element in the pace or rate of supply we must remember the moments
in which waste at the front becomes abnormal. A rapid retirement
like the retreat from Mons means the loss of material wholesale.
A favourable moment seized, as September 6 was seized, for the
counter-offensive, which is known as “The Battle of the Marne,” means
such an expenditure of ammunition as was never provided for in any of
the text-books or considered possible until this campaign was engaged.
Here is an example. The Germans had prepared war for two
years--prepared it specially for the particular moment in which
they forced it upon Europe. Their first operations in France up to
September 6 followed almost exactly the plan they had carefully
elaborated. Nevertheless, we now know that whole groups of the enemy
ran through the enormous supplies which were pouring in to their
front, and that one element in the disarray of the first German army
in those critical days was the shortage of shell, particularly for
the heavy pieces.
It is generally reported, and it is probably true, that the enemy
exhausted before the end of his great effort in the West (which
lasted less than one hundred days, and the intensity of which was
relaxed after the middle of November) _seven times_ the heavy
ammunition he had allowed for the whole campaign.
Here is another example. The life of a horse in the South African War
was, I believe, not quite as many _weeks_ as the same animal had
expectation of _years_ in civilian occupation.
[Illustration: DIAGRAM IV. A troop train is a very long train, and it
is packed close with men. To move one Army Corps alone (without the
cavalry) you must allow over 180 such trains. The diagram gives you
an idea of what that means.]
Here is yet another example, connected with the transport. A troop
train is a very long train, and it is packed close with men. For the
transport of animals and of material objects every inch of space
available is calculated and used. Well, to move one Army Corps alone
(without the cavalry) you must allow over 180 such trains. Now,
even at the origin of the war, upon one front alone, before the
numbers had fully developed, the German invasion involved at least
twenty-five Army Corps.
Such an appreciation of the scale and the pace of supply is
sufficient to illuminate one’s third point, the delicacy of the
whole business, and the peril of its embarrassment. You are feeding,
munitioning, clothing, evacuating the wounded from, sheltering, and
equipping millions of men; those millions subject to sudden abnormal
periods of wastage, any one of which may come at any unexpected
moment, and further subject to sudden unforeseen movements upon any
scale. You must so co-ordinate all your movements of supply that no
part of the vast line is pinched even for twenty-four hours.
The whole process may be compared to the perpetual running of
millions of double threads, which reach from every soldier back
ultimately to the central depots of the army, and thence to the
manufactories, and these double threads perpetually working back
and forth from the manufactories to the Front. These double
threads--always travelling back and forth, remember--are gathered
into a vast number of small, local centres, the sheaves or cords so
formed are gathered back again to some hundreds of greater centres,
and these ropes again concentrated upon some dozens of main bases
of supply. And the ends of these threads--though all in continual
movement back and forth--must each be kept taut, must cross sometimes
one over the other in a complicated pattern perpetually requiring
readjustment, while all the time now one, now another group of
threads suddenly sets up a heavy strain, where the men to whom they
relate are engaged in particularly violent action.
To keep such a web untangled, duly stretched, and accurately working
is an effort of organization such as will never be seen in civilian
life, and such as was never seen, even in military life, until modern
times.
[Illustration: DIAGRAM V. An important point in connexion with
supply is the delicacy of the whole business and the peril of its
embarrassment. The diagram concerns only one tiny detail of the
process--no more than the supply of ammunition to one part of a
division out of the hundreds of divisions that build up an army.
It shows how the ammunition is sorted and distributed from an
ammunition park to the men in the front line; the complexity under
actual conditions of service being apt to be far more tangled and
diversified, according to circumstances.]
Observe the fifth diagram, which concerns only one tiny detail of
the process; no more than the supply of ammunition (out of all that
has to be supplied) and no more than the ammunition of one part of
a division (excluding cavalry) out of the hundreds of divisions
and more that build up one of these great national armies. Even
that diagram, complex as it is, does not nearly represent the
whole complexity even of so small a fraction, but is sufficient to
illustrate my case.
Such a machine or organization, by which an army lives, and in
the collapse of which an army rapidly ceases to be, is clearly at
the mercy of the least disorder. It is indeed protected by the
most careful dispositions, and everything is done to safeguard its
gathering strands, as they unite towards the base, from interruption.
But conceive what the effect of such interruption would be, or
even the menace of it! Deduce from this the importance where such a
vast body of men is concerned, of _freedom from embarrassment_ in
the minds of those who have to direct the operation of the almost
infinite skein!
It is this point, the peril of embarrassment, which is--at the
moment in which I am writing these lines--of such capital importance
in connection with the question of blockade. We may blockade an
enemy’s resources and say: “With very careful economy he has food for
nine-tenths of the year”; or, “Though already anxious for the future,
he has sufficient copper for his shell and cartridge cases for some
time to come”; or, “Though already the Government is forbidding the
sale of petrol, the enemy can, for some time to come, supply his
mechanical transport.” But the mere numerical calculation of his
decreasing resources is no guide to the moral disorder which the
peril alone may cause. The elasticity of the whole machine is at once
affected from the mere knowledge that abnormal economy is demanded.
The directing brain of it is disturbed in an increasing degree as
civilian necessities mix with the already severe strain upon the
supplies of the army.
To produce such a confusion, moral as well as material, is the
directing motive of blockade, and the success of such a policy begins
long before the point of grave material embarrassment is reached.
It is on this account that nations fighting with their whole
strength, as modern nations in competition with the detestable
Prussian model are compelled to fight, must ultimately, willy-nilly,
turn to the policy of complete blockade, and that the success of
this policy attempted by both parties to a struggle--necessarily
better achieved by one than by the other--will perhaps more largely
than anything else determine--seeing what the complexity of national
commerce now is--the issue of a great modern war.
WAR TO-DAY AND YESTERDAY
_This war, in many ways, is quite different from any war in the past.
The length of defensive lines, the development of field fortification
and of big guns, and other important matters are dealt with in the
following pages._
WAR TO-DAY AND YESTERDAY
There has appeared in the present campaign a number of situations so
different both from what was known of war in the past and from what
was expected of any great modern war in West Europe that opinion upon
the change is confused and bewildered. Sometimes it is thrown right
out of its bearings by the novelties it witnesses. And, what is more
grave, opinion is sometimes led to misjudge altogether the nature of
war by these novelties.
For instance, you find people telling you that a war such as this
can end in a “draw” or stalemate. They say this foolish thing simply
because they are impressed by the present unexpected and apparently
unprecedented phase of the war.
Or, again, people tell you vaguely that “the question of finance will
end the war,” because they are bewildered by the magnitude of the
figures of expense, forgetting that the only five things a nation
needs in order to prosecute war are men, arms, clothing, shelter and
food, and, these things being provided, the whole hotch-potch of
reality and imagination which is called finance is indifferent to it.
Now, to prevent false judgments of that kind and the misleading of
public opinion, there is nothing more useful than to distinguish
between the things in which modern war between great forces, fought
with modern weapons and by men trained to utilize their powers to the
utmost, differs from and resembles the wars of the past.
Let us begin with the differences.
When you are dealing with many miles of men whose armament is not
only destructive at a great distance, but also over a wide belt
of ground, you have, in the first place, a vast extension of any
possible defensive lines. It is in this, perhaps, that the present
war is most sharply distinguished from the wars of the past; and I
mean by the wars of the past the wars of no more than a generation
ago.
There have been plenty of long defensive lines in the past. Generals
desiring to remain entirely upon the defensive, for any reason, over
an indefinite space of time (for no one can remain on the defensive
for ever), have constructed from time immemorial long lines behind
which their men, though very thinly spread out, could hold against
the enemy.
They have been particularly led to do this since the introduction of
firearms, because firearms give the individual man a wider area over
which he can stop his enemy. But in every form of war, primitive or
modern, these great lines have existed.
The Wall of China is one great instance of them; the Roman Wall
over the North of Britain, from sea to sea, is another; and the
long-fortified Roman frontier from the Rhine to the Danube was a
third.
The generals of Louis XIV, in a line called by the now famous name
of La Bassée, established on a smaller scale the same sort of thing
for a particular campaign. There are hundreds of examples. But the
characteristic novelty of the present war, and the point in which it
differs from all these ancient examples, is the _rapidity_ with which
such lines are established by the great numbers now facing each
other, armed as they are by weapons of very long range.
[Illustration: This gives you at a glance an idea of the numbers
engaged and the time occupied in some famous battles of the past.
Each little figure in the above drawings represents 5000 men. It will
be seen that even the Battle of Mukden is scarcely comparable in
duration with the months-long contests of the present war.]
Forty-eight hours’ preparation, or even less, is enough for troops
to “dig themselves in” over a stretch of country which, in the
maximum case of the French lines, is 300 miles in extent. Every
slight advance is guaranteed by a new construction of trenches, every
retirement hopes to check the enemy at another line of trenches
established at the rear of the first.
Roughly speaking, half a million of men could hold one hundred miles
of such a line under modern conditions, and, therefore, when the vast
numbers which such a campaign as this produces are brought into the
field, you can establish a line stretching across a whole continent
and incapable of being turned.
That is what has been done in France during the present war. You
have got trenches which, so long as they are sufficiently held in
proportion to the numbers of the offensive, are impregnable, and
which run from the Swiss Mountains to the North Sea.
It is possible that you may have to-morrow similar lines running from
the Carpathians to the Baltic. Though this I doubt, first, because in
the Eastern theatre of war Russia can produce perpetually increasing
numbers to assault those lines; secondly, because the heavy artillery
essential for their support cannot be present in large numbers in the
East.
One may sum up, therefore, upon this particular novel feature of the
present campaign and say that it is mainly due to the very large
numbers engaged, coupled with the retaining power of the heavy
artillery which the Germans have prepared in such high numerical
superiority over their opponents. It is not a feature which you will
necessarily find reproduced by any means in all the wars, even of the
near future, or in the later stages of this war.
You must be able, as you retreat, to check your enemy appreciably
before you can trace such a line; you must be able to hammer him
badly with heavy guns stronger than his own while you are making it,
and unless you are present in very great numbers you will only be
able to draw it over a comparatively short line which your enemy may
be able to turn by the left or the right.
Still, it may be of interest to compare the length of lines thus
drawn apparently during the course of a campaign in the past with
those drawn in the course of the present campaign, and in the first
diagram I show the contrast. It is striking enough.
Another novel feature in which this war differs even from the Balkan
War is the new value which has been given to howitzer fire, and in
particular to its domination over permanent fortification. This is
perhaps the most important of all the changes which this war has
introduced into military art and it is worth while understanding it
clearly. Its main principles are simple enough.
Mankind at war has always used devices whereby he has been able with
a small number to detain the advance of a larger number. That, for
instance, was the object of a castle in the Middle Ages. You built a
stronghold of stone which the engines of that time could not batter
down or undermine save at a very great expense of time, and you
were certain that for every man able to shoot an arrow from behind
such defences ten men or more would be needed for the work of trying
to batter them down. So when you knew that your enemy would have to
go through a narrow pass in the mountains, let us say, or across an
important ford of a river, you built a castle which, as the military
phrase goes, “commanded” that passage; that is, you devised a
stronghold such that with, say, only 1000 of your men you would quite
certainly hold up 10,000 of your enemy.
If your enemy passed by without taking your castle the thousand men
inside could sally out and cut off his supplies as they passed down
the mountain road or across the ford, and so imperil his main forces
that had gone forward.
Your stronghold would never, of course, suffice to win a war--its
function was purely negative. You could not attack with it; you could
not destroy your enemy with it. But you could _gain time_ with it.
You could check your enemy in his advance while you were gathering
further men to meet him, and sometimes you could even wear him out in
the task of trying to reduce the stronghold.
Now the whole history of the art of war is a history of the alternate
strength and weaknesses of these _permanent fortifications_; the
word _permanent_ means fortifications not of a temporary character,
hurriedly set up in the field, but solidly constructed over a long
space of time, and destined to permit a prolonged resistance.
[Illustration: DIAGRAM I. A striking comparison of the length of
lines in some past campaigns with the present. The characteristic
novelty of the present war is the rapidity with which such lines are
established by the great numbers now facing each other, armed as they
are by weapons of very long range.]
When cannon came and gunpowder for exploding mines underground, the
mediæval castle of stone could be quickly reduced. There was,
therefore, a phase in which permanent fortification or permanent
works were at a discount. The wars of Cromwell in this country, for
instance, were fought in the middle of such a phase. The castles
went down like nine-pins. But the ingenuity of man discovered a
new form of defence valuable even against cannon, in the shape of
scientifically constructed _earthworks_. The cannon ball of the day
could not destroy these works, and though they could be _sapped_
and _mined_, that is, though tunnels could be dug in beneath them
and explosives there fired to their destruction, that was a long
business, and the formation of the works was carefully designed to
give the garrison a powerful advantage of fire over the besiegers.
Works of this kind made the defensive strong again for more than two
hundred years. Just as there used to be a stone wall surrounding
a town, at intervals from which people could shoot sideways along
the “curtain” or sheer wall between the towers, so now there was
earthwork, that is, banks of earth backed by brick walls to hold
them up, and having a ditch between the outer parapet and the inner.
These earthworks were star-shaped, sending out a number of projecting
angles, so that an attack launched upon any point would receive
converging fire from two points of the star, and the entrances were
further protected by outer works called horn works.
With the war of 1870, and even for somewhat before it, it was found
that the increased range of modern artillery had destroyed the value
of these star-shaped earthworks, taking the place of the old walls
round a town. One could batter the place to pieces with distant
guns. Though the guns within the place were as strong as the guns
outside, they were at this disadvantage: that they were confined
within a comparatively small space which the besiegers could search
by their fire, while the guns of the besiegers could not be equally
well located by the gunners of the besieged within the fortress.
So the next step was to produce what has been known as the _Ring
Fortress_. That is, a series of detached forts lying three or four
miles outside the inner place of stores, barracks, etc., which you
wanted to defend. Each fort supporting the two others next to it on
either side of this ring was thought to be impregnable, for each fort
was built within range of the two nearest, and on such a model were
built Toul, Verdun, Epinal, Belfort, Metz, Strassburg, Thorn, Cracow,
and fifty other great modern strongholds.
The theory that these ring fortresses could hold out indefinitely
was based upon the idea that the fort so far out from the fortress
would keep the enemy’s guns too far away to damage the inner
place of stores and garrison, and that the supporting fire of the
various forts would prevent anyone getting between them. The three
systems--first the stone wall, then the earthwork, then the ring
fortress, are roughly expressed in the second diagram.
[Illustration: DIAGRAM II. Mankind at war has always used devices
whereby he has been able with a small number to detain the advance
of a larger number. Some of these systems are roughly expressed
above. 1. The old stone fortress or castle of the Middle Ages. 2.
The wall round a town. 3. The earthworks of a fortress of the period
1620-1860. 4. The “Ring” Fortress (1860-1914)--a series of detached
forts lying three or four miles outside the inner place of stores,
barracks, etc., which it was desired to defend.]
Well, the chief lesson, perhaps, of the present war is that these
ring fortresses fall quickly to howitzer fire. Each of the individual
forts can be easily reduced by howitzer fire. This is concentrated
against certain of the forts, which quickly fall, and once their
ring is broken the result is equivalent to the breach in the wall
of a fortress, and the whole stronghold falls. That is because in
quite recent years two new factors have come in: (1) the mobile heavy
howitzer; (2) the highest kinds of explosives.
[Illustration: DIAGRAM III. A howitzer is a gun with a shorter barrel
than the ordinary gun, and designed not to shoot its projectile more
or less straight across the earth, as an ordinary gun does, but to
lob it high up so that it falls almost perpendicularly upon its
target.]
A howitzer is a gun with a shorter barrel than the ordinary gun
(and therefore lighter in proportion to the width of the shell, and
so to the amount of the explosive it can fire) and designed not to
shoot its projectile more or less straight across the earth, as an
ordinary gun does, but to lob it high up so that it falls more or
less perpendicularly upon its target.
Thus the German 11.2-inch howitzer, of which we have heard so much in
this war, has a maximum range when it is elevated to 43 degrees, or
very nearly half-way between pointing flat and pointing straight
up--and howitzers can be fired, of course, at a much higher angle
than that if necessary.
[Illustration: DIAGRAM IV. You can hide a howitzer behind a hill. The
gun, though it has a longer range than the howitzer, can only get at
the howitzer indirectly by firing over the point where it supposes
the howitzer to be, as at A. Secondly, the howitzer can drop its
shell into a comparatively narrow trench which the projectile of the
gun will probably miss.]
[Illustration: DIAGRAM V. If you want to make your shell fall into a
trench of a fortification, A, or come down exactly on the top of the
shelter in a fort, B, it is obvious that your howitzer, firing from
H, and lobbing a projectile along the high-angle trajectory M, will
have a much better chance of hitting it than your gun G, sending a
projectile further indeed but along the flatter trajectory N.]
The advantage of the howitzer is two-fold.
In the first place, you can hide it behind a hill or any other form
of obstacle or screen, as it shoots right up in the air. A gun which
fires more or less flat along the earth cannot get at it.
The gun, though it has a longer range than the howitzer, can only get
at the howitzer indirectly by firing over the point where it supposes
the howitzer to be, as at A in Diagram IV, and so timing the fuse
that the shell bursts exactly there.
Now, that is a difficult operation, both because it is difficult to
spot a machine which you cannot see, and though modern time fuses are
very accurate, they cannot, of course, be accurate to a yard.
Secondly, the howitzer can drop its shell into a comparatively narrow
trench, which the projectile of a gun with its flat trajectory will
probably miss. If you want to make your shell fall into a trench of
a fortification or come down exactly on the top of the shelter in a
fort, as at A, the trench in the fifth diagram, or at B, the shelter,
it is obvious that your howitzer firing from H, and lobbing a
projectile along the high-angle trajectory M, will have a much better
chance of hitting it than your gun G, sending a projectile further,
indeed, but along the flatter trajectory N.
Of course, another howitzer within the fortifications could, in
theory, lob a shell of its own over the hill and hit the besieging
howitzer, but in practice it is very easy for the besieging howitzer
to find out exactly where the vulnerable points of the fortress
are--its trenches and its shelter and magazine--and very difficult
for the people in the fortress to find out where the howitzer outside
is. Its place is marked upon no map, and it can move about, whereas
the fortress is fixed.
[Illustration: DIAGRAM VI. The fort on an elevation at A, and
confined within a narrow space, is a target for howitzers placed
anywhere behind hills at, say, four miles off--as at B-B, C-C, D-D.
It is difficult enough for the fort to find out where the howitzer
fires from in any case; furthermore, the howitzer can shift its
position anywhere along the lines B-B, C-C, and D-D.]
Look, for instance, at Diagram VI.
The fort on an elevation at A, and confined within a narrow space,
is a target for howitzers placed anywhere behind hills at, say, four
miles off, as at B-B, C-C, D-D. It is difficult enough for the fort
to find out where the howitzer fires from in any case, and even when
it has spotted this the howitzer can move anywhere along the lines
B-B, C-C, or D-D, and shift its position.
Further, be it remembered that under quite modern conditions the
accuracy of the howitzer fire against the fort can be checked by
aeroplanes circulating above the fort, whereas the fort is a poor
starting-place for corresponding aeroplanes to discover the howitzer.