which German communiqués may mislead, and that is in the way they
handle statistics. The actual wording of news is often chosen in
order to deceive, although the figures may be accurate. For instance,
under the title “prisoners,” the Germans include all wounded men
picked up, all civilians which in this singular war are carried away
into captivity, and, probably, when it is to their interest to swell
the number of captured, they include certain numbers of the dead.
In the same way they will talk of the capture of Verdun, and not
infrequently include such of their own pieces as a re-advance has
rediscovered upon the field.
It may be added in conclusion that while German communiqués rarely
wander into conjecture, when they do they are idiotic, and exactly
the same reason made German diplomats wholly misunderstand the
mind of Europe immediately before the war. A German induction
upon something other than material elements is worthless, and you
see it nowhere more than in the careful but often useless, though
monumental, work of German historians, who will accumulate a mass
of facts greater in number than those of the scholars of any other
nation, and then will draw a conclusion quite shamefully absurd;
conclusions which, during the last forty years, have usually been
followed by the dons of our own universities.
There is one last element for the formation of a sound opinion on
the war which must be mentioned at the end of this, and that is
the private evidence which occasionally but rarely comes through.
Here there is no guide but that of one’s own experience in travel,
or that of one’s own knowledge of the newspaper or the authority
printing it. The occasions upon which such evidence is available
are very infrequent, but when they do come the evidence is far more
valuable than any official communiqué Let me quote as an example
the letters from Hungary which appeared in the _Morning Post_ upon
various occasions during the autumn and early winter. They were quite
invaluable.
Lastly, one might add for those who have the leisure and the
confidence, the use of the foreign Press--especially the French and
the German. It is biased, as is our own, and often belated in news.
The German Press in particular suffers from the calculated policy of
the Government of the German Empire, which at this moment believes it
to be of service to stimulate public confidence of victory in every
possible manner. Nevertheless, unless you do follow fairly regularly
the Press of _all_ the belligerent nations, you will obtain but an
imperfect view of the war as a whole.
WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US
_Many theories formulated in times of peace have crumbled in the face
of recent actualities. Herein are set forth the main lessons to be
learnt from the present war._
WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US
THE POINTS AT ISSUE
Long periods of peace, intervening between cycles of war, are
necessarily periods during which there must arise a mass of theory
concerning the way in which men will be affected by war when it
breaks out. They are necessarily periods in which are perfected
weapons, the actual effect of which upon the human mind has not been
tested. They are necessarily periods in which are perfected methods
of defence, the efficiency of which against the corresponding weapons
of offence remains a matter of doubt.
More than this, the whole business of naval and military strategy,
though its fundamental rules remain unaltered, is affected by the use
of new materials upon the full character of which men cannot finally
decide until they come to action.
For instance, it is but a short while ago that a very eminent naval
authority in this country put forward a defence of the submarine.
This novel weapon had not been effectively used in war, though it
has existed for so many years. He suggested that in the next naval
war the battleship and cruiser would be rendered useless by the
submarine, which would dominate all naval fighting.
His theory, which, of course, was only a theory, was very warmly
contested. But between the two “schools” at issue nothing could
decide but actual warfare at sea in which the submarine was used.
This necessary presence of rival “schools of thought” upon naval
and military matters is particularly emphasized when the progress
of invention is rapid, combined with the gradual perfecting of
mechanical methods, and when the peace has been a long one.
Both these conditions have been present in Europe as a whole, and
particularly in Western Europe, during our generation, and that is
why this war has already taught so many lessons to those who study
military and naval affairs, and why already it has settled so many
disputed points.
Manœuvres could tell one much, but there was always absent from them
the prime factor of fear, and that next factor almost as important,
of actual destruction.
The list of questions, detailed and general, which have already
been wholly or partly answered by the present campaigns might be
indefinitely extended. There are hundreds of them. But if we consider
only the principal ones we shall find that they fall roughly into
two main categories. You have the technical questions of armament,
its use and its effect; formation, and so forth; and you have the
political questions.
The first set are concerned with the action of human beings under
particular forms of danger, and the physical effect of the weapons
they will employ under the conditions of a high civilization.
The second set are concerned with the action of human beings as
citizens, not as soldiers. How they will face the advent of war,
whether national feeling will be stronger than class feeling, whether
secrecy can be preserved, and the rest.
A list of the principal points in each of these sets will run
somewhat as follows:
In the first there were opposing schools as to--
(1) The value of modern permanent fortification and its power of
resistance to a modern siege train.
(2) The best formation in which to organize troops for action, and
particularly the quarrel between close formation and open.
(3) The doubts as to the degree of reliance which could be placed
upon air-scouts, their capacity for engaging one another, the
qualities that would give dominion of the air, and in particular the
value of the great modern dirigible balloons.
(4) The effect, method, and proportionate value of rifle fire and of
the bayonet.
(5) The use of field artillery; and particularly whether, after a
certain degree of rapidity, still greater rapidity of fire was worth
having.
(6) The exact _rôle_ that would be played in modern war by the supply
of certain materials hitherto unimportant and discoverable only
in certain limited regions, most of them out of Europe. There are
a great number of these materials, but much the most important is
petrol.
(7) Lastly, and by far the most vital of purely technical questions
to this country, was the solution of certain opposing theories upon
what is rather rhetorically called “the command of the sea” and what
might more justly be called naval superiority.
In the second set, the political questions, the most important were:
(1) The working of the conscript and of the voluntary systems.
(2) The possibility of preserving secrecy.
(3) Whether mobilization would work smoothly or not in the face of
class struggles supposedly formidable to national interests.
(4) The action of our modern town populations under the moral strain
of war.
LESSONS WE HAVE LEARNT
Not all of the questions, military or political, have as yet been
solved by experience. Many of them are, however, already partially
solved, some wholly solved. And we may consider them usefully one by
one.
(1) The value of permanent fortification.
Perhaps the most striking lesson of the war, and the one which
is already conclusively taught by its progress, is the fact that
modern permanent works, as we have hitherto known them at least, are
dominated by modern siege artillery, and in particular by the mobile
large howitzer using the last form of high explosive. It is here
important to give the plain facts upon a matter which has from its
suddenness and dramatic character given birth to a good many lessons.
Modern fortification has gone down after a very short resistance
to howitzer fire, throughout the western field of the campaign. In
general, if you can get the big, modern, mobile howitzer up to
striking distance of modern permanent work, it batters that work to
pieces within a period which will hardly extend over a week, and may
be as short as forty-eight hours.
It is not a question of tenacity or courage. The greatest tenacity
and the greatest courage can do nothing with a work that has been
reduced to ruins, and in which there is no emplacement for a gun. So
much is quite certain. But we must not run away with the idea either
that this is the end of fortification for the future; temporary
mobile batteries established _outside_ the old permanent works will
shield a garrison for an indefinite time. Nor is it true that the
Germans have in this field any particular advantage save over the
Russians, who are weak in their heavy artillery and have limited
powers of increasing it. It will be discovered as the war proceeds
that the Western armies are here in the same boat with the Germans.
It is true that the Germans have a larger howitzer than the French
and the English. They have a few 420 millimetre howitzers, that
is, guns of a calibre between 16 and 17 inches. But this gun is
almost too large to use. What has done the work everywhere is the
11-inch howitzer, and a gun of much the same size is in possession
of the French. Only hitherto the siege work has fallen to the German
invaders. When and if the _rôles_ are reversed, German permanent work
will be just as vulnerable to French howitzer fire. And as for the
abolition of fortification in future we need not look for that.
It is probable that the system of large, permanent enclosed works
will give way to a system of narrow, prepared, parallel trenches
connected by covered ways, which, by offering too small a target for
accurate fire from a distance, and by being doubled and redoubled one
behind the other, will be able to hold out far longer than the larger
works which bore the brunt of the present war. But that the defensive
will devise some means of meeting the new and unexpected powers of
the offensive we may be certain, upon the analogy of all past warfare.
(2) In the matter of formation the surprise of the war has
undoubtedly been the success of another German theory, to wit, the
possibility of leading modern short-trained troops, against enormous
losses, in close formation. Everywhere outside Germany that was
doubted, and the Germans have proved that their initial contention
was right, at least in their own case. But there is another aspect
of this question which has as yet by no means been proved one way or
the other, and that is, whether the very heavy losses this use of
close formation entails are worth while in a campaign not immediately
successful at the outset. We are not yet able to say how far troops
once submitted to such violence can be brought to suffer it again--or
how long after--nor are we able to say what effect this lavish
expenditure of men has towards the end of a campaign if its primary
object, immediate initial success, fails.
(3) In the matter of aircraft, four things have come out already.
(_a_) Men will engage each other in the air without fear and they
will do so continually, appalling as the prospect seemed in its
novelty before the outbreak of this war.
(_b_) Aircraft can discover the movement of troops in large bodies
more accurately and successfully than had been imagined.
(_c_) That body of aircraft which is used to a rougher climate, and
to working in heavier winds, will have an immense advantage not only
in bad weather but in all weather. It is this, coupled with a very
fine and already established tradition of adventure, which has made
the English airmen easily the superior of their Allies and enemies.
(_d_) The aeroplane is neither as invulnerable at a great height as
one school imagined it, nor as vulnerable as the opposite school
maintained. The casualties are not as high in proportion to the
numbers engaged as they would be in any other arm--at least so
far--but they exist. And it would seem that the impossibility of
telling whether an aeroplane belongs to friend or foe is a serious
addition to the risk.
Many questions connected with aircraft still remain to be solved; by
far the most important of which to this country are connected with
the efficiency of the dirigible balloon.
(4) The amount of attention that should be given to good rifle firing
and the importance that should be attached to the bayonet seem both
to have been answered hitherto by the war.
Superior rifle fire, especially under the conditions of a difficult
defensive, was the saving of the British force during the retreat
from Mons, and, during the whole battle of the Marne, French accounts
agree that the bayonet was the deciding factor in action after
action. But even if it be true, in the words of a French officer,
that “all actions end with the bayonet,” the actual number of troops
thus engaged and the casualties connected with them, are not in a
very high proportion to the whole.
It almost seems as though the bayonet had replaced the old shock
action of cavalry in some degree, and that it was to be used only
when the opposing troops were shaken or were occupied in too
precipitate a retirement. Of successful bayonet work against other
conditions we have at least had no examples recorded.
(5) On the two chief points in connexion with field artillery,
records hitherto received tell us little. We shall not know until
more detailed accounts are available whether the vastly superior
rapidity of fire enjoyed by the French 75 millimetre gun has given it
a corresponding superiority over its opponent, the German 77. That it
has a superiority is fairly clear. The degree of that superiority we
shall not learn until we have the story of the war from the German
side.
Neither are we established upon the question of weight. General
Langlois’ theory, which convinced the French that the light gun
was essential, has not so far been proved absolutely certain, and
there have been occasions when the English heavier gun (notably at
Meaux) was of vast importance to our Allies. But I suggest that this
question will be better answered now the weather has changed. In
dry weather, that is, over hard ground, the difference between the
heavier and the lighter gun is not so noticeable; once the ground is
heavy it becomes very noticeable indeed.
(6) With the next question, that of the materials and their supply,
we enter a region of the utmost interest to this country in
particular, because it is the superiority of this country at sea, and
the almost complete blockade of the Germanic Powers, that is here
concerned. Roughly speaking, we find (_a_) That a blockade of enemy
ports from a great distance is easy; (_b_) of enemy supply _through
neutrals_ very difficult indeed; (_c_) That certain special products
which modern science has made necessary in war are most affected. For
example:
Of the many things a modern army requires which are to be found only
in a few special places, and those, most of them, out of Europe,
the most important of all is petrol. It is obviously of capital
importance for air work, and where you have a number of good roads,
as in the Western field of operations, it is almost as important for
transport work.
Now it so happens that petrol is not found in Western Europe at
all. The European supply as a whole is limited, and is in the main
confined to Galicia, Roumania, and Russia. The Asiatic and American
supply is only available to Austria-Hungary and Germany by way of the
ocean, and the ocean is closed to them. Russian supply, of course,
they cannot obtain. Galician supply swings back and forth now in the
possession of the Austrian and now in that of the Russian Army.
There remains only Roumania, and though Roumania is neutral it is
doubtful or rather nearly certain that no sufficient supplies are
coming into the Germanic Powers from that source. This is up to the
moment of writing the chief effect of the British naval superiority,
to which I will next turn.
(7) Most of the things that were said in time of peace about the
effect of naval superiority or “command of the sea” have proved true.
The blockade of the inferior naval powers is nearly complete--though
it must be remembered that they have an exceedingly limited
coastline, and that the problem will be very different against a
large fleet possessed of many ports upon an extended coastline.
Further, the submarine has not proved itself as formidable against
men-of-war as some thought, and the superiority of large craft is
still admitted. On the other hand, it has been shown that a few
hostile cruisers could continue to hold the seas for a much longer
period than was imagined, and permanently to threaten commerce.
The conception that almost immediately after a declaration of war
naval superiority would prevent the inferior naval power from
commerce destroying, and that the trade routes of the superior power
would be as safe as in time of peace has broken down. So has the idea
that submarines could seek out the enemy’s fleet in its ports and
destroy them there.
THE POLITICAL RESULTS
When we turn to the political questions which the war has solved we
have obtained immediate results of the very highest interest and
importance, particularly to England.
In the first place, we have found that while the conscript system
of war worked and mobilized with astonishing success, our own much
more doubtful dependence upon a voluntary system for prolonged
warfare has not betrayed this country. Everyone is agreed that the
response to the call for volunteers, upon which there was at first
great and legitimate anxiety, has been quite out of proportion to our
expectations, and particularly to those of our enemies.
I think it true to say that there is nothing in which the German
estimate of British psychology has been more hopelessly at sea than
in this; and that the effects of this exceedingly rapid and large
voluntary enlistment, principally drawn from the best material in
the country, is the chief uncalculated factor in the scheme of what
Germany expected to face. It is a factor that matures more slowly
than many of the others, more slowly, perhaps, even than the effect
of the blockade (which is also due to British effort), but it will
mature with sufficient rapidity to affect all the later, and what may
easily be the decisive, phases of the great war.
We have an equally direct answer to that hitherto quite uncertain
question, whether in a modern state the secrecy which is essential
to the success of a military plan could be maintained or no. Here
again there has been a complete surprise. No one could have suggested
six months ago that so news-tight a system could possibly have been
worked with populations living in the modern great towns. And here
it must be admitted that our opponents have done even better than
ourselves. There is almost a comic element in the complete security
with which the German and Austrian Governments can give those whom
they govern exactly what news they choose and forbid the least scrap
correcting or amplifying these meagre official statements, to pass
the frontiers.
In connexion with this we should note that there is at the time of
writing no definite answer to that very important question of how a
complex modern town population will stand a heavy moral strain. But
in so far as the indirect strain already caused by the war is any
gauge, the answer seems to be favourable to the modern town liver.
Perhaps the most important point of all among the political questions
which the war has propounded is that connected with class as against
national feeling.
In plain fact, the idea that class feeling would anywhere in Europe
be stronger than national feeling has proved utterly wanting.
In the industrial parts of Germany where the distinction of
capitalist and proletariat was so clearly marked, that distinction
had no effect whatsoever, not only upon mobilization, but upon the
spirit of the troops; _a fortiori_ it had none in that French society
which is leavened by its peasantry, or in Russia which is almost
wholly a peasant state.
There is nothing on which the judgment of an educated man would have
proved more at sea had it been taken before the war broke out, and
nothing in which the war has more poignantly revealed the ancient
foundations upon which Europe reposes.
BALLANTYNE PRESS: LONDON AND EDINBURGH
End of Project Gutenberg's The Two Maps of Europe, by Hilaire Belloc