Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/310

 300 A British Officer These causes no doubt affect the making of all history, but for military historians they have a special force. The object of military history is not the mere elucidation of the truth, the vindication of a great commander's reputation, or the pricking of the bubble .of unmerited fame, but its true aim is to deduce, from the experiences of the past, lessons which may assist soldiers in the performance of their duty in future campaigns. Such lessons are not to be har- vested without toil, the toil not only of the men who have won victory by their sweat and blood, but of those whose duty it is to collate and piece together the disjointed evidence of the staff, bat- teries, battalions, and regiments composing the contending force, and after due testing, sifting, and comparison to construct from this raw material a consistent narrative which, so far as human fallibility permits, may present to the reader a true picture. The difficulty of this task has been much augmented by the conditions of modern war. The great increase in the range of firearms, in the extension of troops, and in the size of armies renders it more and more impossible for any one man, be he commander-in-chief or war correspondent, or even for a large staff to follow at the time with any accuracy the detailed movements of units in action. Waterloo was fought ninety-one years ago ; not a survivor is left with us. Yet that great struggle is a vineyard in which historians still labor. The harvest of a modern campaign may take even longer in reaping. Every war and every field of battle is not, however, rich enough in military lessons to justify such close gleaning and re-gleaning. The narrative of many of the small wars of which the British army, beyond all other armies in the world, has the fullest experience, is confined to official telegrams and a despatch published some months afterward in an obscure corner of the London Gazette. Others of more importance have perhaps been favored with the presence of war correspondents whose reports throw light on side issues and give color to the dry official documents. A few attract sufficient public attention to give birth later to a literature of their own. But even if such literature should be created, it but seldom attains the dignity of historical research. Even the greater campaigns often fail to reach the higher plane on which the true scientific spirit of history holds sway. Of all the wars of the nineteenth century, the Napoleonic struggle, the Civil 'ar in America, and the Franco- German War of 1 870-1 87 1 can alone be placed in the latter class, and have alone been subjected by generations of students to that process of scientific winnowing of evidence by which true history is finally secured. Over the wars other than those great contests —