1 Soissons and Arras when I visited them were samples of the deadlock
war; they were like Bloch come true. The living fact about war so far
is that Bloch has not come true--_yet._ I think in the end he will come
true, but not so far as this war is concerned, and to make that clear
it is necessary to trouble the reader with a little disquisition upon
war--omitting as far as humanly possible all mention of Napoleon's
campaigns.
The development of war has depended largely upon two factors. One of
these is invention. New weapons and new methods have become available,
and have modified tactics, strategy, the relative advantage of offensive
and defensive. The other chief factor in the evolution of the war has
been social organisation. As Machiavelli points out in his _Art of War_,
there was insufficient social stability in Europe to keep a properly
trained and disciplined infantry in the field from the passing of the
Roman legions to the appearance of the Swiss footmen. He makes it very
clear that he considers the fighting of the Middle Ages, though frequent
and bloody, to be a confused, mobbing sort of affair, and politically
and technically unsatisfactory. The knight was an egotist in armour.
Machiavelli does small justice to the English bowmen. It is interesting
to note that Switzerland, that present island of peace, was regarded by
him as the mother of modern war. Swiss aggression was the curse of the
Milanese. That is a remark by the way; our interest here is to note that
modern war emerges upon history as the sixteenth century unfolds, as
an affair in which the essential factor is the drilled and trained
infantryman. The artillery is developing as a means of breaking the
infantry; cavalry for charging them when broken, for pursuit and
scouting. To this day this triple division of forces dominates soldiers'
minds. The mechanical development of warfare has consisted largely in
the development of facilities for enabling or hindering the infantry
to get to close quarters. As that has been made easy or difficult the
offensive or the defensive has predominated.
A history of military method for the last few centuries would be a
record of successive alternate steps in which offensive and defensive
contrivances pull ahead, first one and then the other. Their relative
fluctuations are marked by the varying length of campaigns. From the
very outset we have the ditch and the wall; the fortified place upon a
pass or main road, as a check to the advance. Artillery improves, then
fortification improves. The defensive holds its own for a long period,
wars are mainly siege wars, and for a century before the advent of
Napoleon there are no big successful sweeping invasions, no marches
upon the enemy capital and so on. There were wars of reduction, wars
of annoyance. Napoleon developed the offensive by seizing upon the
enthusiastic infantry of the republic, improving transport and mobile
artillery, using road-making as an aggressive method. In spite of the
successful experiment of Torres Vedras and the warning of Plevna the
offensive remained dominant throughout the nineteenth century.
But three things were working quietly towards the rehabilitation of the
defensive; firstly the increased range, accuracy and rapidity of rifle
fire, with which we may include the development of the machine gun;
secondly the increasing use of the spade, and thirdly the invention of
barbed wire. By the end of the century these things had come so far into
military theory as to produce the great essay of Bloch, and to surprise
the British military people, who are not accustomed to read books or
talk shop, in the Boer war. In the thinly populated war region of South
Africa the difficulties of forcing entrenched positions were largely met
by outflanking, the Boers had only a limited amount of barbed wire
and could be held down in their trenches by shrapnel, and even at the
beginning of the present war there can be little doubt that we and
our Allies were still largely unprepared for the full possibilities of
trench warfare, we attempted a war of manoeuvres, war at about the grade
to which war had been brought in 1898, and it was the Germans who first
brought the war up to date by entrenching upon the Aisne. We had, of
course, a few aeroplanes at that time, but they were used chiefly as a
sort of accessory cavalry for scouting; our artillery was light and our
shell almost wholly shrapnel.
Now the grades of warfare that have been developed since the present
war began, may be regarded as a series of elaborations and counter
elaborations of the problem which begins as a line of trenches behind
wire, containing infantry with rifles and machine guns. Against this an
infantry attack with bayonet, after shrapnel fails. This we will call
Grade A. To this the offensive replies with improved artillery, and
particularly with high explosive shell instead of shrapnel. By this the
wire is blown away, the trench wrecked and the defender held down as
the attack charges up. This is Grade B. But now appear the dug-out
elaborating the trench and the defensive battery behind the trench. The
defenders, under the preliminary bombardment, get into the dug-outs
with their rifles and machine guns, and emerge as fresh as paint as
the attack comes up. Obviously there is much scope for invention and
contrivance in the dug-out as the reservoir of counter attacks. Its
possibilities have been very ably exploited by the Germans. Also the
defensive batteries behind, which have of course the exact range of the
captured trench, concentrate on it and destroy the attack at the moment
of victory. The trench falls back to its former holders under this fire
and a counter attack. Check again for the offensive. Even if it can
take, it cannot hold a position under these conditions. This we will
call Grade A2; a revised and improved A. What is the retort from
the opposite side? Obviously to enhance and extend the range of the
preliminary bombardment behind the actual trench line, to destroy
or block, if it can, the dug-outs and destroy or silence the counter
offensive artillery. If it can do that, it can go on; otherwise Bloch
wins.
If fighting went on only at ground level Bloch would win at this stage,
but here it is that the aeroplane comes in. From the ground it would
be practically impossible to locate the enemies' dug-outs, secondary
defences, and batteries. But the aeroplane takes us immediately into a
new grade of warfare, in which the location of the defender's secondary
trenches, guns, and even machine-gun positions becomes a matter of
extreme precision--provided only that the offensive has secured command
of the air and can send his aeroplanes freely over the defender lines.
Then the preliminary bombardment becomes of a much more extensive
character; the defender's batteries are tackled by the overpowering fire
of guns they are unable to locate and answer; the secondary dug-outs and
strong places are plastered down, a barrage fire shuts off support
from the doomed trenches, the men in these trenches are held down by a
concentrated artillery fire and the attack goes up at last to hunt
them out of the dug-outs and collect the survivors. Until the attack is
comfortably established in the captured trench, the fire upon the old
counter attack position goes on. This is the grade, Grade B2, to which
modern warfare has attained upon the Somme front. The appearance of
the Tank has only increased the offensive advantage. There at present
warfare rests.
There is, I believe, only one grade higher possible. The success of B2
depends upon the completeness of the aerial observation. The invention
of an anti-aircraft gun which would be practically sure of hitting and
bringing down an aeroplane at any height whatever up to 20,000 feet,
would restore the defensive and establish what I should think must be
the final grade of war, A3. But at present nothing of the sort exists
and nothing of the sort is likely to exist for a very long time; at
present hitting an aeroplane by any sort of gun at all is a rare and
uncertain achievement. Such a gun is not impossible and therefore we
must suppose such a gun will some day be constructed, but it will be of
a novel type and character, unlike anything at present in existence.
The grade of fighting that I was privileged to witness on the Somme, the
grade at which a steady successful offensive is possible, is therefore,
I conclude, the grade at which the present war will end.
2
But now having thus spread out the broad theory of the business, let me
go on to tell some of the actualities of the Somme offensive. They key
fact upon both British and French fronts was the complete ascendancy of
the Allies aeroplanes. It is the necessary preliminary condition for
the method upon which the great generals of the French army rely in this
sanitary task of shoving the German Thing off the soil of Belgium and
France back into its own land. A man who is frequently throwing out
prophecies is bound to score a few successes, and one that I may
legitimately claim is my early insistence upon that fact that the
equality of the German aviator was likely to be inferior to that of his
French or British rival. The ordinary German has neither the flexible
quality of body, the quickness of nerve, the temperament, nor the mental
habits that make a successful aviator. This idea was first put into my
head by considering the way in which Germans walk and carry themselves,
and by nothing the difference in nimbleness between the cyclists in the
streets of German and French towns. It was confirmed by a conversation I
had with a German aviator who was also a dramatist, and who came to
see me upon some copyright matter in 1912. He broached the view that
aviation would destroy democracy, because he said only aristocrats make
aviators. (He was a man of good family.) With a duke or so in my mind I
asked him why. Because, he explained, a man without aristocratic quality
in tradition, cannot possibly endure the “high loneliness” of the air.
That sounded rather like nonsense at the time, and then I reflected that
for a Prussian that might be true. There may be something in the German
composition that does demand association and the support of pride
and training before dangers can be faced. The Germans are social
and methodical, the French and English are by comparison chaotic and
instinctive; perhaps the very readiness for a conscious orderliness
that makes the German so formidable upon the ground, so thorough and
fore-seeking, makes him slow and unsure in the air. At any rate the
experiences of this war have seemed to carry out this hypothesis. The
German aviators will not as a class stand up to those of the Allies.
They are not nimble in the air. Such champions as they have produced
have been men of one trick; one of their great men, Immelmann--he was
put down by an English boy a month or so ago--had a sort of hawk's
swoop. He would go very high and then come down at his utmost pace at
his antagonist, firing his machine gun at him as he came. If he missed
in this hysterical lunge, he went on down.... This does not strike the
Allied aviator as very brilliant. A gentleman of that sort can sooner or
later be caught on the rise by going for him over the German lines.
The first phase, then, of the highest grade offensive, the ultimate
development of war regardless of expense, is the clearance of the air.
Such German machines as are up are put down by fighting aviators. These
last fly high; in the clear blue of the early morning they look exactly
like gnats; some trail a little smoke in the sunshine; they take
their machine guns in pursuit over the German lines, and the German
anti-aircraft guns, the Archibalds, begin to pattern the sky about them
with little balls of black smoke. From below one does not see men nor
feel that men are there; it is as if it were an affair of midges. Close
after the fighting machines come the photographic aeroplanes, with
cameras as long as a man is high, flying low--at four or five thousand
feet that is--over the enemy trenches. The Archibald leaves these latter
alone; it cannot fire a shell to explode safely so soon after firing;
but they are shot at with rifles and machine guns. They do not mind
being shot at; only the petrol tank and the head and thorax of the pilot
are to be considered vital. They will come back with forty or fifty
bullet holes in the fabric. They will go under this fire along the
length of the German positions exposing plate after plate; one machine
will get a continuous panorama of many miles and then come back straight
to the aerodrome to develop its plates.
There is no waste of time about the business, the photographs are
developed as rapidly as possible. Within an hour and a half after the
photographs were taken the first prints are going back into the bureau
for the examination of the photographs. Both British and French air
photographs are thoroughly scrutinised and marked.
An air photograph to an inexperienced eye is not a very illuminating
thing; one makes our roads, blurs of wood, and rather vague buildings.
But the examiner has an eye that has been in training; he is a picked
man; he has at hand yesterday's photographs and last week's photographs,
marked maps and all sorts of aids and records. If he is a Frenchman he
is only too happy to explain his ideas and methods. Here, he will point
out, is a little difference between the German trench beyond the wood
since yesterday. For a number of reasons he thinks that will be a new
machine gun emplacement; here at the centre of the farm wall they have
been making another. This battery here--isn't it plain? Well, it's a
dummy. The grass in front of it hasn't been scorched, and there's been
no serious wear on the road here for a week. Presently the Germans will
send one or two waggons up and down that road and instruct them to make
figures of eight to imitate scorching on the grass in front of the gun.
We know all about that. The real wear on the road, compare this and this
and this, ends here at this spot. It turns off into the wood. There's a
sort of track in the trees. Now look where the trees are just a little
displaced! (This lens is rather better for that.) _That's_ one gun. You
see? Here, I will show you another....
That process goes on two or three miles behind the front line. Very
clean young men in white overalls do it as if it were a labour of love.
And the Germans in the trenches, the German gunners, _know it is going
on._ They know that in the quickest possible way these observations of
the aeroplane that was over them just now will go to the gunners. The
careful gunner, firing by the map and marking by aeroplane, kite balloon
or direct observation, will be getting onto the located guns and machine
guns in another couple of hours. The French claim that they have located
new batteries, got their _tir de demolition_ upon them in and destroyed
them within five hours. The British I told of that found it incredible.
Every day the French print special maps showing the guns, sham guns,
trenches, everything of significance behind the German lines, showing
everything that has happened in the last four-and-twenty hours. It is
pitiless. It is indecent. The map-making and printing goes on in the
room next and most convenient to the examination of the photographs.
And, as I say, the German army knows of this, and knows that it cannot
prevent it because of its aerial weakness. That knowledge is not the
last among the forces that is crumpling up the German resistance upon
the Somme.
I visited some French guns during the _tir de demolition_ phase. I
counted nine aeroplanes and twenty-six kite balloons in the air at the
same time. There was nothing German visible in the air at all.
It is a case of eyes and no eyes.
The French attack resolves itself into a triple system of gunfire. First
for a day or so, or two or three days, there is demolition fire to smash
up all the exactly located batteries, organisation, supports, behind the
front line enemy trenches; then comes barrage fire to cut off supplies
and reinforcements; then, before the advance, the hammering down
fire, “heads down,” upon the trenches. When at last this stops and the
infantry goes forward to rout out the trenches and the dug-outs, they
go forward with a minimum of inconvenience. The first wave of attack
fights, destroys, or disarms the surviving Germans and sends them back
across the open to the French trenches. They run as fast as they can,
hands up, and are shepherded farther back. The French set to work to
turn over the captured trenches and organise themselves against any
counter attack that may face the barrage fire.
That is the formula of the present fighting, which the French have
developed. After an advance there is a pause, while the guns move up
nearer the Germans and fresh aeroplane reconnaissance goes on. Nowhere
on this present offensive has a German counter attack had more than the
most incidental success; and commonly they have had frightful losses.
Then after a few days of refreshment and accumulation, the Allied attack
resumes.
That is the perfected method of the French offensive. I had the pleasure
of learning its broad outlines in good company, in the company of M.
Joseph Reinach and Colonel Carence, the military writer. Their talk
together and with me in the various messes at which we lunched was for
the most part a keen discussion of every detail and every possibility
of the offensive machine; every French officer's mess seems a little
council upon the one supreme question in France, _how to do it best._
M. Reinach has made certain suggestions about the co-operation of the
French and British that I will discuss elsewhere, but one great theme
was the constitution of “the ideal battery.” For years French military
thought has been acutely attentive to the best number of guns for
effective common action, and has tended rather to the small battery
theory. My two companies were playing with the idea that the ideal
battery was a battery of one big gun, with its own aeroplane and kite
balloon marking for it.
The British seem to be associated with the adventurous self-reliance
needed in the air. The British aeroplanes do not simply fight the
Germans out of the sky; they also make themselves an abominable nuisance
by bombing the enemy trenches. For every German bomb that is dropped by
aeroplane on or behind the British lines, about twenty go down on
the heads of the Germans. British air bombs upon guns, stores and
communications do some of the work that the French effect by their
systematic demolition fire.
And the British aviator has discovered and is rapidly developing an
altogether fresh branch of air activity in the machine-gun attack at a
very low altitude. Originally I believe this was tried in western Egypt,
but now it is being increasingly used upon the British front in France.
An aeroplane which comes down suddenly, travelling very rapidly, to
a few hundred feet, is quite hard to hit, even if it is not squirting
bullets from a machine gun as it advances. Against infantry in the open
this sort of thing is extremely demoralising. It is a method of attack
still in its infancy, but there are great possibilities for it in the
future, when the bending and cracking German line gives, as ultimately
it must give if this offensive does not relax. If the Allies persist in
their pressure upon the western front, if there is no relaxation in the
supply of munitions from Britain and no lapse into tactical stupidity, a
German retreat eastward is inevitable.
Now a cavalry pursuit alone may easily come upon disaster, cavalry can
be so easily held up by wire and a few machine guns. I think the Germans
have reckoned on that and on automobiles, probably only the decay of
their _morale_ prevents their opening their lines now on the chance of
the British attempting some such folly as a big cavalry advance, but
I do not think the Germans have reckoned on the use of machine guns in
aeroplanes, supported by and supporting cavalry or automobiles. At the
present time I should imagine there is no more perplexing consideration
amidst the many perplexities of the German military intelligence than
the new complexion put upon pursuit by these low level air developments.
It may mean that in all sorts of positions where they had counted
confidently on getting away, they may not be able to get away--from
the face of a scientific advance properly commanding and using modern
material in a dexterous and intelligent manner.