Page:EB1911 - Volume 28.djvu/341

Rh ground, all enter into the question of the feasibility or the reverse of military operations, and where the map is the actual field of manœuvre, the features of the natural field must be adequately supplied. Blocks, cut or moulded to scale, represent the different units of the combatants, and are coloured (generally red and blue) to distinguish the opposing forces. Some pairs of dividers and a few measures of the same scale as the maps employed complete the material outfit. Printed regulations for the conduct of kriegspiel are of small value; and although rules have been drafted at various times and in many languages, they have generally been allowed to lapse, practice having proved that the decision of a competent umpire is of more value, as to the soundness or unsoundness of a military manœuvre, than a code of regulations which inevitably lack elasticity.

The usual course of procedure varies but little in the different countries in which the system has been employed. The central map screened from the view of the combatants is used by the umpire, who places on it the forces of both sides; copies are on either hand behind screens or in adjoining rooms, and on them representative blocks are placed in positions which agree with the information possessed by each respective commander. A scheme is formulated such as may occur in war, and a “General Idea” or “Narrative” is the common property of both sides. This contains those items of common knowledge which would be in the possession of either commander in the field. The General Idea is supplemented by “special ideas,” issued one to each of the combatants, supplying the information which a commander might reasonably be expected to have of the details of his own force. A third series of instructions is issued, entitled “Orders,” which define to each commander the object to be attained; and on receipt of these he is required to draft specific orders, such as, in manœuvre or in war, would be considered necessary for issue to field units in the assumed circumstances. Then the game begins. The units of artillery, cavalry, infantry or train-wagons advance or retreat at a rate approximately regulated to their normal pace. Information gained by advancing patrols is brought at realistic speed to its destination, and no alteration in the ordered movements of a unit is allowed, till expiration of the calculated time for the transmission of the intelligence and for the issue of fresh orders. So the exercise progresses, each movement is marked, and periodically the blocks on the three maps are placed as they would be at a simultaneous moment. Smaller units yield to larger ones of the enemy; equal forces, if unassisted by superiority of position, “contain” one another, and are practically neutralized till reinforcements arrive and equilibrium is overthrown.

The decisions of the umpire are all-important, and it is he who makes or mars the value of the instruction. Some axioms must be universally accepted for the guidance both of himself and of the players. A force arrayed within effective range on the flank of an equal and hostile force has the better position of the two. Artillery in position with an unimpeded glacis is a terrible task for a frontal attack. Cavalry, as such, is ineffective in woodlands, marshes or a country broken up by cross hedges or wire fencing. Infantry in masses is an ideal target for efficient artillery, and in scattered bodies affords opportunities for attack by well-handled cavalry. The just application of the ideas contained in these few sentences to the varying stages of a combat is no mean task for a cultured soldier.

One of many difficulties encountered in war is the lack of accurate information. Any one man's view of details spread over large areas of country is extremely limited; and even with the greatest precautions against unreality, a commander's information is vastly more accurate over the extended units of his mimic force at kriegspiel than when the forces so represented are men, horses and machines, wrapped in dust or in smoke, and partially obscured by accidents of the ground too insignificant for reproduction on the map. Yet whilst accepting a certain unreality in kriegspiel, and to a less degree in field manœuvres, both by one and the other military training and education are furthered. The framing of orders follows identical lines at kriegspiel, at manœuvres or in war. The movement of troops in mimic warfare should be brought to harmonize as far as possible with reality. Up to a point this is relatively easy, and depends chiefly on the quality of the umpiring. But directly the close contact of important bodies of troops is represented on paper, imagination, not realism, governs the results. Even this, however, can be tempered, as regards the larger problems of the tactical grouping of forces, by the wisdom and experience of the umpire. It is true that military history teems with tactical events that no map can reproduce and no seer could have prophesied. But the greater an officer's familiarity with military history, the more likely he is to provide the margin of safety against such incidents in his dispositions, and thus kriegspiel, even in the domain of general tactics, is of invaluable assistance as a means of applying sound principles, learned in other ways, to concrete cases.  WARGLA, a town in the Algerian Sahara, 175 m. S.W. of Biskra on the caravan route to the Niger countries, and a starting-point for the exploration of the southern part of the Sahara. Pop. (1906) 3579, the majority of mixed Berber and negro blood. The town is walled and is entered by six gateways, which are fortified. The French fort, barracks, hospital and other buildings are south of the native town. Wargla lies in an oasis containing many palm trees. It claims to be the oldest town in the Sahara, and was for a long time self-governing, but eventually placed itself under the protection of the sultan of Morocco. The sultan, however, had ceased to have any power in the town some time previous to the French occupation. Wargla was first occupied for the French in 1853 by native allies, but it was not until 1872 that the authority of France was definitely established. The importance of the town as a trans-Saharan trade centre has greatly declined since the suppression of slave-trading by the French. The oasis in which Wargla is situated contains two or three other small fortified ksurs or villages, the largest and most picturesque being Ruissat. The total population of the oasis is about 12,000.  WARHAM, WILLIAM (c. 1450-1532), archbishop of Canterbury, belonged to a Hampshire family, and was educated at Winchester and New College, Oxford, afterwards practising and teaching law both in London and Oxford. Later he took holy orders, held two livings, and became master of the rolls in 1494, while Henry VII. found him a useful and clever diplomatist. He helped to arrange the marriage between Henry's son, Arthur, and Catherine of Aragon; he went to Scotland with Richard Foxe, then bishop of Durham, in 1497; and he was partly responsible for several commercial and other treaties with Flanders, Burgundy and the German king, Maximilian I. In 1502 Warham was consecrated bishop of London and became keeper of the great seal, but his tenure of both these offices was short, as in 1504 he became lord chancellor and archbishop of Canterbury, In 1509 the archbishop married and then crowned Henry VIII. and Catherine of Aragon, but gradually withdrawing into the background he resigned the office of lord chancellor in 1515, and was succeeded by Wolsey, whom he had consecrated as bishop of Lincoln in the previous year. This resignation was possibly due to his dislike of Henry's foreign policy. He was present at the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520, and assisted Wolsey as assessor during the secret inquiry into the validity of Henry's marriage with Catherine in 1527. Throughout the divorce proceedings Warham's position was essentially that of an old and weary man. He was named as one of the counsellors to assist the queen, but, fearing to incur the king's displeasure and using his favourite phrase ira principis mors est, he gave her very little help; and he signed the letter to Clement VII. which urged the pope to assent to Henry's wish. Afterwards it was proposed that the archbishop himself should try the case, but this suggestion came to nothing. He presided over the Convocation of 1531 when the clergy of the province of Canterbury voted £100,000 to the king in order to avoid the penalties of praemunire, and accepted Henry as supreme head of the church with the saving clause “so far as the law of Christ allows.” In his concluding years, however, the archbishop showed rather more independence. In February 1532 he protested against all acts concerning the church passed by the parliament which met in 1529, but this did not prevent the important proceedings which secured the complete submission of the church to the state later in the same year. Against this further compliance with Henry's wishes Warham drew up a protest, he likened the action of Henry VIII. to that of Henry II., and urged Magna Carta in defence of the liberties of the church. He died on the 22nd of August 1532 and was buried in Canterbury cathedral. Warham, who was chancellor of Oxford University from 1506 until his death, was munificent in his public, and moderate in his private life. As archbishop he seems to have been somewhat arbitrary, and his action led to a serious quarrel with Bishop Foxe of Winchester and others in 1512.

See W. F. Hook, Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury (1860-1876); J. Gairdner in ''Dict. Nat. Biog.,'' vol. lix. (1899), and The English Church in the 16th Century (1902); J. S. Brewer, Reign of Henry VIII. (1884); and A. F. Pollard, Henry VIII. (1905). 