"OF ALL THE WORLD'S GREAT HEROES."
WHEN an isolated Italian outpost, perched on an Alpine crag, is preparing to meet the assaults of the enemy, the spirit of the Stone Age is not far away. The Alpine have rifles and machine guns, and by supreme energy and skill they may even have carried and installed a light mountain field- piece on their rocky pinnacle. Nothing that modern science or experience can suggest is neglected. Some form of trench or barricade, with loopholes and emplacements, is constructed for protection, and there is no part of the road or valley below which is not commanded by a modern weapon, effective at long range and marvellously accurate. Nor has the soldier any distrust of his weapons. He knows them and believes in them. But the blood of remote ancestry is still in his veins, and the thoughts and habits of the past will not be denied. He gathers or loosens stones, boulders, anything that his distant forebears would have used, and when the attack comes it is not WHEN an isolated Italian outpost, perched on an Alpine crag, is preparing to meet the assaults of the enemy, the spirit of the Stone Age is not far away. The Alpine have rifles and machine guns, and by supreme energy and skill they may even have carried and installed a light mountain field- piece on their rocky pinnacle. Nothing that modern science or experience can suggest is neglected. Some form of trench or barricade, with loopholes and emplacements, is constructed for protection, and there is no part of the road or valley below which is not commanded by a modern weapon, effective at long range and marvellously accurate. Nor has the soldier any distrust of his weapons. He knows them and believes in them. But the blood of remote ancestry is still in his veins, and the thoughts and habits of the past will not be denied. He gathers or loosens stones, boulders, anything that his distant forebears would have used, and when the attack comes it is not unlikely that lie will forget his rifle, his machine gun, his education and science of war, and will return to the methods of primeval man, rolling and pushing great stones and boulders down the steep slope, watching them bounce and crash towards his enemy. The soul of his ancestors is in him. His is the same passion that men felt in the youth of the world and the same savage, intoxicating joy. The great war of the twentieth century has proved many things, but none more conclusively than this: that the education and science of modern warfare are but skin-deep, and that whenever the chance occurs man will gladly return to the weapons of the past, or, indeed, to no weapons at all, save a strong right arm and a stone to throw.
The Slav is a great fighter, but be is too near to the days Of the sword and lance. His books and his training may tell him that "the chief aim in battle is to obtain superiority in volume and accuracy of fire," but when ho sees the enemy he forgets all this. He feels the lance in his hand, call it bayonet or what you will, he 'sees his enemy in the flesh, and be charges; prematurely, probably, and all wrong according to the books, but little he cares, nor does he often lose by it. The spectacle of his wild onslaught brings no comfort to his enemy, better armed perhaps, but shaken in nerve, disciplined into apathy, and far less alive. The Slav has suffered much and from many causes. There have been whispers of "one rifle to three men, sword or lance for the other two." The cry has reverberated throughout Europe: "More men,. but still more munitions I" But the lance is no mean weapon in Slav hands, and there are few who would not gladly turn to it, if the enemy will but come near enough. • And in this war the enemy is indeed near. If any man foresaw the lines along which a war of millions would develop, he was completely silent about it. And yet the moment that Europe decided to arm the whole manhood of her population the present form of warfare was inevitable. The plain truth is that in a densely populated country the land is not big enough for the army. To manmuvre for battle is to deploy.
Deploy your fighting men to develop the "maximum of effective fire," and the line will stretch from sea to sea. There may be an early stage in which one side may more quickly gather and launch its forces and thus gain ground, but as soon as that phase is passed the two lines will continue to extend, each trying to envelop or outflank the other, until the battle front reaches a point on both wings beyond which no further extension is possible. If rifle and gun were the only weapons, each side might even then hope speedily to destroy the other, But rifle and gun are not the only weapons. Pick and shovel and all the skill and ingenuity of the mining engineer are brought into play. The earth is made a defence, and both sides are soon out of sight and comparatively safe. At night they will advance and dig a little closer to each other, until at last the space between them is so small that the artillery no longer dares to fire at the enemy's front line for fear of injuring its own. The deadlock is complete. We are in a deep trench where our rifles are useless, and our enemy is in a similar position, equally impotent. It is a mutual siege. Only two things can happen. The enemy must either be starved out—a long process—or we must destroy him in such numbers that he can no longer hold so long a line. His army must be reduced to such a size that it is liable to be enveloped in detail or disintegrated on so long a front. The land is too small for the armies. The armies must be made small enough for the land.
But how can we destroy the enemy P The fighting instinct is strong in us and something we must do, but our weapons are baffled by his protection.
Suddenly the past asserts itself. We forget the twentieth century, and we throw stones. We throw them high into the air, so that they will fall almost vertically into his trench and destroy him. Our " stone" is not quite that of our forefathers. It is an ingenious contrivance loaded with high explosive and surrounded with an iron ring that scatters in many fragments on impact. Our military authorities have not entirely for- gotten that war might yet, come to this, but the provision they have made for it is rather a legacy from the past than an anticipation of the future. There are few of these missiles in existence and they are soon exhausted. The only official mention of them is in an appendix. No one believed in them, and the manufacture of them has practically ceased.
But we are not without resource. The impulse to throw something is urgent, and the engineers are there. So we borrow explosives and make our own missiles. It is great fun. A jam-tin, a few stones, a few ounces of explosive, and a piece of fuse are all the tackle we want. Pack the tin tightly and fasten the lid on with the fuse just peeping out. Light the fuse and you still have a second or two to spare. Throw it high and towards the enemy. Muscle and skill will drop it clean into his trench. A great game I Then some ingenious fellow thinks he could throw further if he had something with a handle to it. He cuts a flat piece of wood into the shape of a hairbrush with a long handle. Famous word "hairbrush," familiar now along the whole battle line. Tie your explosive, with any old bits of iron and stones, to the "brush." Light the fuse and grip the handle firmly. Hurl with all your might. Magnificent! A great noise and scrape flying about everywhere, to the great confusion of the enemy. Meanwhile the old term " grenadier," of glorious memory, bee begun to reappear in official writings. Cunning workers at home are told to invent and manufacture. Millions of hand- bombs and grenades of many clever patterns are ordered. Soon the supply is enormous, and the " game" is official. We have grenadier officers, with courses of instruction everywhere behind the lines and in the training camps at home. Every battalion must have skilled grenadiers. In some units every man is skilled. Even that is not enough. We must organise ourselves. Once get a footing in an enemy trench and you can " bomb " him out of the rest of it if your supplies are good and your party is properly organized for the purpose. We begin to be of inestimable service in an attack. Soon we are indispensable. The enemy has learnt the same game, but he does not play cricket at home as we do. His throwing is wild. We feel our superiority, and we are going to win. This is cricket.
Our greatest trouble is that we cannot throw far enough. At thirty or forty yards we are deadly, but no man can "bowl" a weight of nearly two pounds much further. Then some grenadier finds apiece of disused gaspipe. Three-inch iron pipe—just the thing Close one end and put a small charge in. The "jam-tin" fits it nicely. Fire away. A. hundred, a hundred and fifty, two hundred yards 1 We are almost artillery. Another genius, in whose veins the ancient blood is strong, finds some stout rubber bands, makes a forked wooden frame, and a canvas sling. Trench catapult he calls it; an excellent name. We have seen many devices for hurling jam-tins, but we like this the best. It is simple, it is accurate, and, above all, it is noiseless. It completely deceives the enemy, and we are jubilant. We try every kind of missile at every kind of range. We are delighted and fascinated, and never tire of fighting and experimenting with this latest weapon. This, wo feel, is new, exhilarating, scientific. It gives us something to do, something to watch. It is effective, too, as the enemy well knows. We are inventive, ingenious, above all, scientific, we men of this modern age. There is nothing we cannot do when we set our minds to it. There is no situation to which we cannot adapt ourselves. We fight with our brains, and we shall win.
And yet this is the year of our Lord 1915, and it is nearly two thousand years since Caesar lived and fought that other Gallic War, in the same land and with similar weapons. We have found our text-book. It is called De Bello Gallic*.
G. D.
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