A General Sketch of the European War Part 8

(_a_) The great rapidity of such attacks would make the _total_ and _final_ wastage less than was expected, and further:--

(_b_) That the heavy wastage, such as it was, was worth while, because it would lead to very rapid strategical decision as well as tactical.

In other words, because once you had got your men to stand these heavy _local_ losses and to suffer heavy _initial_ wastage, you would win your campaign in a short time, so that the high-rate wastage not being prolonged need not be feared.

Well, in the matter of this theory, the war conclusively proved the following points:--

(_a_) The Germans were right and the Allies were wrong with regard to the mere possibility of using close formations. The German temper, coupled with the type of discipline in the modern German service, did prove capable of compelling men to stand losses out of all proportion to what the Allies expected they could stand, and yet to continue to advance neither broken nor brought to a standstill. But--

(_b_) The war also proved that, upon the whole, and taking the operations in their entirety, such formations were an error. In case after case, a swarm of Germans advancing against inferior numbers got home after a third, a half, or even more than a half of their men had fallen in the first few minutes of the rush. But in many, many more cases this tactical experiment failed. Those who can speak as eye-witnesses tell us that, though the occasions on which such attacks actually broke were much rarer than was expected before the war began, yet the occasions on which the attack was thrown into hopeless confusion, and in which the few members of it that got home had lost all power to do harm to the defenders, were so numerous that the experiment must be regarded as, upon the whole, a failure. It may be one that no troops but Germans could employ. It is certainly not one which any troops, after the experience of this war, will copy.

(_c_) Further, the war proved even more conclusively that the wastage was not worth while. The immense expense in men only succeeded where there was an overwhelming superiority in number. The strategical result was not arrived at quickly (as the Germans had expected) through this tactical method, and after six months of war, the enemy had thrown away more than twice and nearly three times as many men as he need have sacrificed had he judged sanely the length of time over which operations might last.

II. Another German theory had maintained that modern high explosives fired from howitzers and the accuracy of their aim controlled by aircraft would rapidly and promptly dominate permanent fortification.

This theory requires explanation. Its partial success in practice was the most startling discovery and the most unpleasant one to the Allies of the early part of the war.

In the old days, say up to ten years ago or less, permanent fortification mounting heavy guns was impregnable to direct a.s.sault if it were properly held and properly munitioned. It could hold out for months. Its heavy guns had a range superior to any movable guns that could be brought against it--indeed, so very heavily superior that movable guns, even if they were howitzers, would be smashed or their crews destroyed long before the fortress was seriously damaged by them.

A howitzer is but a form of mortar, and all such pieces are designed to lob a projectile instead of throwing it. The advantage of using these instruments when you are besieging permanent works is that you can hide them behind an obstacle, such as a hill, and that the heavy gun in the fortress cannot get its sh.e.l.l on to them because that sh.e.l.l has a flatter trajectory. The disadvantage is that the howitzer has a very much shorter range than the gun size for size.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sketch 19.]

Here is a diagram showing how necessarily true this is. The howitzer, lobbing its sh.e.l.l with a comparatively small charge, has the advantage of being able to hide behind a steep bit of ground, but on such a trajectory the range is short. The gun in the fortress does not lob its sh.e.l.l, but throws it. The course of the gun sh.e.l.l is much more straight. It therefore can only hit the howitzer and its crew indirectly by exploding its sh.e.l.l just above them. Until recently, the gun was master of the howitzer for three reasons:--

First, because the largest howitzers capable of movement and of being brought up against any fortress and shifted from one place of concealment to another were so small that their range was insignificant. Therefore the circ.u.mference on which they could be used was also a small one; their opportunities for hiding were consequently reduced; the chances of their emplacement being immediately spotted from the fortress were correspondingly high, and the big gun in the fortress was pretty certain to overwhelm the majority of them at least. It is evident that the circ.u.mference a? offers far more chances of hiding than the circ.u.mference ABC, but a still more powerful factor in favour of the new big howitzer is the practical one that at very great ranges in our climate the chances of spotting a particular place are extremely small. Secondly, because the explosives used, even when they landed and during the short time that the howitzer remained undiscovered and unheard, were not sufficiently powerful nor, with the small howitzers then in existence, sufficiently large in amount in each sh.e.l.l to destroy permanent fortification.

Thirdly, because the effect of the aim is always doubtful. You are firing at something well above yourself, and you could not tell very exactly where your howitzer sh.e.l.l had fallen.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sketch 20.]

What has modified all this in the last few years is--

First, the successful bringing into the field of very large howitzers, which, though they do lob their sh.e.l.ls, lob them over a very great distance. The Austrians have produced howitzers of from 11 to 12 inches in calibre, which, huge as they are, can be moved about in the field and fired from any fairly steady ground; and the Germans have probably produced (though I cannot find actual proof that they have used them with effect) howitzers of more than 16 inches calibre, to be moved, presumably, only upon rails. But 11-inch was quite enough to change all the old conditions. It must be remembered that a gun varies as the _cube_ of its calibre. A 12-inch piece is not twice as powerful as a 6-inch. It is _eight times_ as powerful. The howitzer could now fire from an immense distance. The circ.u.mference on which it worked was very much larger; its opportunities for finding suitable steep cover far greater. Its opportunities for moving, if it was endangered by being spotted, were also far greater; and the chances of the gun in the fortress knocking it out were enormously diminished.

Secondly, the high explosives of recent years, coupled with the vast size of this new mobile howitzer sh.e.l.l, is capable, when the howitzer sh.e.l.l strikes modern fortification, of doing grievous damage which, repeated over several days, turns the fort into a ma.s.s of ruins.

Thirdly, the difficulty of accurate aiming over such distances and of locating your hits so that they destroy the comparative small area of the fort is got over by the use of aircraft, which fly above the fort, note the hits, and signal the results.

Now, the Germans maintained that under these quite recently modified conditions not even the best handled and heaviest gunned permanent fort could hold out more than a few days. The French believed that it could, and they trusted in the stopping power not only of individual works (such as the fortress of Manonvilliers on the frontier), but more especially of great rings of forts, such as surround Liege, Namur, Verdun, etc., and enclose an area within the security of which large bodies of troops can be held ready, armies which no one would dare to leave behind them without having first reduced them to surrender.

The very first days of the war proved that the German theory was right and the French wrong. The French theory, upon which such enormous funds had been expended, had been perfectly right until within quite recent years the conditions had changed. Port Arthur, for instance, only ten years ago, could hold out for months and months. In this war no individual fort has held out for more than eleven days.

It might be imagined under such circ.u.mstances that the very existence of fortresses was doomed; yet we note that Verdun continues to make a big bulge in the German line four months after the first shots fell on its forts, and that the Germans are actively restoring the great Belgian rings they have captured at Liege, Antwerp, and Namur.

Why is this? It is because another German theory has proved right in practice.

III. This German theory which has proved right in practice is what may be called "the mobile defence of a fortress." It proposes no longer to defend upon expensive permanent works precisely located upon the map, but upon a number of improvised batteries in which heavy guns can move somewhat behind field-works concealed as much as possible, numerous and constructed rapidly under the conditions of the campaign. Such works dotted round the area you desire to defend are quite a different thing to reduce from isolated, restricted, permanent forts. In the first place, the enemy does not know where they are; in the second place, you can make new ones at short notice; in the third place, if a howitzer does spot your heavy gun, you can move it or its neighbours to a new position; in the fourth place, the circ.u.mference you are defending is much larger, and the corresponding area that the besiegers have to search with their fire more extended. Thus, in the old forts round Verdun, about a dozen permanent works absolutely fixed and ascertainable upon the map, and covering altogether but a few acres, const.i.tuted the defence of the town. Before September was out the heavy guns had been moved to trenches far advanced into the field to the north and east, temporary rails had been laid down to permit their lateral movement--that is, to let them shift from a place where they had perhaps been spotted to a new place, under cover of darkness, and the sectors thus thrown out in front of the old fortifications in this improvised mobile fashion were at least three times as long as the line made by the ring of old forts, while the area that had to be searched was perhaps a hundred times as large. For in the place of the narrowly restricted permanent fort, with, say, ten heavy guns, you had those same ten heavy guns dotted here and there in trenches rapidly established in half a dozen separate, unknown, and concealed spots, along perhaps a mile of wooded hill, and free to operate when moved over perhaps double that front.

IV. _In Grand Strategy a German general theory of strategics was opposed to a French general theory of strategics, and upon which of the two should prove right depended, much more than on any of the previous points, the ultimate issue of the campaign._

This is far the most important point for the reader's consideration.

It may be said with justice that no one can understand this war who has not grasped the conflict between these two fundamental conceptions of armed bodies in action, and the manner in which (by the narrowest and most fortunate margin!) events in the first phase of the war justified the French as against the German school.

I must therefore beg the reader's leave to go somewhat thoroughly into the matter, for it is the foundation of all that will follow when we come to the narration of events and the story of the Western battle which began in the retreat from the Sambre and ended in the Battle of the Marne.

The first postulate in all military problems is that, other things being equal, numbers are the decisive factor in war. This does not mean that absolute superiority of numbers decides a campaign necessarily in favour of the superior power. What it means is that _in any particular field_, if armament and discipline are more or less equal on the two sides, the one that has been able to ma.s.s the greater number _in that field_ will have the victory. He will disperse or capture his enemy, or at the least he will pin him and take away his _initiative_--of which word "initiative" more later. Now, this field in which one party has the superior numbers can only be a portion of the whole area of operations. But if it is what is called the decisive portion, then he who has superior numbers _in the decisive time and place_ will win not only there but everywhere. His local victory involves consequent success along the whole of his line.

For instance, supposing five men are acting against three. Five is more than three; and if the forces bear upon each other equally, the five will defeat the three. But if the five are so badly handled that they get arranged in groups of two, two, and one, and if the three are so well handled that they strike swiftly at the first isolated two and defeat them, thus bringing up the next isolated two, who are in their turn defeated, the three will, at the end of the struggle, have only one to deal with, and the five will have been beaten by the three because, although five is larger than three, yet _in the decisive time and place_ the three never have more than two against them. It may be broadly laid down that the whole art of strategics consists for the man with superior numbers in bringing all his numbers to bear, and for the man with inferior numbers in attempting by his cunning to compel his larger opponent to fight in separated portions, and to be defeated in detail.

As in every art, the developments of these elementary first principles become, with variations of time and place, indefinitely numerous and various. Upon their variety depends all the interest of military history. And there is one method in particular whereby the lesser number may hope to pin and destroy the power of the greater upon which the French tradition relied, and the value of which modern German criticism refused.

Before going into that, however, we must appreciate the mental qualities which led to the acceptance of the theory upon the one side and its denial upon the other.

The fundamental contrast between the modern German military temper and the age-long traditions of the French service consists in this: That the German theory is based upon a presumption of superiority, moral, material, and numerical. The theory of the French--as their national temperament and their Roman tradition compel them--is based upon an _envisagement_ of inferiority: moral, material, and numerical.

There pervades the whole of the modern German strategic school this feeling: "I shall win if I act and feel as though I was bound to win."

There pervades the whole French school this sentiment: "I have a better chance of winning if I am always chiefly considering how I should act if I found myself inferior in numbers, in material, and even in moral at any phase in the struggle, especially at its origins, but even also towards its close."

This contrast appears in everything, from tactical details to the largest strategical conception, and from things so vague and general as the tone of military writings, to things so particular as the instruction of the conscript in his barrack-room. The German soldier is taught--or was--that victory was inevitable, and would be as swift as it would be triumphant: the French soldier was taught that he had before him a terrible and doubtful ordeal, one that would be long, one in which he ran a fearful risk of defeat, and one in which he might, even if victorious, have to wear down his enemy by the exercise of a most burdensome tenacity. In the practice of the field, the contrast appeared in the French use of a great reserve, and the German contempt for such a precaution: in the elaborate thinking out of the use of a reserve, which is the core of French military thought; in the superficial treatment of the same, which is perhaps the chief defect of Germany.

It would be of no purpose to debate here which of these two mental att.i.tudes, with all their consequences, is either morally the better or in practice the more successful. The French and Latin tradition seems to the German pusillanimous, and connected with that decadence which he perceives in every expression of civilization from Athens to Paris. The modern German conception seems to the French theatrical, divorced from reality, and hence fundamentally weak. Either critic may be right or either wrong. Our interest is to follow the particular schemes developing from that tone of mind. We shall see how, in the first phases of the war, the German conception strikingly justified itself for more than ten days; how, after a fortnight, it was embarra.s.sed by its opponent; and how at the end of a month the German initiative was lost under the success--only barely achieved after dreadful risk--of the French plan.

That plan, inherited from the strategy of Napoleon, and designed in particular to achieve the success of a smaller against a larger number, may be most accurately defined as _the open strategic square_, and its leading principle is "the method of detached reserves."

This strategic conception, which I shall now describe, and which (in a diagram it is put far too simply) underlies the whole of the complicated movements whereby the French staved off disaster in the first weeks of the war, is one whose whole object it is to permit the inferior number to bring up a _locally_ superior weight against a _generally_ superior enemy in the decisive time and at the decisive place.

Let us suppose that a general commanding _twelve_ large units--say, twelve army corps--knows that he is in danger of being attacked by an enemy commanding no less than _sixteen_ similar units.

Let us call the forces of the first or weaker general "White," and those of the second or stronger general "Black."

It is manifest that if White were merely to deploy his line and await the advance of Black thus,

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sketch 21.]

he would be outflanked and beaten; or, in the alternative, Black might ma.s.s men against White's centre and pierce it, for Black is vastly superior to White in numbers. White, therefore, must adopt some special disposition in order to avoid immediate defeat.

Of such special dispositions one among many is the French Open Strategic Square.

This disposition is as follows:--

White arranges his twelve units into four quarters of three each, and places one quarter at each corner of a square thus:--

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sketch 22.]

We will give them t.i.tles, and call them A, B, C, and D.

If, as is most generally the case in a defensive campaign at its opening, White cannot be certain from which exact direction the main blow is coming, he may yet know that it is coming from some one general direction, from one sector of the compa.s.s at least, and he arranges his square to face towards that sector.

For instance, in the above diagram, he may not know whether the blow is coming from the precise direction 1, or 2, or 3, but he knows that it is coming somewhere within the sector XY.