Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/377

Rh STRATEGY.] WAR 353 They only actually met on the field of battle of Sadowa. The effect of the selection of a point of concentration, as tending to leave an enemy uncertain as to the direction which a general purposes afterwards to take, can hardly be better illustrated than by Napoleon s concentration in the Waterloo campaign. By gathering his army at Philippe- ville, Beaumont, and Solre, he threatened Mons more directly than he threatened Charleroi, and thereby tended to prevent his enemies from concentrating against the point of his intended attack. There is a peculiarity in the strategical aspect of British campaigns beyond sea against savage tribes which requires a short explanation. Usually the difficulty lies in trans porting from the base towards the front a sufficient quantity of provisions without eating them up on the road. Since the animals and men employed in transporting food and ammunition must themselves be fed, it is evident that if we send supplies for a day s journey forward the balance available for feeding the troops will be the amount the transport can carry, less two days food for themselves, that is one day forward and one day in coming back. Similarly, for a journey of eight days to the front sixteen days food for the carrying animals and men will have to be deducted. In fact, more than this will be required, because when the journey is extended beyond a certain limit there must be occasional rest days. It is clear that if, as was the case in Abyssinia, in Ashantee, in the movement on Sikukuni s country, and, though with different transport, on the Nile and in Egypt, a march of many days beyond all supplies of food not carried by the transport has to be made, a point will be reached at which the animals begin to eat up all the food they carry. This can only be met by the system of depoting. That is to say, an accumula tion of large supplies of food is made as far forward on the road as possible, and then from that point it is again pushed forward by one relay of transport whilst others fill it up from behind. But here again another point arises. If the whole army to be employed on the expedition were pushed forward to the front where the supplies are being accumulated, these supplies would be eaten up as fast as they arrived. The fewer the troops in the front the more rapid will be the accumulation. Hence the great secret of a rapid advance in this case is to keep in front only as many troops as are necessary, when well entrenched, to guard the accumulation of supplies. The more completely all others are kept back from the front the sooner will the expedition achieve the object for which it is employed. These are incidents which repeat themselves on every English expedition, while at the same time complaints are continually being made of the generals during the course of the campaign for the delay involved in their doing the very thing which hastens achievement. TACTICS. In speaking of the changes which have affected strategy, we declared our belief that the weapons of strategy have changed since the Napoleonic era even more completely than those of tactics. It now becomes necessary to define the limits of what this statement implies. We have shown how, even in questions of strategy, the spirit of subordination and the nature and kind of co-operation which a minor leader has to give to his commander- in-chief have been affected by the changes in the size of armies, the scope of operations, and the developed facilities of communication and supply. This change, however, of the spirit of organization is, in so far as re gards strategy, a comparatively secondary matter. Among the few men engaged in the actual command of armies and army corps, it is almost an affair of personal arrange ment and of mutual understanding how far the sub ordinate acts independently, and how far he merely carries out the precise directions of his superior. Where men are so well known to one another as were, for instance, the leaders of armies and army corps of the Germans during the campaign of 1870, the generals of such great bodies as these could judge from personal knowledge of the characters of those under whom they were acting what degree of latitude to allow themselves in the interpretation of orders. We see the evidence of this everywhere. This personal confidence, this mutual knowledge of one another among the higher leaders of armies, has become an essential instrument of modern war. The general who has men under him whom he does not know and cannot trust suffers now in a degree in which he never suffered before. But when we come to compare the effect of modern changes on the spirit of strategy, in these matters of discipline, with its effect on tactics, there is no proportion between the two. Discipline is the very life-blood of an army, and it is Importanc on the field of battle, that is, within the province of of mechani tactics, that it shows its potency. To interfere in any way with this spirit, as it determines the power of the commander over his men in the presence of the enemy and under the stress of battle, to introduce the least malignant influence into it, is to blood-poison the army. Therefore, as no army can nowadays hope, in presence of a modern enemy armed with the weapons of to-day, to carry out a system of manoeuvres in which discipline can be main tained with the old facility, and under conditions so favourable to it as those of the past, we must approach the subject with a caution proportioned to its vital importance. Curiously enough it is from an English scientific author, from Mr Darwin, that one of the ablest of recent German writers on war has borrowed the penetrating phrase which sums up the essential element, common to the discipline of the past with that of the present, which it is vital to us not to shake or to impair. The engrained habit of mutual confidence among all ranks of a regiment is the factor in its strength which attracted Mr Darwin s attention as the cause of its incalculable superiority in power over an armed mob. Baron von der Goltz accepts the statement as true, without reserve. When, however, we come to consider what has enabled armies to acquire this engrained habit, we are met by some very curious experiences. In the first place, the instinctive habit of obedience to a word of command, as coming from one who has the right and the duty to give that command, has to be carried into the very limbs of a man. When cultivated men of mature years entered the ranks of the British volunteers during the early stages of the movement, some very amusing protests appeared in print as to the dreary monotony of the mechanical contortions which represent the early phases of recruit drill. A certain pity or sympathy was expressed for the poor soldiers who had to spend their lives in such uninteresting tasks. It would hardly be too much to say that the complaints of these very superior persons showed a want of philosophic acute- ness, which is entirely absent from the minds of the most zealous volunteers of our day. No one understands better than these the fact that in the dull mechanical routine of those incidents of recruit drill is laid the foundation of all military power. The zealous barrister, who at thirty-five always found himself turning by mistake to the right when he was ordered to turn to the left, who found it impossible to supple his limbs in the required &quot;extension motions,&quot; was unconsciously illustrat ing the weakness of the most zealous untrained armed man. With the best of wishes his body was so little under the command of his own mind and will that he could not, much as he wished it, place it at once under XXIV. - 45