第30章 NEW ARMS FOR OLD ONES(1)

1

Such are the landscapes and method of modern war.It is more difficult in its nature from war as it was waged in the nineteenth century than that was from the nature of the phalanx or the legion.The nucleus fact--when I talked to General Joffre he was very insistent upon this point--is still as ever the ordinary fighting man, but all the accessories and conditions of his personal encounter with the fighting man of the other side have been revolutionised in a quarter of a century.The fighting together in a close disciplined order, shoulder to shoulder, which has held good for thousands of years as the best and most successful fighting, has been destroyed; the idea of /breaking/ infantry formation as the chief offensive operation has disappeared, the cavalry charge and the cavalry pursuit are as obsolete as the cross-bow.The modern fighting man is as individualised as a half back or a centre forward in a football team.Personal fighting has become "scrapping" again, an individual adventure with knife, club, bomb, revolver or bayonet.In this war we are working out things instead of thinking them out, and these enormous changes are still but imperfectly apprehended.The trained and specialised military man probably apprehends them as feebly as anyone.

This is a thing that I want to state as emphatically as possible.

It is the pith of the lesson I have learnt at the front.The whole method of war has been so altered in the past five and twenty years as to make it a new and different process altogether.Much the larger part of this alteration has only become effective in the last two years.Everyone is a beginner at this new game; everyone is experimenting and learning.

The idea has been put admirably by /Punch./ That excellent picture of the old-fashioned sergeant who complains to his officer of the new recruit; "'E's all right in the trenches, Sir;'e's all right at a scrap; but 'e won't never make a soldier," is the quintessence of everything I am saying here.And were there not the very gravest doubts about General Smuts in British military circles because he had "had no military training"? ACanadian expressed the new view very neatly on being asked, in consequence of a deficient salute, whether he wanted to be a soldier, by saying, "Not I! I want to be a fighter!"The professional officer of the old dispensation was a man specialised in relation to one of the established "arms." He was an infantryman, a cavalryman, a gunner or an engineer.It will be interesting to trace the changes that have happened to all these arms.

Before this war began speculative writers had argued that infantry drill in close formation had now no fighting value whatever, that it was no doubt extremely necessary for the handling, packing, forwarding and distribution of men, but that the ideal infantry fighter was now a highly individualised and self-reliant man put into a pit with a machine gun, and supported by a string of other men bringing him up supplies and ready to assist him in any forward rush that might be necessary.

The opening phases of the war seemed to contradict this.It did not at first suit the German game to fight on this most modern theory, and isolated individual action is uncongenial to the ordinary German temperament and opposed to the organised social tendencies of German life.To this day the Germans attack only in close order; they are unable to produce a real modern infantry for aggressive purposes, and it is a matter of astonishment to military minds on the English side that our hastily trained new armies should turn out to be just as good at the new fighting as the most "seasoned troops." But there is no reason whatever why they should not be."Leading," in the sense of going ahead of the men and making them move about mechanically at the word of command, has ceased.On the British side our magnificent new subalterns and our equally magnificent new non-commissioned officers play the part of captains of football teams; they talk their men individually into an understanding of the job before them; they criticise style and performance.On the French side things have gone even farther.Every man in certain attacks has been given a large scale map of the ground over which he has to go, and has had his own individual job clearly marked and explained to him.All the Allied infantrymen tend to become specialised, as bombers, as machine-gun men, and so on.The unspecialised common soldier, the infantryman who has stood and marched and moved in ranks and ranks, the "serried lines of men,"who are the main substance of every battle story for the last three thousand years, are as obsolete as the dodo.The rifle and bayonet very probably are becoming obsolete too.Knives and clubs and revolvers serve better in the trenches.The krees and the Roman sword would be as useful.The fine flourish of the bayonet is only possible in the rare infrequent open.Even the Zulu assegai would serve as well.

The two operations of the infantry attack now are the rush and the "scrap." These come after the artillery preparation.Against the rush, the machine gun is pitted.The machine gun becomes lighter and more and more controllable by one man; as it does so the days of the rifle draw to a close.Against the machine gun we are now directing the "Tank," which goes ahead and puts out the machine gun as soon as it begins to sting the infantry rush.

We are also using the swooping aeroplane with a machine gun.

Both these devices are of British origin, and they promise very well.