When nations go to war their probable fortunes, other things being equal, are to be measured in numbers.
Other things being equal, the numbers one party can bring against the other in men, coupled with the numbers of weapons, munitions, and other material, will decide the issue.
But in European civilization other things are more or less equal. Civilian historians are fond of explaining military results in many other ways, particularly in terms of moral values that will flatter the reader. But a military history, however elementary, is compelled to recognize the truth that normally modern war in Europe has followed the course of numbers.
Among the very first, therefore, of the tasks set us in examining the great struggle is a general appreciation of the numbers that were about to meet in battle, and of their respective preparation in material.
More than the most general numbers—more than brief, round statements—I shall not attempt. I shall not do more than state upon such grounds as I candiscover proportions in the terms of single units—as, to say that one nation stood to another in its immediate armed men as eight to five, or as two to twenty. Neither shall I give positive numbers in less than the large fractions of a million. But, even with such large outlines alone before one, the task is extraordinarily difficult.
It will almost certainly be found, when full details are available after the war, that the most careful estimates have been grievously erroneous in some particular. Almost every statement of fact in this department can be reasonably challenged, and the evidence upon matters which in civilian life are amply recorded and easily ascertainable is, in this department, everywhere purposely confused or falsified.
To the difficulty provided by the desire for concealment necessary in all military organization, one must add the difficulty presented by the cross categories peculiar to this calculation. You have to consider not only the distinction between active and reserve, but also between men and munitions, between munitions available according to one theory of war, and munitions available according to another.You have to modify statical conclusions by dynamic considerations (thus you have to modify the original numbers by the rate of wastage, and the whole calculus varies progressively with the lapse of time as the war proceeds).
In spite of these difficulties, I believe it to be possible to put before the general reader a clear and simple table of the numbers a knowledge of which any judgment of the war involves, and to be fairly certain that this table will, when full details are available, be discovered not too inaccurate.
We must begin by distinguishing between the two sets of numbers with which we have to deal—the numbers of men, and the amount of munitions which these men have to use.
The third essential element, equipment, we need not separately consider, because, when one says "men" in talking of military affairs, one only means equipped, trained, and organized men, for no others can be usefully present in the field.
Let us start, then, with some estimate of the number of men who are about to take part in battle; let us take for ourlimits the convenient limits of a year, and let us divide that space of time arbitrarily into three parts or periods.
There was a first period in which the nations opposed brought into the field the men available in the first few weeks for immediate action. It is not possible to set a precise limit, and to say, "This period covers the first six" or "the first eight weeks;" but we can say roughly that, when we are speaking of this first period, we mean the time during which men for whom the equipment was all ready, whose progress and munitioning had all been organized, were being as rapidly as possible brought into play. Such an estimate is not equivalent to an estimate of the very first numbers that met in the shock of battle; those numbers were far smaller, and differed according to the rate of mobilization and the intention of the various parties. The estimate is only that of the total number which the various parties could, and therefore did, bring into play before men not hitherto trained as soldiers, or trained but not believed to be required in the course of the campaign—according as thatcampaign had been variously foreseen by various governments—came in to swell the figures.
The conclusion of this first period would come, of course, gradually in the case of every combatant, and would come more rapidly in the case of some than in the case of others. But we are fairly safe if we take the general turning-point from the first period to the second to be the month of October 1914. The second period had begun for some—notably for Germany—with the first days of that month; it had already appeared for all, especially for England, before the beginning of November.
The second period is marked for all the combatants by the bringing into play of such forces as, for various reasons, the Government of each had once hoped would not be required. The German Empire might have marked them as not required, in the reasonable hope that victory would be quickly assured. The British Government might, from a very different standpoint, have believed them not to be required, because it regarded the work of its continental Allies as sufficient togain the common object, etc. But in the case of all, however various the motives, the particular mark of this second period is the straining to put into the field newly trained and equipped bodies which in the first period were, it was imagined, neither needed nor perhaps available.
This second period merges very gradually into the third, or final, period, which is that of the last effort possible to the belligerents. There comes a moment before the end of the first year when, in the case of most of the belligerents, every man who is available at all has been equipped, trained, and put forward, and after which there is nothing left but the successive batches of yearly recruits growing up from boyhood to manhood.
Although Britain is in a peculiar position, and Russia, through her tardiness in equipment, in a peculiar position of another kind, yet one may fairly say that the vague margin between the second period of growth and the third period of finality appears roughly somewhere round the month of June. It will fall earlier with Germany, a good deal earlier with France; but from the middle of May atearliest to the end of June at latest may be said to mark the entry of the numerical factor into its third and final phase.
Let us take these three periods one by one.
The first period is by far the most important to our judgment of the campaign; a misapprehension of it has warped most political statements made in this country, and most contemporary judgments of the war as a whole. It is impossible to get our view of the great European struggle—of its nature in the bulk—other than fantastically wrong, if we misapprehend the opening numbers with which it was waged.
There are three ways of getting at those numbers.
The first and worst way is the consulting of general statistics published before the war broke out. Thus we may see in almanacs the French army put down as a little over four million, the German at the same amount, the Russian at about five million, and so forth.
These figures have no relation to reality, because they omit a hundred modifying considerations—such as the age of thereserves, the degree of training of the reserves, the organization prepared for the enrolment of untrained men, etc. The only element in them which is of real value is the statistics—when we can obtain them—of men actually present with the colours before mobilization, to which one may add, perhaps—or at any rate in the case of France and Germany—the numbers of theactivereserve immediately behind the conscript army in peace.
The second method, which is better, but imperfect, is that which has particularly appealed to technical writers. It consists in numberingunits; in noting the headquarters and the tale of army corps and of independent divisions.
The fault of this method is twofold. First, that only actual experience can tell one whether units are really being maintained during peace at full strength; and secondly, that only actual experience discovers how many new units can and will be created when war is joined. In other words, the fault of this method (necessary though it is as an adjunct to all military calculations) lies in its divorce from the reality of numbers.
At the end of the retreat from Moscow each army corps of the Grand Army still preserved its name, each regiment its nominal identity. And the roll was called by Ney, for instance, before the Beresina, division by division and regiment by regiment, and even in the regiments company by company; but in most of these last there was no one to answer, and there is a story of one regiment for which one surviving man answered with regularity until he also died. What fights is numbers of living men—not headings; and if five army corps are present, each having lost two-fifths of its men, three full army corps are a match for them.
The third method is that of commonsense. We must deduce from the results obtained, from the fronts covered, from the energy remaining after known losses, from the reports of intelligence, from the avenues of communication available, what least and what largest numbers can be present. We must correct such conclusions by our previous knowledge of the way in which each service regards its strength, which most depends upon reserves, how each uses his depots anddrafts, what machinery it has for training the untrained and for equipping them. This complicated survey taken, we can arrive at general figures.[1]
Using that method, and applying it to the present campaign, I think we shall get something like the following.
The Figures of the First Period, say to October 1-31, 1914.
Germany put across the Rhine in the first period (without counting a certain small proportion of Hungarian cavalry and Austrian artillery) rather more than two and a quarter million men. She put into the Eastern field first a quarter of a million, which rapidly grew to half a million, and before the end of October to nearly a million; a balance of rather more than another million she used for filling gaps and for keeping her strengthat the full, and also in particular cases (as in her violent attempt to break out through Flanders, or rather the beginning of that attempt) for the immediate reinforcement of a fighting line. Say that Germany put into the field altogether five million men in the first period, and you are saying too much. Say that she put into the field altogether in the first period four and a quarter million men, and you are saying probably somewhat too little.
France met the very first shock with about a million men, which gradually grew in the fighting line to about a million and a half. Here the limit of the French force immediately upon the front will probably be set. The numbers continued to swell long before the end of the first period and well on into the second, but they were kept in reserve. Counting the men drafted in to supply losses and the reserve, it is not unwise to put at about two and a half million men the ultimate French figure, of which one and a half million formed, before the end of the first period, the immediate fighting force.
Austria was ordered by the Germans to put into the field, as an initial body to check any Russian advance and to confuse the beginning of Russian concentration, about a million men; which in the first period very rapidly grew to two million, and probably before the end of the first period to about two million and a half.
Russia put into the field during the first weeks of the war some million and a quarter, which grew during the first period (that is, before the coming of winter had created a very serious handicap, to which allusion will presently be made) to perhaps two million and a half at the very most. I put that number as an outside limit.
Servia, of men actually present and able to fight, we may set down at a quarter of a million; and Belgium, if we like, at one hundred thousand—though the Belgian service being still in a state of transition, and the degree of training very varied within it, that minor point is disputable. Indeed it is better, in taking a general survey, to consider only the five Great Powers concerned.
Of these the fifth, Great Britain, though destined to exercise by sea power and by her recruiting field a very great ultimate effect upon the war, could only provide, in this first period upon the Continent, an average of one hundred thousand men. To begin with, some seventy-five thousand, dwindling through losses to little more than fifty thousand, replenished and increased to about one hundred and twenty-five thousand, and approaching, as the end of the first period was reached, one hundred and fifty thousand men actually present upon the front.
We can now set down these figures in the shape of simple units, and see how the numerical chances stood at the opening of the campaign.
The enemy sets out with32men, of whom he bids10men against the Russians, and sends22against the French. The Russians meet the10men with about12, and the French meet the22with about10; but as they have not the whole22to meet in the first shock, they are struck rather in the proportion of10to16or17, while the presence of the British contingent makes them rathermore than10½. But these initial figures rapidly change with the growth of the armies, and before the first period is over the Germans have22in the West against15French and1British, making16; while in the East the Russian12has grown to, say,24, but the Austro-Germans in the East, against those24, have grown to be quite32. And there is the numerical situation of the first period clearly, and I think accurately, put,supposing the wastage to be equal in proportion throughout all the armies. The importance of appreciating these figures is that they permit us to understand why the enemy was morally certain of winning, quite apart from his right judgment on certain disputed theories of war (to which I shall turn in a moment), and quite apart from his heavy secret munitioning, which was of such effect in the earlier part of the campaign. He was ready with forces which he knew would be overwhelming, and how superior he was thus numerically in that first period can best be appreciated, I think, by a glance at the diagram on the next page.
Sketch 14Sketch 14.
Sketch 14.
It is no wonder that he made certain ofa decisive success in the West, and of the indefinite holding up or pushing back of the Russian forces in the East. It is no wonder that he confidently expected acomplete victory before the winter, and the signing of peace before the end of the year. To that end all his munitioning, and even the details of his tactics, were directed.
The Figures of the Second Period, say to April 15-June 1, 1915.
The second period saw in the West, and, in the enemy's case, a very great change proceeding by a number of minute steps, but fairly rapid in character.
The French numbers could not grow very rapidly, because the French had armed every available man. They could bring in a certain number of volunteers; but neither was it useful to equip the most of the older men, nor could they be spared from those duties behind the front line which the much larger population of the enemy entrusted to men who, for the most part, had received no regular training. The French did, however, in this second period, gradually grow to some two and a half million men, behind which, ready to come in for the final period, were about a third of a million young recruits.
Great Britain discovered a prodigious effort. She had already, comparatively early in the second period, put across the sea nearly half a million men, and drafts were perpetually arriving as the second period came to a close; while behind the army actually upon the Continent very large bodies—probably another million in number—hastily trained indeed, and presented with a grave problem in the matter of officering, but of excellent material andmoral, were ready to appear, before the end of the second period or at its close, the moment their equipment should be furnished. Counting the British effort and the French together, one may say that, without regard to wastage, the Allies in the West grew in the second period from the original 16 to over 30, and might grow even before the second period was over to 35 or even more.
On the enemy's side (neglecting wastage for the moment) there were the simplest elements of growth. Each Power had docketed every untrained man, knew his medical condition, where to find him, where and how to train him. The German Empire had during peace taken aboutone-half of its young men for soldiers. It had in pure theory five million untrained men in the reserve, excluding the sick, and those not physically efficient for service.
In practice, however, a very large proportion of men, even of the efficients, must be kept behind for civilian work; and in an industrial country such as Germany, mainly urban in population, this proportion is particularly large. We are safe in saying that the German army would not be reinforced during the second period by more than two and a half million men. These were trained in batches of some 800,000 each; the equipment had long been ready for them, and they appeared mainly as drafts for filling gaps, but partly as new formations in groups—the first going in or before November, the second in or before February. A third and last group was expected to have finished this rather elementary training somewhere about the end of April, so that May would complete the second period in the German forces.
Austria-Hungary, by an easily appreciable paradox, possessed, though but 80per cent. of the Germans in population, a larger available untrained reserve. This was because that empire trained a smaller proportion of its population by far than did the Germans. It is probable that Austria-Hungary was able to train and put forward during the second period some three million men.
It is a great error, into which most critics have fallen, to underestimate or to neglect the Austro-Hungarian factor in the enemy's alliance. Without thus nearly doubling her numbers, Germany could not have fought France and Russia at all, and a very striking feature of all the earlier weeks of 1915 was the presence in the Carpathians of increasing Austro-Hungarian numbers, which checked for more than three months all the Russian efforts upon that front.
Say that Austria-Hungary nearly doubled her effectives (apart from wastage) in this second period, and you will not be far wrong.
Russia, which upon paper could almost indefinitely increase during the second period her numbers in the field, suffered with the advent of winter an unexpectedblow. Her equipment, and in particular her munitioning (that is, her provision of missiles, and in especial of heavy shell), must in the main come from abroad. Now the German command of the Baltic created a complete blockade on the eastern frontier of Russia, save upon the short Roumanian frontier; and the entry of Turkey into the campaign on the side of the enemy, which marked the second period, completed that blockade upon the south, and shut upon Russia the gate of the Dardanelles. The port of Archangel in the north was ice-bound, or with great difficulty kept partially open by ice-breakers, and was in any case only connected with Russia by one narrow-gauge and lengthy line; while the only remaining port of Vladivostok was six thousand miles away, and closed also during a part of the winter.
In this situation it was impossible for the great reserves of men which Russia counted on to be put into the field, and the Russians remained throughout the whole of this second period but little stronger than they had been at the end of the first. If we set them down atperhaps somewhat over three millions (excluding wastage) towards the end of this second period, we shall be near to a just estimate.
We can now sum up and say that,apart from wastage, the forces arrayed against each other after this full development should have been about 120 men for the central powers of the enemy—35 (and perhaps ultimately 40) men against them upon the West, and, until sufficient Russian equipment could at least be found, only some 30 men against them upon the East.
Luckily such figures are wholly changed by the enormous rate of the enemy's wastage. The Russians had lost men almost as rapidly as the enemy, but the Russian losses could be and were made good. The handicap of the blockade under which Russia suffered permitted her to maintain only a certain number at the front, but she could continually draft in support of those numbers; and though she lost in the first seven months of the war quite four hundred thousand in prisoners, and perhaps three-quarters of a million in other casualties, her strength ofsomewhat over three millions was maintained at the close of the first period.
In the same way drafts had further maintained the British numbers. The French had lost not more than one-fifth of a million in prisoners, and perhaps a third of a million or a little more in killed and permanently disabled—that is, unable to return to the fighting line. In the case of both the French and the British sanitary conditions were excellent.
You have, then, quite 35 for your number in the West, and quite 33 for your number in the East of the Allied forces at the end of the winter; but of your enemy forces you may safely deduct 45-50 might be a truer estimate; and it is remarkable that those who have watched the matter carefully at the front are inclined to set the total enemy losses higher than do the critics working at home. But call it only 45 (of which 5 are prisoners), and you have against the 68 Allies in East and West no more at the end of this second period than 75 of the enemy.
The following diagram illustrates ingraphic form the change that six months have produced.
Sketch 15Sketch 15.
Sketch 15.
In other words, at the end of the winter and with the beginning of the spring, although the enemy still has a numerical preponderance, it is no longer the overwhelming thing it was when the war began, and that change in numbers explains the whole change in the campaign.
The enemy was certain of winning mainly because he was fighting more than equal in the East, and at first nearlytwo to one, later quite four to three, in the West. Those are the conditions of the late summer of 1914. 1915, before it was a third over, had seen the numbers nearly equalized. With the summer of 1915 we might hope to see the numbers at last reversed, and, after so many perilous months, a total (not local) numerical majority at last appearing upon the side of the Allies. If ever this condition shall arrive before the enemy can accomplish a decisive result in either field the tide will have turned.
The third period belongs at the moment of writing to the future. All we can say of it is that it presents for the enemy no considerable field of recruitment; but while in the West it offers no increase to the French, it does offer another five units at least, and possibly another six or eight, to the British; and to the Russians, if the blockade can be pierced at any point, or if the change of weather, coupled with the broadening of the gauge of the railway to Archangel, permits large imports, an almost indefinite increase in number—certainly an increase of two millions, or twenty of the units wewere dealing with in the figures given above.
So much, then, for the numerical factor in men which dominates the whole campaign.
When we turn from this to the second factor—that of munitions—we discover something which can be dealt with far more briefly, but which follows very much the same line.
The enemy in the first period of the war had, if anything, an even greater superiority in munitioning than in men. This superiority was due to two distinct causes. In the first place, as we shall see in a few pages, his theory upon a number of military details was well founded; in the second place,he made war at his own chosen moment, after three years of determined and largely secret preparation.
As to the first point:—
We may take as a particular example of these theories of war the enemies' reliance upon heavy artillery—and in particular upon the power of the modern high explosive and the big howitzer—to destroy permanent fortification rapidly, and to have an effect in the field, particularly inthe preparation of an assault, which the military theories of the Allies had wrongly underestimated. It is but one example out of many. It must serve for the rest, and it will be dealt with more fully in the next section. The Germans to some extent, and much more the Austrians, prepared an immensely greater provision of heavy ammunition than their opponents, and entered the field with large pieces of a calibre and in number quite beyond anything that their opponents had at the outset of the campaign.
As to the second point:—
No peaceful nations, no nations not designing a war at their own hour, lock up armament which may be rendered obsolete, or, in equipment more extensive than the reasonable chances of a campaign may demand, the public resources which it can use on what it regards as more useful things. Such nations, to use a just metaphor, "insure" against war at what they think a reasonable rate. But if some one Government in Europe is anarchic in its morals, and proposes, while professing peace, to declare war at an hour and a day chosen by itself, it will obviously havean overwhelming advantage in this respect. The energy and the money which it devotes to the single object of preparation cannot possibly be wasted; and, if its sudden aggression is not fixed too far ahead, will not run the risk of being sunk in obsolete weapons.
Now it is clearly demonstrable from the coincidence of dates, from the exact time required for a special effort of this kind, and from the rate at which munitions and equipment were accumulated, that the Government at Berlin came to a decision in the month of July 1911 to force war upon Russia and upon France immediately after the harvest of 1914; and of a score of indications which all converge upon these dates, not one fails to strike them exactly by more than a few weeks in the matter of preparation, by more than a few days in the date at which war was declared.
Under those circumstances, Berlin with her ally at Vienna had the immense numerical advantage over the French and the Russians when war was suddenly forced upon those countries on the 31st of July last year.
But, as in the case of men, the advantagewould only be overwhelming during the first period. The very fact that the war had to be won quickly involved an immense expenditure of heavy ammunition in the earlier part of it, and this expenditure, if it were not successful, would be a waste.
It takes about five months to produce a heavy piece, and the rate of production of heavy ammunition, though slow, is measurable. At the moment of writing this, towards the close of the second period, the balance is not yet redressed, but it is in a fair way to be redressed. The imperfect and too tardy blockade to which the enemy is somewhat timidly subjected is a factor in aid of this; and we may be fairly confident that, if a third period is reached before the enemy shall have the advantage of a decision, there will be a preponderance of munitioning upon the Allied side in the West and the East which will be, if anything, of superior importance to the approaching preponderance in numbers.
Having thus briefly surveyed the opposing strength of either combatant, checked and measured as it varied with the progress of the war, we will turn to themoralopposition of military theory between the one party and the other, and show how here again that,save in the most important matter of all, grand strategy, the enemy was on the highroad to the victory which he confidently and, for that matter, reasonably expected.
The long peace which the most civilized parts of Europe had enjoyed for now a generation left more and more uncertain the value of theories upon the conduct of war, which theories had for the most part developed as mere hypotheses untested by experience during that considerable period. The South African and the Manchurian war had indeed proved certain theories sound and others unsound, so far as their experience went; but they were fought under conditions very different from those of an European campaign, and the progress of material science was so rapid in the years just preceding the great European conflict that the mass of debated theories still remained untried at its outbreak.
The war in its first six monthsthoroughly tested these theories, and proved, for the greater part of them, which were sound in practice and which unsound. I will tabulate them here, and beg the special attention of the reader, because upon the accuracy of these forecasts the first fortunes of the war depended.
I. A German theory maintained that, with the organization of and the particular type of discipline in the German service, attacks could be delivered in much closer formation than either the French or the English believed to be possible.
The point is this: After a certain proportion of losses inflicted within a certain limit of time, troops break or are brought to a standstill. That was the universal experience of all past war. When the troops that are attacking break or are brought to a standstill, the attack fails. But what you cannot determine until you test the matter in actual war is what numbers of losses in what time will thus destroy an offensive movement. You cannot determine it, because the chief element in the calculation is the state of the soldier's mind, and that is not a measurable thing. One had only the lessons of the past to help one.
The advantages of attacking in close formation are threefold.
(a) You launch your attack with the least possible delay. It is evident that spreading troops out from the column to the line takes time, and that the more extended your line the more time you consume before you can strike.
Sketch 16Sketch 16.
Sketch 16.
If I have here a hundred units advancing in a column towards the place where they are to attack (and to advance in column is necessary, because a broad line cannot long keep together), then it is evident that if I launched them to the attack thus:—
Sketch 17Sketch 17.
Sketch 17.
packed close together, I get them into thatformation much more quickly than if, before attacking, I have to spread them out thus:—
Sketch 18Sketch 18.
Sketch 18.
(b) The blow which I deliver has also evidently more weight upon it at a given point. If I am attacking a hundred yards of front with a hundred units of man and missile power, I shall do that front more harm in a given time than if I am attacking with only fifty such units.
(c) In particular circumstances, where troopshaveto advance on a narrow front, as in carrying a bridge or causeway or a street or any other kind of defile, my troops, if they can stand close formation and the corresponding punishment it entails, will be more likely to succeed than troops not used to or not able to bear such close formation. Now, such conditions are very numerous in war. Troops are often compelled, if they are to succeed, to rush narrow gaps of this kind, and their ability to do so is a great element in tactical success.
I have here used the phrase "if they can stand close formation and the corresponding punishment it entails," and that is the whole point. There are circumstances—perhaps, on the whole, the most numerous of all the various circumstances in war—in which close formation, if it can be used, is obviously an advantage; but it is equally self-evident that the losses of troops in close formation will be heavier than their losses in extended order. A group is a better target than a number of dispersed, scattered points.
Now, the Germans maintained in thisconnection not only, as I have said, that they could get their men to stand the punishment involved in close formation, but also that:—
(a) The great rapidity of such attacks would make thetotalandfinalwastage 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 heavylocallosses and to suffer heavyinitialwastage, 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, andyet 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 inmen 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 assault 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 broughtagainst 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 shell on to them because that shell has a flatter trajectory. The disadvantage is that the howitzer has a very much shorter range than the gun size for size.
Sketch 19Sketch 19.
Sketch 19.
Here is a diagram showing hownecessarily true this is. The howitzer, lobbing its shell 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 shell, but throws it. The course of the gun shell is much more straight. It therefore can only hit the howitzer and its crew indirectly by exploding its shell 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 circumference 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 circumference αβγ offers far more chances of hiding than the circumference ABC, buta 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, werenot sufficiently powerful nor, with the small howitzers then in existence, sufficiently large in amount in each shell 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 shell had fallen.
Sketch 20Sketch 20.
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 shells, 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 thecubeof its calibre. A 12-inch piece is not twice as powerful as a 6-inch. It iseight timesas powerful. The howitzercould now fire from an immense distance. The circumference 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 shell, is capable, when the howitzer shell strikes modern fortification, of doing grievous damage which, repeated over several days, turns the fort into a mass 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 inthe 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 Liége, 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 circumstances 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 greatBelgian rings they have captured at Liége, 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 circumference you are defending is much larger, and the corresponding area that the besiegers have to searchwith 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, constituted 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 campaignnecessarily in favour of the superior power. What it means is thatin any particular field, if armament and discipline are more or less equal on the two sides, the one that has been able to mass the greater numberin that fieldwill have the victory. He will disperse or capture his enemy, or at the least he will pin him and take away hisinitiative—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 numbersin the decisive time and placewill 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 arein 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, yetin the decisive time and placethe 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 uponthe 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 anenvisagementof 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 theinstruction 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 attitudes, 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 modernGerman 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 embarrassed 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 asthe 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 tobring up alocallysuperior weight against agenerallysuperior enemy in the decisive time and at the decisive place.
Let us suppose that a general commandingtwelvelarge units—say, twelve army corps—knows that he is in danger of being attacked by an enemy commanding no less thansixteensimilar 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,