in the great offensive which, begun on March 21 and ended on
July 18, had exhausted the physical energy of the troops and
produced a corresponding deterioration of moral. At the same
time two years of under-nourishment and nervous strain had
undermined the spirit of the civil population to an extent which
was necessarily reflected in the army. The defences, again,
were but improvised trench systems, hastily adapted to the i
requirements of the moment and in no way comparable to those ;
of 1916. Against them the British and French armies could
bring a more numerous and more powerful artillery than at any
previous period of the war; a better and more numerous air
service; a more formidable infantry equipment, thanks to the
now universal light mortars; and, finally, an ample provision !
of tanks those new engines of war which were certainly the
best means of overcoming the German machine-gun defence i
and, by their moral as well as their physical effect, were to play
so great a part in the final phase of the war. With such changed
conditions it would indeed have been strange and wrong if
corresponding changes had not been introduced into tactics, i
Changes in tactics are brought about by scientific discovery
and consequent improvements in the means of killing. At no
time in history have men of science devoted themselves so
universally and so whole-heartedly to war requirements that
is to say, to the art of killing their fellow-creatures as they did
from 1914 to 1918. Gas, bombs, smoke screens, wireless teleg-
raphy in the field, are but a few of the means by which scientists
had a direct influence upon tactics and by which the research
student in the laboratory was directly connected with the
platoon commander in the field.
It was, therefore, by the united efforts of all classes in a
truly national war that trench warfare came to an end in Aug.
TACTICS
667
1918; but that which followed was not the open warfare of
Frederick the Great, Napoleon or Wellington. Even to the very
end, in Nov., the opposing lines were continuous for 300 miles,
and no open flank afforded opportunity for crushing defeat.
Local flank attacks there were in plenty, and some on quite a
big scale, but there was no Waterloo or Sedan. It had been a
national war, and the German nation had suffered a crushing
national defeat; but even when the Emperor had deserted and
fled ignominiously to Holland the beaten army was still able to
withdraw across the Rhine in some semblance of order.
Palestine. Different in almost every respect, and therefore
also in the tactics employed, were the campaigns conducted in
parts of the world outside Europe. This was especially so in
Palestine, and for that reason will it be well to devote some space
to the special conditions of that theatre of war and upon the
resulting conduct of operations. In the first place the theatre
of war was practically a neutral country. Nominally a part of
the Turkish Empire, Palestine was in actual fact extra-national,
or extra-imperial, with a population by no means united or
enthusiastic in support of the Turkish power. The Russo-
Japanese War offers another, and even more remarkable, instance
of a quarrel between two nations being settled on the territory
of a third. In such conditions the war can have none of those
national characteristics which formed such a dominating and
distinctive feature of the war in the west of Europe. This was
the fundamental difference between the main campaign and
the subsidiaries, from which it came about that the defeat of
Turkey was less national and far more military than was the
defeat of Germany. A second important feature of difference
is to be seen in the railway development of the theatre of war.
It is only through a complete network of railways, supplemented
by road transport, that a nation is able to concentrate the
whole efforts not only of its manhood, but of its entire population
upon the one purpose of winning a war, just as in peace the
whole efforts of a population are concentrated upon various
forms of industry. When the necessary conditions are lacking,
the resultant warfare must inevitably be, if not exactly more
primitive in form than in a highly developed country, at least
nearer to that waged by the professional armies of the past.
The preparatory stages of this campaign, including the
Turkish raids against the Suez Canal and the subsequent
advance to El Arish and the neighbourhood of Gaza, need not
detain us beyond noting the construction of the broad-gauge
railway from Kantara across the Sinai desert. It was wise
strategical and tactical foresight which had led Allenby's
predecessor, Sir A. Murray, to insist upon a broad-gauge line
and so be prepared for operations on a large scale instead of
yielding to the temptation to content himself with a narrow-
gauge line, which could have been more easily and rapidly
constructed and would have sufficed for his own immediate
requirements. A false, or at least a different, decision on his
part in the spring of 1916 would have had a most hampering
effect upon subsequent operations, of which it was at that time
only possible to foresee the most shadowy possibility.
For the purely tactical study, we may pass at once to the
period of Lord Allenby's command and the advance in Pales-
tine. This period may itself be divided into two phases: first,
that campaign which began with the capture of Beersheba on
Aug. 31 1917 and culminated in the entry into Jerusalem on
Dec. ii of the same year; secondly, the dramatic series of
operations which, between Sept. 19 and Oct. 26 1918, resulted
in the destruction of the IV., VII. and VIII. Turkish Armies.
Allenby's strength in mounted men was significant of the
possibilities of the theatre in which he was to operate. In
i iiscussing the development of the tactics on the western front
10 mention has been made of the mounted arm, simply because
ifter the first weeks of the war it had no scope for acting in its
peculiar sphere; there was no scope for mobility and the mounted
nan never really found his opportunity. It was exactly the
everse with the Palestine campaign. So we find that in all
;hese operations the infantry gets from the cavalry or other
mounted troops far more of the support which it always requires
and from the artillery far less. There are no long preliminary
bombardments, for as a rule there are neither guns nor targets,
but in the very first operation undertaken, the capture of
Beersheba, " a mounted attack by Australian Light Horse,
who rode straight at the town from the east, proved completely
successful. They galloped over two deep trenches held by the
enemy just outside the town, and entered the town about 7 P.M.,
capturing numerous prisoners." 1 In passing, it is worth noting
that the operation against Beersheba was undertaken expressly
because " when it was in our hands we should have an open
flank against which to operate, and I could make full use of our
superiority in mounted troops"; and again, when the city had
been taken, with 2,000 prisoners and thirteen guns : " This success
laid open the left flank of the main Turkish position for a
decisive blow." Surprise and movement had taken the place
of costly infantry assaults, simply because local conditions had
made them possible.
Exactly the same experience was repeated in the second stage
of this campaign, which began in Sept. 1918 and ended when the
armistice came into force on Oct. 31. At the commencement of
these operations the Egyptian Expeditionary Force was holding
a line from the river Jordan on the right to a point where the
left rested on the Mediterranean coast, 10 miles north of Jaffa.
The total fighting strength of the force was 12,000 mounted
men, 57,000 infantry and 540 guns. Opposing them, the Turkish
IV. Army watched Lord Allenby's right on the Jordan, in the
centre was the VII. Army on a front of some 20 miles, while
on the right was the VIII. Army holding a similar length of
front. Including reserves, but excluding certain posts on the
Hejaz railway which were more than fully occupied defending
themselves against the Arabs, the Turkish commander-in-chief
had at his disposal some 4,000 mounted men, 26,000 infantry,
with 400 guns, by no means a strong force with which to stand
on the defensive on a front of over 50 miles against an active
and resolute enemy.
Allenby's numerical superiority, it will be noted, was especially
in mounted men, and this he decided to turn to full advantage
when he resolved to make Nazareth, a good 40 miles to the north,
the objective of his next advance; but to set his cavalry free it
was first necessary for the infantry and artillery to force an
opening through the Turkish front. By using every device to
deceive the enemy as to his intentions, Allenby was able to
concentrate 35,000 rifles and 383 guns on his left, where they
were opposed by no more than 8,000 rifles and 130 guns, while
two cavalry divisions and one Australian mounted division
were immediately available. 2 The infantry attack was launched
at 4:45 A.M. on Sept. 19 after an artillery bombardment last-
ing no more than fifteen minutes, the exact object of which is
not clearly evident. The attack was completely successful,
and the cavalry, dashing through the opening afforded to
them, seized the communications and closed all lines of retreat
to the north. Nazareth was entered on the second day of the
operations, and four days later " the last remnant of the Turkish
VII. and VIII. Armies had been collected." The IV. Army met
the same fate only a few days later, and on Oct. i the Arab army
and Allenby's Mounted Corps entered Damascus, which lies
nearly 100 miles in a straight line to the north-east of Nazareth.
Still pressing northward, and completing as they went the
unutterable destruction of the Turkish armies, the mounted
troops, with a few armoured cars, entered Aleppo, more than
200 miles north of Damascus, on Oct. 26, and when the armistice
was signed on the 3ist were within striking distance of
Alexandretta.
II. TACTICS AFTER THE WORLD WAR
An effort has been made so far to give in outline some idea
of the tactical conditions on the western front and in Palestine,
'From Lord Allenby's despatch, dated 16.12.1917: "What
would not the British or French cavalry on the western front have
given for such an opportunity! But wire, mud, shell holes, and
especially German machine guns, effectually prevented any such
possibility."
a Lord Allenby's despatch, dated 31.10.18.
668
TACTICS
the methods resulting from these conditions, and the results
achieved. Utterly dissimilar as were these two theatres of war,
the underlying principles of victory are found, as always, to be
the same. A firm faith in the offensive, concentration at the
right time and against a suitable objective, surprise, and coopera-
tion. The welding of all the forces, moral and physical, by the
genius of the commander into one homogeneous whole, with one
common inspiration, and directed to a common objective, namely
victory. So far the two campaigns selected for illustration are
in agreement with one another and with all the campaigns of
the past; in every other respect the contrast is complete. On
the one hand, in France and Flanders we find whole nations in
arms, troops numbered by hundreds of thousands, and, as a
necessary corollary, continuous lines, heavily fortified and
without flanks to be turned, almost (one might say) without any
vital line of communications, so complete were the railway and
road systems available. As the result long periods of stagnation,
infantry deriving no assistance from the mounted troops (except
indeed when acting dismounted), and dependent in the first
place upon artillery and latterly upon tanks as well. Movement,
when at last it comes, is by slow stages, until when victory is
won it is by the crushing of a nation rather than of the armies
in the field-alone; for this was national war. On the other hand,
in Palestine we find armies operating in a neutral arena, small
in numbers with open flanks to the east, and each dependent
upon a single line of railway; scope and objective not only for
trained and disciplined mounted troops, making full use of their
mobility, but also for light rapid-moving Arab levies harrying
the Turkish communications, and achieving great strategical
and tactical results, with but little loss to themselves, entirely
by the power of movement. Artillery here plays but a secondary
or even lesser r61e, for instead of congestion there is spacs
space in plenty, and when that element is present light troops
come in to their own; activity takes the place of force, and victory
is over the field armies rather than over the civil population.
Between the two extremes of the western European front and
Palestine lay such other campaigns as Mesopotamia and Mace-
donia; but these, though interesting enough in themselves,
add nothing to our present purpose and seem only to emphasize
the same theory in less convincing form namely that each
theatre of war, by its own distinctive physical features and
climate, influences, if it does not actually dictate, the tactics by
which battles and campaigns are won. Otherwise war might
become an exact science instead of the most difficult of the arts.
This war of 1914-8, then, by its very size and variety, has
solved no tactical problem, has answered none of the questions
left by S. Africa in 1890-1902, or Manchuria in 1904-5, but,
like all its predecessors, has raised many new ones. Strategy
is still the art of bringing the enemy to battle on terms which are
disadvantageous to him; tactics are still the methods employed
for his destruction. In former wars this most desirable object
was accomplished by a judicious combination of artillery,
cavalry and infantry. To-day the object is the same, but the
means have been complicated to a degree which in 1910 was
altogether beyond human imagination. Railways have completed
the work of Carnot and the French revolutionary generals, and
made national war a complete reality; but through the perfec-
tions of the internal-combustion engine war itself has taken on
a third dimension. If a great master was formerly required
properly to handle and combine the comparatively primitive
means at his disposal, how much greater should the artist now
be who is to use, and not to waste, the much more complicated
tools which science has now placed in his hands. As science
advances the art becomes more complex, things tend to become
greater than men, and use more difficult than invention. Always
change has followed along the same line, but so rapid have been
the latest steps that the armies of 1921 were further from those
of 1821 than Napoleon's armies were from those of Hannibal;
yet the human imagination and capacity remain as they were
two thousand years ago.
All through the ages changes in tactics have been brought
about by improvements in the means of killing. Latterly
science has advanced with giant strides, yet the mechanism of
slaughter appears to be only in its infancy. How difficult,
therefore, to foresee even with what weapons later wars may be
fought, and what may be the next steps in tactical evolution.
It is easy, indeed, to let the imagination run riot, and to picture
whole populations destroyed by infernal machines easily and
efficiently controlled by wireless waves. The pebble is to be
thrown in at Berlin, Stockholm, Moscow or anywhere else you
will, and the influence carried to the uttermost parts of the
earth. Equally easy it is to persuade oneself that there will be
no change, and the next war will begin exactly where the last
left off. History teaches us, unfortunately, that neither of
these views is likely to be exactly fulfilled. Possibly they serve
as useful correctives one to the other; but the difficulty is to
strike the happy medium. When so many new questions have
been raised and so few old ones have been answered, only one
definite new principle seems to have been established. It is
that, more than ever before, tactical methods must vary in
accordance with the theatre of operations, and that methods
suitable to one country are unsuitable to another. Indeed
even this is hardly new, since it is clear that methods which
sufficed to overthrow the Mahdi at Omdurman would have been
quite unsuitable against the Boers in S. Africa. A short time
ago we were satisfied with two classes " normal warfare "
and " savage warfare"; that is to say, war against highly
trained, well-equipped professional armies or against primitive
races, of which every able-bodied man was an ill-equipped
untrained soldier. Those distinctions no longer suffice. Here
there is an initial difficulty, for in trying to imagine the tactics
of the future we must first imagine the conditions under which
war will be fought. Will they resemble the conditions of France
and Flanders, of Macedonia, Mesopotamia or Palestine?
Conditions for Future Wars. One thing is certain, that the
wit of man cannot devise a system which will be equally suitable
for all. Principles there are, but nothing more. This is especially
a British difficulty, for no army of the world is called upon to
fight under such varying conditions as is the British; moreover,
the British army of modern history has never fought in its own
country. It is only necessary to reflect upon the history of the
World War of 1914-8 to realize that, while Germans fought
almost entirely on their own frontiers, if not in Germany, French-
men in France, Italians in Italy, Turks and Bulgarians in Turkey
and Bulgaria, the British army and troops from the British
Dominions and India fought all over the world. French troops,
it is true, fought in many distant campaigns, but except at
Salonika the oversea campaigns were preponderatingly British,
and cannot be considered apart from the British Dominions and
India. The only other countries at all in like position are
America and Japan, with few extra-territorial commitments.
As a further branch of this same problem we must for a
moment consider the troubles of organization and equipment
which are inseparable from those of tactics. The French army
exists for the defence of France, the Italian army for the defence
of Italy. Defence, no doubt, includes offensive action, especially
in the case of Germany, but how simple these tasks seem
compared with that imposed upon Great Britain with all her
world-wide interests. It is easy to see with what confidence the
general staffs of continental European nations can address
themselves to their well-defined problems, and how much more
complex are the manifold problems of the British general
staff. Others can fortify their frontiers. Not so Great Britain
or her Dominions, who must always be prepared to fight oversea
in some theatre of war which cannot be foreseen with any degree
of confidence or certainty. That is one fundamental and special
complication, as the result of which tactics, organization and
even equipment must always, from a British point of view, be
something of a compromise, ready and able to be adapted to
special conditions on the actual outbreak of war.
Let us consider for a moment what is to be the future of
trench warfare. Will future wars reproduce the conditions of
1914 which led up to it? Will it be the normal warfare of the
future, or was it no more than a passing phenomenon? Is it
TACTICS
669
desirable or not to organize, train and equip modern armies
with a view to it?
The only possible answer to these questions is that nobody
knows. Similar conditions would no doubt produce similar
results, but are we likely to find them? What we know beyond
the possibility of doubt is that in 1914-8 highly developed
industrial countries with dense populations were fighting on or
near their own borders. It was these conditions which made
possible a war on a front of hundreds of miles; and we may well
ask if they can be found again, and, if so, where? Probably the
answer would be that only nations possessing the greatest
possible resources could support a war of this kind, and that
those nations are extremely limited in number, even more limited
in 1921 than they were in 1914. Trench warfare in its extreme
form is the direct outcome of the industrial revolution of the
nineteenth century, and is not possible between such nations,
for instance, as Russia and Poland.
But there is more than this. It must also be remembered that
trench warfare came in 1914-5 as a surprise, and that all armies
dropped into it quite unconsciously. It began with a few strands
of ordinary wire laid out in front of simple old-fashioned fire
trenches. It was indeed a strange phenomenon. In place of
the rapid decision for which everyone trad looked, the largest
armies the world had ever seen were peering at one another
through their screens of metal. That was late in 1914, just at
the moment when all the belligerents had practically run out of
gun ammunition, when there was no means of dealing with
such an unexpected obstacle, and neither side could get at the
other. Nothing like this had ever been seen in war. As we now
know, it took four years to find the way out of the impasse, but
the important point to note is that after the war every nation
possessed the antidote. With masses of artillery, instantaneous
fuzes and tanks, is trench warfare of this type in any circum-
stances conceivable? One thing at least seems to be certain, and
that is that, having learnt their lesson, the armies of all nations
will strain every nerve to render it impossible, and to avoid a
repetition of the wearisome experience of 1914-8.
If this means anything at all it is that future wars between
civilized nations will be opened with a suddenness and violence
far in advance of 1914. In past wars there have always been a
few days of grace between the declaration of war and the first
serious collisions. In 1914 Germany issued orders for her gen-
eral mobilization on Aug. i, France declared war on the 3rd, the
Belgian frontier was crossed by Germans on the 4th and by
France on the 6th; Liege was entered on the 7th, and the last
forts were captured on the isth; finally the field armies came into
collision on the I7th and i8th. Meanwhile on the southern front
the French occupied Mulhausen on the 8th with covering troops,
but failed to hold it, and it was not until the i4th that their
I. and II. Armies and the Alsace group were mobilized and
ready to advance into Alsace and Lorraine.
Now, in considering the strategy or the tactics of the opening
phases of any future campaign, it was very difficult in 1921 to
divest the mind of the picture of 1914, and to remember that
there no longer existed in Europe two great military nations
with armies magnificently led, fully organized and separated
only by an almost imaginary line .called a frontier. Something
of the sort, it is true, may be found in the borders of France
and Italy, but a formidable mountain range only to be trav-
ersed by troops at certain well-defined points introduces an
important factor which was absent in 1914. Other open frontiers
also remained in 1921, notably between Germany and Poland,
between Poland and Russia, and still between France and
Germany; but, for the time at all events, organized well-equipped
armies no longer existed as we knew them in 1914, except in
the cases of France and Italy. Nevertheless it is necessary to
look forward. Germany, no doubt, had been forbidden by the
Peace Treaty to maintain an army of more than 100,000 men,
but it was by no means impossible that before many years had
passed several of the more backward nations of Europe would
become rich and prosperous, with great industries and extensive
railway systems, and would be unable to deny themselves the
luxury of great standing armies and all the paraphernalia of
war. History, at least, is not encouraging in this respect, and
it would certainly be most unwise to assume that, because the
necessary conditions of a first-class war were no longer visible
in Europe in 1921, they would remain so for ever, or even for a
very long time; moreover, it cannot be forgotten that the
opening years of the twentieth century saw a first-class war far
outside the confines of the European continent.
No excuse is, therefore, necessary for the assumption, in 1921,
that coming generations would know war even as the present
generation has known it, and that its opening phases would not
be so very unlike those of 1914, always with such difference as
is brought about by the scientific development of engines of