Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/378

Rh 354 WAR [TACTICS. the command of anyone else. Much less could he cut out that disturbing element himself so far as to obey in stinctively, and without a certain element of resisting individuality, the command he received. Now the capacity to act together under the orders of one man can never be dispensed with under any of the condi tions of modern war. The instinctive obedience of a rank of soldiers to the order to turn &quot; Eight about,&quot; when that order sends them back into the ground where shells are bursting and where bullets are raining, has been a power in fighting too great for us ever willingly to throw it away. Some humorous illustrations of its effect on soldiers, and of the victory-winning power which an even apparently unintelligent submission to this authority of instinct has given, more especially to English soldiers, are mentioned in the article ARMY (vol. ii. p. 589). In proportion as men understand war they value this effect, and would be unwilling even to diminish at a given moment actual loss of life if that diminution were secured by any sacrifice of this power. An old English battalion trained to the absolute perfection of such mechanical obedience was a splendid fighting instrument. No train ing, however perfect, to take advantage of ground, to seek cover, to glide on to the weak points of an enemy, will compensate, even in these days, a deficiency in that habit of utter self-abnegation, of entire subordination to the one Further purpose of united action under assigned orders. But, training under the modern conditions of war, the loss inflicted within a given time by the terrible weapons now in the sar ^ hands of all armies is so great that the very formations under which on a parade ground the armies of the past prepared to move in actual fighting under the orders of their commanders are mechanically as much as morally dissolved. Not even can the voice of the captain or the subaltern be heard, much less that of the lieutenant-colonel, above the din of breech-loaders and of shrapnel shells. It is not therefore with a light heart, not willingly, not as thinking that a dispersed order of fight is something in itself more powerful or more advantageous than a rigid formation in which ordered and orderly movement is easy, in which force can be concentrated, in which the habits of discipline can be more certainly maintained, but of dire necessity, that the most experienced soldiers of our day have come to the absolute conviction that only by preparing armies for fighting in dispersed order can discipline be maintained at all. The great problem of modern tactics, in so far as it concerns actual fighting, which regulates everything else, is how to maintain the old unity under the new conditions which make it so difficult. Infantry. This much at least we know, that from the moment that infantry are actually involved in a modern breech loader fight all manoeuvring has ceased to be possible. The natural and the necessary deduction from this is that the only influence which can be exercised upon such a fight by any but very subordinate leaders is to throw into it fresh bodies of men who till then have been retained in close formations. Now the experience of the 1870 battles showed clearly that the effect of fresh bodies thus thrown into a fight is very great indeed. Moreover, that experience showed further that the direction in which the fresh force is thrown into a contest already engaged between two bodies of infantry is vitally important in determining how great the effect of the blow so delivered will be. The tendency of any great fight is to break up into a series of partially independent actions. Therefore it almost always happens that in each of these there are on both sides certain weak points, which present oppor tunities to a skilful assailant. These arise either from cir cumstances of ground or from the inevitable disconnexion produced by isolated action of particular bodies of troops. Skill now consists in taking advantage of these oppor tunities, in anticipating the conditions under which they are likely to occur, in preparing to escape from similar dangers, and in pressing home a success. Here then is the way in which the organization spoken of above as the means of battle action makes itself felt. It is impossible now for the commander-in-chief of a great army to be ready at each part of a battle for one of these emergencies. Scarcely can the commander of a division of 10,000 men, or even the commander of 3000, meet all the local incidents that occur. At each stage of the hierarchy there is needed a man who, in proportion to the extent of the opportunity or the danger, is ready to seize or to meet it. But among the means of doing this which the practical experience of the Prussians taught them is one which tends more and more to be forgotten as the experiences of the great campaign are lost in the distance of the past. As the phases of any battle now succeed one another a time comes when the fight sways forward, and many men are left behind out of the immediate region of the combat. Often these stragglers are more numerous than the men engaged in the actual shooting line. They may be in a wood or for some other reason out of the reach of the enemy s projectiles, or they may at all events not be severely exposed to them. What is wanted is to take advantage of this wasted power and to throw it into the fight. This can only be done effectively by getting the men into closed bodies, and so bringing them again under orders and discipline. This was what the Germans or, to speak more accurately, the Prussians, who in all these respects were head and shoulders over all their German compatriots habitually did. The study then of the mode of preparing infantry for the fights of the future does not in these inner circumstances of battle consist in training them for some particular forms of attack nearly so much at least as in the following points : 1. In accustoming the men, as soon as from any cause they find themselves thrown out of the actual fighting line and out of the stress of fire, to place themselves instinctively and as quickly as possible under the orders of some officer who can get them into order, and either lead them on or await the moment when the services of a formed body of men will become invaluable; 2. In accustoming officers to seek all opportunities for re-forming dispersed men at the earliest possible moment; 3. In maintaining such close order as is possible as long as it can be maintained without risking overwhelming loss of life and dire confusion, hence therefore the breaking up into such small organized bodies as, by taking advantage of ground or other means, may be able to preserve unity of action longer than would be possible with greater masses ; 4. In keeping up, by the action of the higher ranks of the military hierarchy, the fighting connexion between these bodies, by the judicious employment of fresh force or of reserves that have been made up out of men that have been already engaged ; 5. In providing for the continual replenishment of ammunition close to the fighting line of at least all those who are not actually engaged in it, and the continually thrusting into the fighting line of men well supplied with ammunition to push forward the line, so that those who have exhausted their ammunition maybe resupplied without having to fall back ; and 6. Above all, in practice and training during peace in a mode of action which cannot be simply learnt on a parade-ground by help of drill-sergeant and words of command taught by rote. We have taken first this question of the change which has taken place in infantry fighting, because it is on the forms of infantry fight that the changes in armament have produced their greatest effect, because the main sub stance of an army always consists of infantry, and because the changes which have occurred in the use of the other arms, artillery and cavalry, have been determined by the changes in infantry tactics and arms more than by any other cause, though the development of artillery armament has also affected them.