STRATEGY AND HISTORY.
WAR is an art, and the principles of it are eternal. Changing conditions impose a different aspect on war as the years pass, but these changes are only super- ficial; the underlying purposes of both strategy and tactics remain the same. The principles of Alexander, Julius Caesar, Marlborough, Napoleon. and Wellington are the principles of the German, French, Russian, and British Armies to-day. Military students never cease to wonder at the simplicity of Napoleon's strokes. But this simplicity, it should be remembered, did not appear till the stratagem which spelled success had been disentangled from the conflicting considerations which presented themselves in the first instance to Napoleon's mind. He bad to choose his plan out of a welter of facts, hypotheses, and rumours. When he had fixed his mind on what seemed to him to be the grand object, his course of action was comparatively simple because, with true greatness, he never allowed subsidiary schemes to divert him. Not, of course, that he ever had any plan of campaign that was not adaptable to the immediate movements of his enemy. The term "plan of campaign," in so far as it suggests a preconceived immutable intention, is misleading. Napoleon, like every great strategist, was always ready, within the ample compass of his general purpose, to respond most sensitively to the acts of his opponents, and he nearly always profited thereby. His power of selection and concentration was perhaps the greatest the world has ever seen. If we had been placed in the same circumstances, we should not have found the problem at all simple. Very likely, in an attempt to simplify the issue, we should have confused some side-issue with the true object. Here we may mention the impression generally made on readers of military history that the winner in a successful campaign did almost everything right and the loser almost everything wrong. An analysis of a campaign can hardly avoid in form conveying such an idea, but, as the late Captain Donaldson remarked in his book on Military History Applied to Warfare, the loser supposed himself to be doing what was right according to his information about the enemy's movements and his deductions as to the enemy's intentions. He was not such a fool as he may appear to have been to us who have the comfortable advantage of knowing after the event all that he then vainly sought to know. The history of any campaign has the unfortunate effect of making the right strategy appear so obvious that one wonders how any leader of repute could have hesitated a moment as to his plan of campaign. This appearance is, of course, delusive.
It is a paradox indeed that, while all strategy can be reduced to very simple forms of expression, is derived from experience and from nothing else, and is always aimed at one and the same end, it requires a genius to put it into effect with constant akilL Even then the genius will make many mistakes. "A general who has not made mistakes," said old Turenne, " has not for very long made war." A military genius, whatever else he may be, is emphatically not a man who has flashes of inspiration which come to him, as it were, out of the void, or who arrives at a triumphant plan by hard medita- tion upon the facts considered as isolated phenomena. All great leaders have been most diligent students of military history. They based their schemes on the achievements and failures of their predecessors. Napoleon said: "Read and re-read without ceasing the campaigns of the great leaders. That is the only way to master the secrets of the art of war." The place for human genius is not in abstract inventiveness, but in military ratiocination, in foresight, in quickness of perception, in prompt application of principles, in unhesitating changes of scheme which are approved by what seems to be intuition, but is really the fruit of learning and experience. The proof of the need for the highest qualities of intellect in military leadership is the extraordinary fact that history can show no examples of good results having come from "Councils of War." Great results have always flowed from a single brain. It is odd indeed that the phrase "Council of War" should have passed into common currency without any tinge of disrepute. The mind of the supreme strategist should be so thoroughly isolated from the distractions of purely local necessities that it is well for him to be removed from the close spectacle of hostilities, and to be able to regard war as a game of chess and not as a contest in human flesh and blood. In this particular respect the vast front of modern battles is an advantage, since the generalissimo must be a good way behind the line in order to gather up all the threads of the labyrinthine struggle.
The paramount object of strategy is to fling the maximum strength at the decisive point. That is to say, it is the object of strategy to choose this point, and to convey thither a preponderating force. The employment of that force on the
actual field, for enveloping or piercing or whatever the scheme may be, is the business of the tactician. Tactics, it has been said, is the handmaid of strategy. In an excellent little book (The Foundations of S(rategy, G. Allen and Unwin, 5a. net), which we have already noticed briefly, Captain H. M. Johnstone, RE., has used the phrase "Full Strength" to indicate this imperative need of strategy. The necessity for an army to search out the vulnerable link in the enemy's line and smash it is as urgent as for a fleet to search out the hostile fleet wherever it may be and destroy it. Beside this the incidents of war, such as the occupation of important towns (which Napoleon derided as an empty honour), the mere overrunning of territory, and the investment of fortresses, are as nothing. Various phrases have been used to describe the master principle of strategy : "Economy of force on secondary objects," "preponderance of force at a chosen place at the right time," and so on. But it may be that an attacker may not have the good fortune to possess a preponderance of force; all that he can be required by sound practice to do is to exert the greatest strength of which he is capable. He may be weaker than his enemy in numbers, but stronger in moral. Napoleon laid down the startling doctrine that "the moral is to the physical as three to one." The decisive blow—it is cruel but true—must make light of the loss of life if the object be attainable. The disciplined soldier is trained, as Captain Donaldson used to say, "to die, not merely to avoid dying." Let us accord our admiration freely to the German soldiers who are willing to make any sacrifice to the decisive end.
But it may be asked whether detached forces are not urgently required for all sorts of purposes in a campaign, and particularly for guarding communications. Communications must be kept open, of course, but not a man more than is necessary must guard them. Raids on the lines of com- munication—raids unsupported by real strength—cause incon- venience, no doubt, but, as the South African War proved over and over again, they are not serious, and certainly not fataL The detachment of a sufficient number of men to make raids on the lines of communication wholly impossible would not justify itself. It would undermine the master principle of strategy. A strategic reserve is held to be unsound. But a tactical reserve plays quite another part, because it is ready to be thrust—an incursion of fresh and enthusiastic troops— into the line at the supreme moment of the attack, and thus serves the highest object of war—the dealing of the critical blow with "full strength."
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