FRENCH ON GERMAN?

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 1897, 4 November 1913, Page 4

FRENCH ON GERMAN?

TWO WAYS OF FIGHTING A BATTLE. Tho now famous speech of the King of Greece, in which ho praised iho German school of military tactics, and incidentally gave serious offence to Franco, revives interest in the dispute that has long been going on in the military .world about tlio" relative merits of tho German and tho French tactics. M. Reginald Kami, the well-known French military writer, comes in the "Temps" to the help of tho lawman by giving a lucid account of these two rival schools of organising victory on the battlefield, i What aro called tho French tactics aro the result of an exhaustive study of military history, from ancient times to our own, which tho French wero compelled to make after tho disasters _of 1870, with'a view to reconstructing their amy. organisation. Tiie new doc-1 trine was formally laid down in 18951 in one of the chapters of the French military "Reglement," and has since then been taught in all military schools. Its essentials can be formulated in those words: Only tho offensivo can give definite results. A battle, falls into three phases—(l) Preparatory action executed by cavalry and subsequently by a portion of tho main army, with a view to assisting tho commander-in-chief in finding the best conditions for tho decisive attack; (2) the decisive attack executed against the weakest point of the enemy at tho opportune moment by a mass movement; and (3) tho entrance of the reserves with a view, as tho case may be, to either pursuit in case of_ a victory or to covering tho retreat in caso of failure of the main attack. Tho German tactics, as evolved by Moltke and successfully applied both in 1866 and 1870, are different. According to them the entire army, with no reserves to fall back upon, simply moves in ono large mass over an cxtendedfront against the enemy, enveloping 'it on either sido and crushing it in a vice, as it were. The French tactics are thus based on tho genius of the commander and tho elan of tho troops—that is, on human factors; while the Gorman tactics are based on, tho conception of the army as a machine, and depend for their success on organisation, precision, and discipline. . Tho French tacticians were strengthened in their' views by the teaching of Genoral Dragomirolf, himsolf a pupil of Skobclelf; but tho failures of tho British Army in South Africa gavo rise to strong criticism on the part of such men as General Negrier and, recently, of Colonel Grandmaison, of the General Staff, who pointed out that the French tactics exposed the commander to the danger of being by the enemy in. the matter of taking tho offensive. On their part, tho Germans themselves have begun to doubt the universal validity of their doctrines, and three years ago General von Kluck, commanding tlio Red army at tho Imperial manoeuvres, showed, by tho construction of sham trenches, how tlio enemy, proceeding on orthodox lines, can bo deceived into enveloping an ompty space and then bo crushed by an attack from, an unexpected quarter. French ideas aro, thereforo, making their way into tho Gorman army, while German ideas, as this year's manoeuvres show, aro penetrating into tho French army. M. ICann concludes by observing that if Napoleon "won at Austerlitz, AVagram, and Lignv thanks to tho French tactics, it was the German tactics which ho employed at Castiglione, Eylau, and Bautzon."