Page:EB1922 - Volume 32.djvu/686

660

which preceded it. Something of the same kind was seen during the Russo-Japanese War, when great mountain ranges made movement far from the railway extremely difficult, with the result that, broadly speaking, neither Oyama nor Kuropatkin had room for manoeuvre, and tactically the war resolved itself into a series of frontal assaults on a defended defile. So it was that, from 1914 to 1918, commanders on the western European front had no opportunity for crushing strokes and striking victories like Austerlitz, Rossbach or Salamanca. Their genius had to show itself rather in the skill and ingenuity with which they made use of the resources placed at their disposal by modern science, than in rapidity of movement and dashing leadership. More than ever war has become "an art served by many sciences," but in so doing it has lost much of its romance. It was only as they moved eastward out of Europe to Palestine and Mesopotamia, where restricted railway communications and scanty populations made it necessary to operate with com- paratively small forces in big countries, that the British com- manders found themselves working under conditions which pre- vious experience had made familiar to them. Before 1914 in- stances of the tactical use of railways could be numbered on the fingers of one hand; the arrival of the ever-famous Stonewall brigade on the battlefield of Bull Run, the dramatic appearance of Lambton's naval brigade at Ladysmith on the morning of Oct. 30 1899 at a critical moment in the action of Lombard's Kop, and one or two other examples complete the tale of occa- sions when railways can fairly be said to have had a direct in- fluence upon a tactical decision.

All this is now changed. Broad-gauge and light-gauge lines are now a necessary and ever-increasing part of the mysterious machinery of battle; and it is they, together with the comple- mentary service of road transport, that have made it possible to mobilize the entire manhood almost the whole adult population of a nation, and to maintain in the field armies numbering several millions of men. These armies in their turn claim the services of every industry and every factory to such an extent that in time of war the term " civilian population " is merely misleading, and undefended towns and ordinary merchant ves- sels become legitimate objects of attack. Thus it is that the new feature of " continuous lines " has been introduced into civilized war, and frontal attacks have become inevitable.

Obstacles: Wire. Here, however, we must stop to consider another new factor which has resulted directly from the extended use of railway communications and the " nationalization " of war. This is the use of obstacles, more particularly of wire. For sev- eral years before 1914 it had been amply evident to every student of the great military problem of Europe that, so soon as the German armies were mobilized and received the order to march, every road between the Dutch frontier and the mountains of Switzerland ' would be filled to overflowing with advancing troops. There was, be it noted, no doubt whatever among com- petent soldiers that Germany would not hesitate to violate the neutrality of Belgium; indeed, the very size of her armies, as well as her declared principle of envelopment, made it certain that she would do so, even had the fortifications of the eastern frontier of France not barred the way from Alsace and Lorraine to Paris. To this extent, therefore, " continuous lines " had been foreseen, but it was generally considered that they would exist only during the opening phase.

The present writer can recall very clearly an interesting argu- ment between a very distinguished senior officer and two of his subordinates which took place early in 1914. The senior officer maintained that he found it impossible to visualize a collision along a front of something like 140 miles. The two subordinates maintained that this gigantic battle must be the result of the numbers which would certainly be mobilized; clearly it could not last very long before it broke up into groups of armies oper- ating semi-independently, but, taking Mukden as something of a guide, they expected to see the first, and perhaps the decisive, battle rage from Belfort to the neighbourhood of Namur for perhaps three weeks. " Well," was the senior officer's final remark, " I'll give you three weeks, but not a day longer," and

with that the juniors departed content. Some things, it will be seen, turned out as anticipated; but many, especially the rapidity of the Allied retreat, turned out very differently.. On the one hand, the German movement through Belgium was too quick and too successful to allow the Allied armies to make the expected stand; on the other hand, the continuous lines were never broken, and after three months of moving warfare the siege of Germany began. Once started, it lasted, not for three weeks, but for four whole years a phenomenon which was due to field fortifications and, more than anything else, to wire.

It is a remarkable fact that in all the tactical exercises, staff rides and other instructional devices in which soldiers were ac- customed to indulge before the war, the problem of field fortifi- cation was but lightly considered. This is true of all countries, and it is quite wrong to believe that Germany, as has been held in too many quarters, showed any greater prescience than her enemies. The reasons are simple: first, it was not possible to test the efficacy of trenches, dug-outs, barbed-wire entangle- ments or " pill-boxes " under manoeuvre conditions, when time was short and compensation a grave consideration; secondly, it was generally agreed that fortified positions limited the offensive power of the defending garrison and could themselves be easily avoided or turned. This was the teaching of the South African and all previous campaigns, and even Manchuria gave but little indication of what war was to be like in the highly industrialized areas of western Europe. Thus it was that, at the end of the first battle of Ypres, in the middle of November 1914, the British, French and German armies found themselves con- fronted with entirely novel tactical conditions which demanded entirely new tactical treatment; and to-day new tactics involve not only the training of troops but also the application of mechan- ical device. In 1914 the new conditions were those of " con- tinuous lines," for which the solution was eventually found, but only through a weary process of " trial and error," in the course of which the ultimate victors came perilously near to exhaustion.

It is not proposed here to discuss the various methods which were adopted with a view to avoiding the central problem and seeking a decision in other theatres of war, for they have noth- ing to do with tactics. It is, however, permissible to refer to the effect of operations in different theatres of war upon the tactical evolution in the armies of the Allies and of the Central Powers.

Interior Lines. Put quite briefly, it would appear to be this that, as a result of their central position and possession of interior lines facilitating the rapid transfer of troops from one theatre of operations to another, the German commanders were not so free to concentrate their attention upon the demands of local conditions as were the French and especially the British. The theatres of Mesopotamia, Gallipoli and later of Salonika and Palestine were so remote from France and from each other that it was less difficult to allot to each the necessary proportion of the different arms, and to give to each the distinct training and equipment essential for its efficiency, than it was for Ger- many, whose troops and commanders were constantly on the move from one theatre to another. Hence it was that, while Germany was inclined, or compelled, to compromise, the Allies opposed to her were able to specialize, with the result that, with one notable exception, in every theatre the initiative and the lead in tactical development were with them. That notable ex- ception was the not very noble or praiseworthy one of the use of gas. In the true realm of tactics it may fairly be said that, from the end of 1914 until March 1918, when Ludendorff had for the first time been able to devote his individual attention to the problems of the western front, the lead in tactical evolution was always with the Entente armies.

Changes in Organization. To return to the deadlock in the West, it became clear towards the end of 1914 and beginning of 1915 that the problem of field fortification could not be solved by the methods of 1870, S. Africa or Manchuria. It was not that principles were changed and theories at fault. The power of modern rifle fire had been amply demonstrated, especially by the British Expeditionary Force, whose trust in their weapons had been more than justified; the French seventy-