WARFARE.
The last notable war of the nineteenth century has falsified the
anticipations of nearly all the makers of small arms. The magazine
rifle was held to be so perfect in its trajectory, and in the rapidity
with which it could discharge its convenient store of cartridges in
succession, that the bayonet charge had been put outside of the region
of possibility in warfare. Those who reasoned thus were forgetting, to
a large extent, that while small arms have been improving so also has
artillery, and that a bayonet charge covered by a demoralising fire of
field-pieces, mortars, and quick-firing artillery is a very different
thing from one in which the assailants alone are the targets exposed
to fire. Given that two opposing armies are possessed of weapons of
about equal capacity for striking from a distance, they may do one
another a great deal of harm without coming to close quarters at all.
Yet victory will rest with the men who have sufficient bravery, skill
and ingenuity to cross the fire-zone and tackle their enemies hand to
hand.
Smoke-producing shells and other forms of projected cover, designed to
mask the advance of cavalry and infantry, will greatly assist in the
work of rendering this task of crossing the fire-zone less dangerous,
notwithstanding any possible improvement that may be effected in the
magazine-rifle. Already it has been observed that much of the surprise
and confusion which terrifies those who have no bayonets, when
subjected to a cannonade and at the same time brought face to face
with a bayonet charge, arises from the fact that they cannot see to
shoot straight, owing to the haze produced by the smoke and its
blinding effects upon the eyes.
Special smoke-producing shells, made for the express purpose of
covering a charge, will soon be evolved from the laboratory of the
chemist in pursuance of this clue. In addition to shells and other
missiles, small pieces of steel-piping will be projected by mortars
into the fire-swept zone, in order to supplement the defects of
natural cover which, of course, are nearly always as great as
possible, seeing that the ground has generally been selected by the
side against which the attack is being directed.
The task of enabling a rifleman to shoot straight has been taken up
with extraordinary zeal and ability compared with the amount of skill
and effort devoted to the corresponding or opposing object of spoiling
his aim and preventing him from getting a shot in. When this latter
has been to some extent accomplished, mainly by the agency of
artillery, the bayonet and other weapons for use at close quarters
will once more be in the ascendant. Thin shields of hard steel will be
affixed to the rifles of the attacking party, so as to deflect the
bullets wherever possible.
This baffling of the rifleman by the artillery supporting the cavalry
and bayonet charge will produce momentous changes, not only in the
future of war, but also in that of international relations. Anything
which tends to discount the value of personal bravery and to elevate
the tactics of the ambuscade and the sharp-shooting expedition gives,
_pro tanto_, an advantage to the meaner-spirited races of mankind, and
places them more or less in a position of mastery over those who hold
higher racial traditions. The man who will face the risk of being shot
in the open generally belongs to a higher type of humanity than he who
only shoots from behind cover.
Moreover, the nations which have the skill and ingenuity to
manufacture new weapons of self-defence belong to a higher class than
those which only acquire advanced warlike munitions by purchase. One
of the early international movements of the twentieth century will be
directed towards the prohibition of the sale of such weapons as
magazine-rifles, quick-firing field guns, and torpedoes to any savage
or barbarous race. It will be accounted as treason to civilisation for
any member of the international family to permit its manufacturers to
sell the latest patterns of weapons to races whose ascendency might
possibly become a menace to civilisation. As factors in determining
the survival of the fittest, the elements of high character, bravery,
and intellectual development must be conserved in their maximum
efficiency at all hazards.
Another potent element in the safeguards of civilisation may be seen
in the increased effectiveness of weapons for coastal defence. The
hideous nightmare of a barbarian irruption, such as those which almost
erased culture and intellect from the face of Europe during the dark
ages of the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries, may occasionally be
seen exercising its influence in the pessimistic writings which are
from time to time issued from the Press predicting the coming
ascendency of the yellow man.
However the case may be in regard to nations which are accessible by
land to the encroachments of the Asiatic, there is no doubt that those
countries which are divided off by the sea have been rendered much
more secure through the rapid advances which have been made in the
modern appliances for defending coasts and harbours. In naval tactics,
also, it will be more and more clearly seen that to possess and defend
the harbours where coaling can be carried out is practically to
possess and defend the trade of the high seas; and the essence of good
maritime policy will be to so locate the defended harbours that they
may afford the greatest amount of protection, having in view the harm
that may be done by an enemy's harbours in the vicinity.
The most effective naval weapon in the future will undoubtedly be the
torpedo, but, like the bayonet, it requires to be in the hands of
brave men before its value as the ultimate arbiter of naval conflict
can be demonstrated. Much fallacious teaching has arisen from what has
been called the lessons of certain naval wars which occurred on the
coasts of South America and China--international embroilments in which
mercenaries, or only half-trained seamen and engineers, were engaged.
On similar fallacious grounds it was argued that the magazine-rifle
had put the bayonet out of the court of military arbitrament, and the
South African war has proved conclusively how erroneous was that idea.
The use of the torpedo-boat and of the weapons which it carries must
always demand, like that of the bayonet, men of the strongest nerve,
and of the greatest devotion to their duty and to their country.
Fifty miles an hour is a rate which is already in sight as the speed
of the future torpedo-boat, the first turbine steamer of the British
Navy having achieved forty-three miles an hour before the end of the
nineteenth century. It should be distinctly understood, however, that
such a speed cannot be kept up for any great length of time and that
long voyages are out of the question. The role of the turbine
torpedo-boat will be to "get home" with its weapon in the shortest
practicable time. Hence its great value for the defence of harbours by
striking at distances of perhaps two or three hours' steaming.
On the high seas the battle-ships, which will virtually be the
cruisers of the future, will be provided with turbine torpedo-boats,
carried slung in convenient positions and ready at short notice to be
let slip like greyhounds. During the hazardous run of the
torpedo-boat towards the enemy, various devices will be employed for
the purpose of baffling his aim, such for instance as the emission of
volumes of smoke from the bows and the erection of broad network
blinds covering the sight of the little craft, but capable of being
shifted from side to side, so that the enemy's marksmen may never know
exactly what part of the object in sight is to be aimed at. The
torpedo will be carried on a mast, which at the right moment can be
lowered to form a projecting spar like a bowsprit; and the explosion
that will take place on its impact with the enemy's hull will be
enough to blow a fatal breach in any warship afloat.
For harbour defence and the safety of the battle-ship the wire-guided
and propelled torpedo will form a second line behind the fast
torpedo-boat. This type of weapon strikes with more unerring accuracy
than any other yet included in the armoury of naval warfare, because
it is under the control of the marksman from the time of its launching
until it fulfils its deadly mission. Its range, of course, is strictly
limited; but it may be worked to advantage within the distances at
which the best naval artillery can be depended upon to make good
practice.
The least costly and the lightest form is that in which the backward
pulling of two wires, unwinding two drums on the torpedo, actuates two
screws at greater or less speeds according to the rapidity of the
motion imparted, any advantage of speed in one screw over the other
being responded to by an alteration in the direction taken by the
weapon. The torpedo may be set so as to dive from the surface at any
desired interval; but, of course, an appearance in the form of at
least a flash is necessary to enable the operator to judge in what
direction he is sending his missile. Small torpedo-boats, not manned
but sticking to the surface, may be used in the same manner. Each one
no doubt runs a very great risk of being hit by shot or shell aimed at
them; but out of half a dozen, discharged at short intervals, it would
be practically impossible for an enemy to make certain that one at
least did not find its billet.
The submarine boat will have some useful applications in peace; but
its range of utility in warfare is likely to be very limited. It is
hopeless to expect the eyes of sailors to see any great distance under
the water; therefore the descent must be made within sight of the
enemy, who has only to surround himself with placed contact-torpedoes
hanging to a depth, and to pollute the water in order to render the
assault an absolutely desperate enterprise.
Military aeronautics, like submarine operations in naval warfare, have
been somewhat overrated. Visions of air-ships hovering over a doomed
city and devastating it with missiles dropped from above are mere
fairy tales. Indeed the whole subject of aeronautics as an element in
future human progress has excited far more attention than its
intrinsic merits deserve.
A balloon is at the mercy of the wind and must remain so, while a true
flying machine, which supports itself in the air by the operation of
fans or similar devices, may be interesting as a toy, but cannot have
much economical importance for the future. When man has the solid
earth upon which to conduct his traffic, without the necessity of
overcoming the force of gravitation by costly power, he would be
foolish in the extreme to attempt to abandon the advantage which this
gives him, and to commit himself to such an element as the air, in
which the power required to lift himself and his goods would be
immeasurably greater than that needed to transport them from place to
place.
The amount of misdirected ingenuity that has been expended on these
two problems of submarine and aerial navigation during the nineteenth
century will offer one of the most curious and interesting studies to
the future historian of technological progress. Unfortunately that
faculty of the constructive imagination upon which inventive talent
depends may too frequently be indulged by its possessor without any
serious reference to the question of utility. Fancy paints a picture
in which the inventor appears disporting himself at unheard-of depths
below the surface of the sea or at extraordinary heights above the
level of the land, while his friends, his rivals, and all manner of
men and women besides, gaze with amazement! Patent agents are only too
well aware how often an inordinate desire for self-glorification goes
along with real inventive talent, and how many of the brotherhood of
inventors make light of the losses which may be inflicted upon
trusting investors so long as they themselves may get well talked
about.
Nations may at times be infected with this unpractical vainglory of
inventiveness; and on these occasions there is need of all the
restraining influence of the hard-headed business man to prevent the
waste of enormous sums of money. The idea that military ascendency in
the future is to be secured by the ability to fly through the air and
to dive for long distances under the water has taken possession of
certain sections in France, Germany, Russia, Great Britain and the
United States. Large numbers of voluble "Boulevardiers" in Paris have,
during the last years of the nineteenth century, made it an article of
their patriotic faith that the future success of the French navy
depends upon the submarine boat. The question as to what an enemy
would do with such a boat in actual warfare seems hardly ever to occur
to them; and, indeed, any one who should venture to put such a query
would run the risk of being set down as a traitor to his country!
More important to the student of the practical details of naval
preparation is the great question as to the point at which the contest
between shot and armour will be brought to a standstill. That it
cannot proceed indefinitely may be confidently taken for granted. The
plate-makers thicken their armour while the gun-makers enlarge the
size and increase the penetrative power of their weapons, until the
weight that has to be carried on a battle-ship renders the attainment
of speed practically impossible.
Meanwhile there is going forward, in the hull of the vessel itself, a
gradual course of evolution which will eventually place the policy of
increasing strength of armour and of guns at a discount. The division
of the air-space of a warship into water-tight compartments will
doubtless prove to be, in actual naval conflict, a more effectual
means of keeping the vessel afloat than the indefinite increase in the
thickness and consequent weight of her armour.
The most advanced naval architects of modern times are bestowing more
and more attention upon this feature, as affording a prospect of
rendering ships unsinkable, whether through accidents or through
injury in warfare. No doubt, for merchant steamers, it will be seen
that development along the lines already laid down in this department
will suffice for all practical purposes. The water-tight bulkheads,
with readily closed or automatically shutting doorways, ensure the
maintenance of buoyancy in case of any ordinary accident from
collision or grounding, while the duplication of engines, shafts and
propellers--without which no steamship of the middle twentieth century
will be passed by marine surveyors as fit for carrying passengers on
long ocean voyages--will make provision against all excepting the most
extremely improbable mishaps to the machinery.
If the numerical estimate of the chance of the disablement of a single
engine and its propeller during a certain voyage be stated at one to
a thousand, then the risk of helplessness through the break down of
both systems in a vessel having twin screws and entirely separate
engines will be represented by the proportion of one to a million.
This mode of reckoning, of course, assumes that the two systems could
be made absolutely independent in relation to all possible disasters;
and some deduction must be made on account of the impossibility of
attaining this ideal. Yet it is evident that when every practicable
device has been adopted for rendering a double accident improbable the
chances against such a disaster will not be far from the proportion
stated.
When we come to consider the evolution of the warship as compared with
that of the merchant steamer, we are at once confronted with the fact
that the infliction of injury upon the boilers, the engine, or the
propellers of a hostile vessel is the great object aimed at by the
gunners. The evolution of the warship in the direction of ensuring
safety, therefore, will not stop at the duplication of the engines,
boilers and propellers. In fact it must sooner or later be apparent
that the interests of a great naval power demand the working out of a
type of warlike craft that shall be almost entirely destitute of
armour, but constructed on such a principle--both as to hull and
machinery--that she can be raked fore and aft, and shot through in all
directions without becoming either water-logged or deprived of her
motive power.
A torpedo-boat built on this system may consist essentially of a
series of steel tubes of large section grouped longitudinally, and
divided into compartments like those of a bamboo cane. Each of these
has its own small but powerful boilers and engines, and each its
separate propeller at the stern. Care also is taken to place the
machinery of each tube in such a position that no two are abreast. In
fact, the principle of construction is such as to render just as
remote as may be the possibility of any shot passing through the
vessel and disabling two at the same time.
If a boat of this description has each tube furnished not only with a
separate screw at the stern, but also with a torpedo at the bows, it
can offer a most serious menace to even the most powerful battle-ship
afloat, because its power of "getting home" with a missile depends not
upon its protective precautions, but upon an appeal to the law of
averages, which makes it practically impossible for any gunners,
however skilful, to disable all its independent sections during the
run from long range to torpedo-striking distance. The attacked
warship is like an animal exposed to the onslaught of one of those
fabled reptiles possessing a separate life and a separate sting in
each of its myriad sections; so that what would be a mortal injury to
a creature having its vital organs concentrated in one spot produces
only the most limited effect in diminishing its strength and powers of
offence.
Or this class of naval fighter may be regarded as a combined fleet of
small torpedo-boats, bound together for mutual purposes of offence and
defence. Singly, they would present defects of coal-carrying capacity,
sea-going qualities, and accommodation for crew which would render
them comparatively helpless and innocuous; but in combination they
possess all the travelling capacities of a large warship, conjoined
with the deadly powers at close quarters of a number of torpedo boats,
all acting closely in concert upon a single plan.
The chief naval lesson taught during the Spanish-American War was the
need for improving the sea-going qualities of the torpedo-boat before
it can be regarded as a truly effective weapon in naval warfare. It
was announced at one stage that if the Spanish torpedo-boat fleet
could have been coaled and re-coaled at the Azores, and two or three
other points on the passage across to America, it might have been
brought within striking distance of the United States cruisers
operating against Santiago. This hypothetical statement provided but
cold comfort for the Spaniards, who had been persuaded to put so much
of their available naval strength into a type of craft utterly
unsuited for operations complying with the first great requirement of
naval warfare, namely, that the proper limit of the campaign coincides
with the shores of the enemy's country.
But when the naval architect and the engineer have evolved a class of
torpedo-using vessel which can both travel far and strike hard, and
which, moreover, can stand a few well-directed shots penetrating her
without succumbing to their effect, a new era will have been opened up
in naval warfare--an era of high explosive weapons requiring to strike
home with dash and bravery in spite of risk from shot and shell; but,
like the bayonet on land, capable of overthrowing all war-machines
which can only strike from a considerable distance.