
To gain our aim or objective we have to change this adverse will into
a compliance with our own policy, and the sooner and more cheaply
in lives and money we can do this, the better chance is there of a
continuance of national prosperity in the widest sense.
The aim of a nation in war is, therefore, to subdue the enemy’s will to
resist, with the least possible human and economic loss to itself.
If we realize that this is the true objective, we shall appreciate
the fact that the _destruction_ of the enemy’s armed forces is but
a means――and not necessarily an inevitable or infallible one――to the
attainment of our goal. It is clearly not, despite the assertion of
military pundits, the sole true objective in war. Clear the air of the
fog of catchwords which surrounds the conduct of war, grasp that in the
human will lies the source and mainspring of all conflict, as of all
other activities of man’s life, and it becomes transparently clear that
our goal in war can only be attained by the subjugation of the opposing
will. All _acts_, such as defeat in the field, propaganda, blockade,
diplomacy, or attack on the centres of government and population, are
seen to be but means to that end; and, instead of being tied to one
fixed means, we are free to weigh the respective merits of each. To
choose whichever are most suitable, most rapid, and most economic,
_i.e._, which will gain the goal with the minimum disruption of our
national life during and _after_ the war. Of what use is decisive
victory in battle if we bleed to death as a result of it?
A single man can be beaten by the simple process of killing him. Not
so a nation――for total extermination, even if it were possible, would
recoil on the heads of the victors in the close-knit organization of
the world’s society, and would involve their own ethical and commercial
ruin――as we have had a foretaste from the attrition policy of the Great
War. But besides being mutually deadly it is unnecessary, for a highly
organized state is only as strong as its weakest link. In a great war
the whole nation is involved, though not necessarily, or wisely, under
arms. The fists and the sinews of war are mutually dependent, and, if
we can demoralize one section of the nation, the collapse of its will
to resist compels the surrender of the whole――as the last months of
1918 demonstrated.
It is the function of grand strategy to discover and exploit the
Achilles’ heel of the enemy nation; to strike not against its strongest
bulwark but against its most vulnerable spot. In the earliest recorded
war, Paris, son of Priam, King of Troy, thus slew the foremost champion
of the Greeks. As the Greek legend runs, Achilles, when a child,
having been dipped by his mother, Thetis, in the waters of the Styx,
his whole body became invulnerable save only the heel by which she
held him. In the Trojan war, after Achilles had slain Hector in direct
combat, Paris brought stratagem to bear, and his arrow, guided by
Apollo, struck Achilles in his vulnerable heel. It is significant that
Apollo, among his numerous attributes, was held to be the sun god, and
the god of prophecy, for here surely he forecast the future of war, and
shed light on the true objective――a ray of truth too dazzling for the
vision of all but a few soldiers.
After dashing out the lives of millions in vain assault against the
enemy’s strength, it might not be amiss now to take a lesson from the
objective aimed at by Paris three thousand years ago.
Turning from myth to history, it may be useful to glance at two
authentic examples of the use of the moral objective――which in each
case changed the course of the world’s history.
HISTORICAL EXAMPLES OF THE MORAL OBJECTIVE
First, from the Punic Wars. In the struggle between Rome and Carthage
for the domination of the ancient world, the two mother cities with
their government and population form the vital points――the moral
objective. Hannibal, the Carthaginian leader, lives in history as, with
Napoleon, the supreme military executant of all time. Yet similarly he
appears to lack the gift of “grand strategical” vision. His objective
is the armed forces of the enemy, but even the annihilating victory
of Cannæ does not bring him to his goal, because Rome itself stands
unmastered. The apologists for Hannibal are legion, but they cannot
obscure the truth that by his failure to gain Rome he ultimately lost
Carthage. Scipio Africanus, his ultimate conqueror at Zama, suffers
from the misfortune that his own claims to fame are overshadowed by
his adversary’s dramatic victories and heroic stand in Italy for so
many years, which appeal to the sentimental imagination. But Scipio’s
appreciation of the principle of the objective is surely more profound.
Instead of seeking a decision in Italy, where his troops would suffer
under the moral influence of Hannibal’s repeated victories in that
theatre, Scipio, in face of the most weighty protests, embarks for
Carthage. His immediate objective is to free Italy, and he realizes
that a threat to Carthage will so act upon the moral of the citizens
that they will recall Hannibal. The result proves the soundness of his
judgment. Then, by striking at the resources of Carthage in Northern
Africa he accomplishes the next step towards the subjugation of the
Carthaginian will, and so to Zama, the flight of Hannibal himself to
the East, and the capitulation of Carthage. Scipio’s moral objective
triumphs over the “armed forces” theory of Hannibal.
Turning to the history of the modern world, we have the example of the
campaign of 1814, which ended in Napoleon’s abdication and relegation
to the Isle of Elba. Never perhaps in his whole career does Napoleon’s
genius shine so brightly as in that series of dramatic victories in
February and March, 1814, by which he staggers the Allies, until, in
pursuit of the delusive military objective, he over-reaches himself. He
moves east to fall upon Schwarzenberg’s rear, drawn on by the theory
of destroying the main mass of the enemy’s forces. By this move he
uncovers Paris――and the Allies march straight forward to gain the true
objective――the nerve centre of the French will to resist. Paris is
the prey of war alarms and fatigue, in the very condition for a moral
detonator to wreck Napoleon’s hold. The Royalist, de Vitrolles, tells
the Czar Alexander that “People are tired of the war and of Napoleon.
Consider politics rather than strategy, and march straight on Paris,
where the true opinion of the people will be shown the moment the
Allies appear.” Captured despatches also bear witness to the underlying
discontent of the Capital. The Czar summons a council of war. Barclay
de Tolly, the senior, urges that the forces should be concentrated, to
follow and attack Napoleon. General Toll affirms that there is only one
true course, to “advance on Paris by forced marches with the whole of
our army, detaching only 10,000 cavalry to mask our movement.”
Barclay de Tolly disagrees and argues the example――so hackneyed in
later years――of the occupation of Moscow. Toll points out that the
effect of the seizure of Paris will be decisive economically and
morally, and that there is no true parallel between the cases of Moscow
and _Paris_――the nodal point of France.
The Czar decides for Toll’s plans, the army sweeps on Paris and
enters in triumph after but the slightest resistance, while Napoleon
is winning delusive successes in Lorraine. When the news from Paris
reaches him, he thinks frantically of a counter-march, but the moral
germ disseminated by the occupation of Paris spreads even among his
generals and troops. Too late! So great are the moral repercussions
of the act, that in a brief space Napoleon, with the people and his
satellites turned against him, is forced to an unconditional abdication.
Some might suggest that the German failure to achieve victory in 1914
is a still more recent example of the truth that the moral objective
is the real one. History may well decide that had the German Higher
Command been less obsessed with the dream of a Cannæ manœuvre, and
struck at Paris first instead of attempting to surround the French
armies, “Deutschland über alles” might now be an accomplished fact.
On the island of Corfu is a giant statue of Achilles, with his heel
transfixed by the arrow. Countless hours the ex-Kaiser spent gazing at
this statue, yet its message apparently made no impression. “Whom the
gods wish to destroy they first make ...”――blind.
THE MEANS TO THE MORAL OBJECTIVE
After this brief historical survey, let us turn to consider the means
by which the moral objective, of subduing the enemy’s will to resist,
can be attained. These means can be exercised in the military, the
economic, the political, or the social spheres. Further, the weapons by
which they are executed may be military, economic, or diplomatic――with
which is included propaganda.
As war is our subject, the diplomatic and economic weapons, except
in a military guise, are outside our purview. There appears little
doubt, however, that the economic weapon in the struggle between
rival national policies during so-called peace has possibilities
still scarcely explored or understood. Again, the military weapon
can be wielded in the economic sphere without any open state of war
existing. In the Ruhr we saw the French aiming, by a military control
of Germany’s industrial resources, to subdue the latter’s will to
resist French policy, and with the further motive of a moral disruption
between the German states.
What, however, are the ways in which the military weapon can be
employed to subdue the enemy’s will to resist _in war_?
The question demands that we first examine how the moral attack takes
effect, and how the will of an enemy people is reduced to such a degree
that they will sue for peace rather than face a continuation of the
struggle. Put in a nutshell, the result is obtained by dislocating
their normal life to such a degree that they will prefer the lesser
evil of surrendering their policy, and by convincing them that any
return to “normalcy”――to use President Harding’s term――is hopeless
unless they do so surrender. It is an old proverb that “So long as
there is life, there is hope,” and this Ciceronian saw may be adduced
to support the argument that in the case of people who fight best
“with their backs to the wall” only death will end their resistance.
This may be true of individuals, or even of considerable bodies of
men; the annals of the Anglo-Saxon race afford examples――though such
cases have almost always occurred when surrender was as fatal as
continued resistance. As soldiers know well, time throws an heroic
glamour over events of the past, and national pride leads to pardonable
exaggeration of great deeds. Such _résistance à mort_ is probably as
rare as that mythical bayonet charge and hand-to-hand clash with cold
steel so beloved of tradition and the painter of battle scenes. The
latter myth was exposed by the long-dead Ardant du Picq, that French
soldier-realist who refused to bow before the altar of the martial
tradition. And the Great War finally dissipated it. Imaginative
soldiers, especially those in the supply services, might write letters
home describing such close quarter fights, war-correspondents safely
behind the lines might retail such martial exploits for the benefit of
a sensation-loving public, but the real fighting soldier soon found
that two sides did not cross bayonets in mortal conflict. The weaker
broke and fled, or else threw up their hands as token of surrender the
moment they realized the actual shock could no longer be warded off.
The normal man, immediately he recognizes a stronger, directly he
realizes the hopelessness of overcoming his enemy, always yields. Nor
is man unique in this respect, as any study of animal life will confirm.
Armies and nations are mainly composed of normal men, not of abnormal
heroes, and once these realize the _permanent_ superiority of the enemy
they will surrender to _force majeure_.
History, even Anglo-Saxon history, shows that nations bow to the
inevitable, and abandon their policy rather than continue a struggle
once hope has vanished. No war between civilized people has been
carried, nor anywhere near carried, to the point of extermination.
The living alone retain the power to admit defeat, and since wars,
therefore, are ended by surrender and not by extermination, it becomes
apparent that defeat is the result not of loss of life, save, at the
most, indirectly and partially, but by loss of moral.
The enemy nation’s will to resist is subdued by the fact _or threat_
of making life so unpleasant and difficult for the people that they
will comply with your terms rather than endure this misery. We use the
words “or threat” because sometimes a nation, directly its means of
resistance――its forces――were overthrown, has hastened to make peace
before its territory was actually invaded. Such timely surrender is
merely a recognition of the inevitable consequences.
In what ways is this pressure exerted? Partly through the stomach,
partly through the pocket, and partly through the spirit. In the
“good old days” more forcible physical measures were practised,
burning, pillage, and rapine. But in the present age the wholesale
and avowed use of such persuasive aids is barred by the ethical code
of nations――and press publicity, though, as the last war showed,
still indulged in sporadically with or without the specious excuse
of “reprisals.” But if the international conscience is too tender to
permit this direct violence, it swallows its qualms where the people’s
will to resist is undermined by the indirect method of wholesale
starvation. Deprive individuals of food and there is an outcry, cut
off the food supply of a nation and the moral sense of the world is
undisturbed. Thus the naval weapon is pre-eminently the means of
applying “stomach” pressure, because its blockade is indirect instead
of direct, general instead of particular. As nothing more surely
undermines moral than starvation, a blockade would seem obviously
the best means to gain the moral objective were it not for two grave
disadvantages. First, it can only be successful where the enemy
country is not self-supporting, and can be entirely surrounded――or at
any rate its supplies from outside effectively intercepted. Second, it
is slow to take effect, and so imposes a strain on the resources of the
blockading country.
Pressure through “the pocket” can be exerted directly by levies,
confiscation, or seizure of customs――which require a military
occupation――and indirectly by the general dislocation of business and
the stoppage of the enemy’s commerce. Above all, as the military forces
of a modern nation are but the wheels of the car of war, dependent
for their driving power on the engine――the nation’s industrial
resources――it follows that a breakdown in the engine or in the
transmission――the means of transport and communication――will inevitably
render the military forces immobile and powerless. Just as the engine
and transmission of an automobile, because of the intricacy and
delicacy of their joints and working parts, are far more susceptible
to damage than the road wheels, so in a modern nation at war its
industrial resources and communications form its Achilles’ heel. Mere
common sense should tell us that if possible these are the points at
which to strike.
Pressure on “the spirit” is intimately connected with that on “the
pocket,” a thorough and long-continued interruption of the normal life
of a nation is as depressing and demoralizing as the intimidation
of the people by methods of terrorism――which, even if temporarily
successful, usually react among civilized nations to the detriment of
the aggressor by stimulating the will to resist or by so outraging the
moral sense of other nations as to pave the way for their intervention.
In the past a military occupation of the hostile country has generally
been the ultimate method of bringing to bear this pressure on the
spirit, and may still be necessary against semi-civilized peoples
spread out in little self-supporting communities, whose material wants
are simple, and who offer no highly organized industrial and economic
system for attack or control by an enemy.
But though the indignity and restrictions that arise from a military
occupation are always galling, the conscience of the world forbids, or
at least limits, the terrorism of earlier times and so makes the mere
presence of an invading army less irksome. Conversely, with the growth
of civilization the dislocation or control of an enemy’s industrial
centres and communications becomes both more effective and more easy as
the means by which to subdue his will to resist.
Every modern industrial nation has its vitals; in one case it may be
essential mining areas, in another manufacturing districts, a third
may be dependent on overseas trade coming into its ports, a fourth so
highly centralized that its capital is the real as well as the nominal
heart of its life. In most cases there is a blend of these several
factors, and in all the regular flow of transport along its arteries is
a vital requirement.
As warships are tied to the sea, they cannot penetrate into an enemy
country; as, moreover, they are notoriously at a disadvantage against
land defences, they cannot even occupy his ports. Hence they are
limited to indirect action against the enemy’s vitals――either by
blockade, by enabling troops to be landed, or nowadays by serving as
a mobile base for aircraft which can strike at “nerve centres” within
some 250 miles of the coast.
Armies have hitherto been the means of “direct action,” whether against
the resources of the enemy nation, the intimidation of the people, or
by the capture or overthrow of individuals who were the mainspring of
the opposing policy.
Armies, however, suffer one serious handicap in subduing the hostile
will. Being tied to one plane of movement, compelled to move across the
land, it has rarely been possible for them to reach the enemy capital
or other vital centres without first disposing of the enemy’s main
army, which forms the shield of the opposing government and nation.
It was because of this age-long limitation that the short-sighted, if
natural, delusion arose that the armed forces themselves were the real
objective.
But the air has introduced a third dimension into warfare, and with the
advent of the aeroplane new and boundless possibilities are introduced.
Hitherto war has been a gigantic game of draughts. Now it becomes
a game of halma. Aircraft enables us _to jump over_ the army which
shields the enemy government, industry, and people, and _so strike
direct and immediately at the seat of the opposing will and policy_. A
nation’s nerve-system, no longer covered by the flesh of its troops,
is now laid bare to attack, and, like the human nerves, the progress
of civilization has rendered it far more sensitive than in earlier and
more primitive times.
THE AIR WEAPON
In the Great War aircraft filled but an auxiliary _rôle_ to the
established arms, and their action against the moral objective was
merely sporadic. The blow planned against Berlin, which might have
revealed beyond question the decisive influence of the new arm, was
still-born because of Germany’s haste to conclude an armistice. Those
who depreciate the value of the air attack point to the comparatively
small damage wrought by any particular attack in the Great War,
arguing also that the influx of recruits after some of them showed that
such “frightfulness” brought its own recoil in a stiffening of the
national “upper lip.”
The best answer to this short-sighted deduction is to present a
few facts. Between the 31st of May, 1915, and the 20th May, 1918,
the German air-raids over the London area were carried out with an
aggregate force of 13 Zeppelins and 128 aeroplanes, dropping in all
less than 300 tons of bombs. The total result was 224 fires, 174
buildings completely destroyed, and 619 seriously damaged, a damage
estimated in money at something over £2,000,000. This was achieved for
the most part in face of strong air and ground defences, and in a war
where the total British air force was never markedly inferior in size
to its enemy, indeed generally the reverse.
Let us for a moment take a modern comparison, simply to point the
moral. France has 990 aeroplanes in the home country, Great Britain
312――and this is a notable increase on the situation two years ago.
Even allowing an ample margin of aircraft to hold the British air
fleet in check, it would be easily possible for a greater weight of
bombs to be dropped on London in one day than in the whole of the Great
War, and to repeat the dose at frequent and brief intervals.
A damage spread over three years is a flimsy basis on which to estimate
the moral and material results of such a blow concentrated on a single
day, delivered with an accuracy and destructive effect unrealizable by
the primitive instruments of 1915–1918. Moreover, what is an air fleet
of a thousand compared with future possibilities, as civil aviation
develops?
Witnesses of the earlier air attacks before our defence was organized,
will not be disposed to underestimate the panic and disturbance that
would result from a concentrated blow dealt by a superior air fleet.
Who that saw it will ever forget the nightly sight of the population of
a great industrial and shipping town, such as Hull, streaming out into
the fields on the first sound of the alarm signals? Women, children,
babies in arms, spending night after night huddled in sodden fields,
shivering under a bitter wintry sky――the exposure must have caused far
more harm than the few bombs dropped from two or three Zeppelins.
Of the crippling effect on industrial output, let facts speak: “In
1916, hostile aircraft _approached_ the Cleveland district in thirteen
different weeks――which reduced the year’s output in that district by
390,000 tons (of pig-iron), or one-sixth of the annual output. In
certain armament works it was observed that on the days following
raids, skilled men made more mistakes in precision work than usual, the
quality of the work done was inferior, while air raids made a constant
output impossible.”
Those pundits who prate about the “armed forces” objective appear to
forget that an army without munitions is a somewhat useless instrument.
Imagine for a moment that, of two centralized industrial nations at
war, one possesses a superior air force, the other a superior army.
Provided that the blow be sufficiently swift and powerful, there is no
reason why within a few hours, or at most days from the commencement
of hostilities, the nerve system of the country inferior in air power
should not be paralysed.
A modern state is such a complex and interdependent fabric that it
offers a target highly sensitive to a sudden and overwhelming blow
from the air. We all know how great an upset in the daily life of the
country is caused at the outset of a railway strike even. Business is
disorganized by the delay of the mails and the tardy arrival of the
staff, the shops are at a standstill without fresh supplies, the people
feel lost without newspapers――rumours multiply, and the signs of panic
and demoralization make their appearance. Perhaps an even more striking
parallel may be found in the disruption of the whole life of Japan
in the recent earthquake. An air attack of the intensity that is now
possible would be likely to excel even this stroke in its disorganizing
and demoralizing effect. Imagine for a moment London, Manchester,
Birmingham, and half a dozen other great centres simultaneously
attacked, the business localities and Fleet Street wrecked, Whitehall
a heap of ruins, the slum districts maddened into the impulse to
break loose and maraud, the railways cut, factories destroyed. Would
not the general will to resist vanish, and what use would be the still
determined fractions of the nation, without organization and central
direction?
Victory in air war will lie with whichever side first gains the moral
objective. If one side is so foolish as to waste time――more the supreme
factor than ever before――in searching for the armed forces of the
enemy, which are mobile and capable of concealment, then clearly the
static civil centres of its own land will be paralysed first――and the
issue will be decided long before the side which trusted in the “armed
forces” objective has crossed the enemy’s frontiers.
If, on the other hand, the decisiveness of the moral objective be
admitted, is it not the height of absurdity to base the military forces
of a nation on infantry, which would――even if unopposed――take weeks
to reach Essen or Berlin, for example, when aircraft could reach and
destroy both in a matter of hours?
OBJECTIONS TO THE AIR-ATTACK
To this use of aircraft to gain the moral objective there are, however,
two possible objections, one economic, the other ethical. The economic
limitation is that by destroying the enemy factories and communications
we may so cripple his commerce and industry as seriously to reduce
his post-war value as a potential customer. There is a certain weight
in this argument, for if one lesson stands out clearly from the last
war it is that the commerce and prosperity of civilized nations are
so closely interwoven and interdependent that the destruction of the
enemy country’s economic wealth recoils on the head of the victor.
The obvious reply, however, is that even the widespread damage of a
decisive air attack would inflict less total damage and constitute
less of a drain on the defeated country’s recuperative powers than a
prolonged war of the existing type.
The ethical objection is based on the seeming brutality of an attack on
the civilian population, and the harmful results to the aggressor of
any outrage of the human feelings of the neutral peoples. The events of
the last war have, however, in some measure acclimatised the world to
the idea that in a war between nations the damage cannot be restricted
merely to the paid gladiators. When, moreover, the truth is realized
that a swift and sudden blow of this nature inflicts a total of injury
far less than when spread over a number of years, the common sense of
mankind will show that the ethical objection to this form of war is at
least not greater than to the cannon-fodder wars of the past.