WAR AS A BUSINESS

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2600, 23 October 1915, Page 13

WAR AS A BUSINESS

SOME REFLECTIONS AND A MORAL BRITAIN'S TASK (By E. B. Osborne, in tho "Morning Post.") "But suppose there should arise in Europo a peoplo endowed with energy, with genius, witli resources, with government; a people which combined tue virtues of austerity with a national militia, and wJiieli added to them a fixed plan of aggrandisement; which never lost sight of this system; which, as it would know how to make war at small cost and subsist on its victories, would not be compelled by calculations of finance to lay down, its arms. We should see that people subdue its neighbours and upset our teeble Constitutions as the north wind bends the slender reeds.—Ciuibert's '.'Essai General do Tactique," Vol. 1., xiii. The author of this prophetic passage was the son of tlio Com te de Guibert, the famous Duo do Broglie's MajorGeneral .or Qhief of • Staff. In 1772 ho published his admirable ''Essai general de Tactiqne," which anticipated many of tho conclusions of Clausowitz and was read and deeply pondered by Napoleon, who uses its characteristic phraseology from time to time. T'he passage I have quoted is part of his vindication of the necessity of a new kind of warfare—new, that is to say, for the Eighteenth Century, in which war had become merely a dynastio game, a more emphatio form of diplomacy—to be carried on by armed nations at the cost as c ar as possible of the countries they were out to conquer. He advooated, in point of fact, a return to that lloman conception gf _ thrifty and effective fighting which is summed up in Cato's aphorism that "war must support war." 111 the dynastic wars of tho Eighteenth Century the mass of the populations of a country took no part in the operations, and the theory obtained, and was sometimes put into practice, by good-natured generals, that non-combatants in invaded territory ought not to' be penalised either in their, persons or in their property. Curious examples of this illogical immunity could be given; one is told, for example, of a German regiment camping out on a bitter cold night in the vicinity of huge wood-piles, not a stick of which they dared to touch. War in those halfhearted days w.ai leaked upon as a form of politics—but tho parallel idea, so rigorously applied by the all-conmiorine Romans, thai it is also a form of business, had to he rediscovered.

The Propheoy Fulfilled. When the French people became a weapon of speed and precision in Napoleon's , hands Guibert's prophecy was almost completely fulfilled. A great administrator as well as a great geneial,' he knew hoit to make full use of all the national resources aparf from the whole stock of rational manhood. His army was the steel point of a gigantic miEsile, which carried- with it the whole mass and momentum of a pco-ple released from medieval servitude that gave the vast mass of the population no part in whatever prosperity Franco was capable of, and, to take but one military disability, made Court-favour the chief qualification for the higher command. And so far as was practicable, the cost of his campaigns was paid by th 9 foreign territories in which they took placo; his armies lived on the countries they invaded as' cheaply • and comfortably a 6 tie Roman legions did whose eagles the.v had adopted. ' A great strategic advantage * emerged from .this . plan— they were not tied to fixed supplypoints, as armies had been iii the old dynastic wars, and 60 could move more freely through the network of well-made roads which had come into being, in most parts, of Europe (Russia excepted) in the half ceijtury following tho Seven Years War. Napoleon also revived and systematised the method of levying iiirdemnities; the huge penalty imposed on Prussia aftov the shattering defeat of Jena was the most striking example of a system which, in its everyday applications, requisitioned supplies of all kinds, including forced labour. Thus the maxim of Vae Victis was worked out in the ccomonic sphere with results doubly profitable to the conquering invaders, for the French exactions not only cut down the cost of victory but also diminished the enemy's financial resistance-power. There was no mercy for the conquered in Napoleon's mul, but he was not so brutally foolish as to oppress the population of an invaded territory unnecessarily and unnaturally—he saw that oppression for oppression's sake not; only diminished the profits of occupation, but also led .to outbreaks of partisan warfare, which is waged, secretly and übiquitously, by individuals that have been wronged in their human rights and will risk life for revenge, becauce living no longer seems worth while. It is not so with the Germa" loaders to-day; they are brutal for brutality's sake, for such is the German temperament, and their method of organising tho lusts of a still-uncivilised and irecently-de-Ohris-tiar.ised people nas put a keener edge on the resistance power of all the opposed nations, it will be sufficient for the present argument if I point out that the sexual form of "frightfulness" is, as Napoleon very well knew, utterly unbusinesslike. In Russia.it has already provoked the beginnings of that partisan warfare which is dreaded more than anything else by tho statesmanlike general. For, once it begins, this creeping fire cannot bo repressed; attempts to repress it merely add fuel to tho small, multitudinous flames of its secret conflagration.

"War Is Nov; a Business." In this respect Germany has proved herself less intelligent than Napoleon and his Marshals in developing war on its business side. Yet, on tho whole, Guibert's prophecy is finally fulfilled ill the spectacle,. as yet little understood in tliis country, of the whole- Gorman nation organised, from top to bottom and in all its manifold activities, for tho prosecution of a war of conquest in the most economical and cfrectivo manner. It is in vain, that the average Englishman cries out at tho "unclriv;yrous" naturo of German warfare. Iso amount of rhetorical reprisals will have* tho slightoit effect—evon on the attitude of neutral nations, who judge the present situation by works rather than words, and in the last resort will bo governed by tho realities of definite national interests rather than by idealistic chatter. War is now a business, and must be waged on busnesslike lines if wo are to be eventually victorious. Once that vital truth is grasped, tho futility of the line, humanitarian talk with which we have been deluged will he manifest. And, after all, the averago Englishman should not be ashamed to strip away tho veil of hypocrisy which hides the stern realities of the present position of his country—a country that lives by commerco and industry, and owes its expansion into an Empire to an ago-long quest for business opportunities, and can go on living in 110 other way. I could never see any chivalry in tho Englishman's eountinghouse; his ultima ratio in business dealings is to take all iegal profits .that can be taken, and lie sheds 110 chivalrous tears over the fate of a business rival who has been put out of action in the course of cut-throat competition. Let him, then, seo himself as bo is, and things as they are, and so prepare to act 011 the wise old Roman maxim fas e3t ot ab hoste doceri. In tho intervals of abusing the Germans, which is a- sort of psychological safetyvalve and useful as such, let us see what Germany can teach us in regard to tho business principles of modern war-

faro. And away, once for all, with, the sick sentimentality of all those wellmeaning Pacifists who wore so busy preparing for the Millennium that they allowed Armageddon to find us utterly unprepared.

A Committee of National Safety. If a more businesslike Government could bo substituted for tlio Coalition tlio patriot's duty would be plain before him. But 110 such alternative is visible. 'J'lio idea of !i Dictatorship is quito impracticable, for tlio simple and sufficient reason that there is 110 possible Dictator in sight. A Dictator cannot bo improvised; ho makes and appoints himself, ; as Cromwell and Napoleon did. But it does seem that, without destroying or oven unduly criticising the Coalition Government, several salutary improvements could be obtained by common consent. A Cabinet of twenty-two members, oven if every member wero a genius born and, made in his Department, which is certainly not the case, is far too big and cumbrous to manage a war. AVhat "ould bo tlio fate of a company which was run by a board of directors of such prodigious obesity? It would be foily to wreck this Cabin .'t- of all the talents on the chance that something better might be found to take its place. But if its twenty-two members would choose an inner Cabinet or Cominitteo of National Safety fr;"3i among themselves to carry om the wo.' a el.ief causo of fata! hesitation would be romoved. In war a prompt decision, even if it be not the best, is better than none at all, and five Committeemen, say, could come to a decision in an hour where twenty-two, each with a voice in the matter under discussion, might waste weeks in talking about and around about a pressing problem. If the twonty-two Ministers would adopt this common-sensible course (which does not strike mo as unconstitutional) the confidence of the public (which is always a. great asset in. wartime} would be greatly increased. It might he advisable to substitute a sailor and a financier of outstanding ability for the present incumbents of two all-important _ officos. That could be done without dislocating the cosmos; the men could be found easily enough. And the names of this Committee of National Safety should, of course, bo disclosed to a public which, has cea?ed to trust in the existing unbusinesslike concatenation of political personages.