THE WAR BEHIND THE FRONT

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 12, 9 October 1917, Page 6

THE WAR BEHIND THE FRONT

« — NEW CONDITIONS.CREATE NEW OBJECTIVES A WAR OF PEOPLES AND ARMIES (By Miles, in-the "English Koviow.") ri'lie on the military ethics of reprisals-for air raids lend a special jntorest to the following article.] It is not only on the sea that a new e oment has appeared in war; on land also war in modern conditions is now seen to be a national industry as importHilt militarily as men and the strategy t)t man. In the days of professional armies war signified misery, poverty, privation at home. War was thus a specialised activity which concerned almost solely [nose engaged in its service; the rest looked on and suffered. • When war broke out most of us thought that such were the conditions which faced us. The capitalists had their usual war panic; money seemed (o be "in the air," 60; to speak; and for a long time men fought against conscription, hoping to keep war within the old prescribed limits of our British "limited liability" theory, wheh was the way wo fought Nnnoleon. v But gradually wo bocame drawn in at full strength, and to-day what every man soos is that war is a national industry. The effects of this are twofold, economic and military. In the economic sphere we find war reversing Unfold conditions. Instead of suffering by w,ar, the floor are more regularly employed and far better paid than in peace. In the place of warmisery, war to-day means money. There are no unemployed, there is no poverty; on the contrary, the whole economic conditions of Labour have assumed the dimensions of orgy doubly enhanced by women's sharo in the industry, so that it is a' common thing to find a married woman with a couple of sons serving in the possession of a weekly wage fonr times as much as she ever had in pence, and so on through all strata of the community in to the profiteers, to whom war has been El Dorado. J f r. Bonnr Law's revelations of his. profits in shipping shares nrovide a curious commentary on war. The point need not be dwelt upon, it is too obvious—the profiteering is too disgusting; suffice it to say that these conditions have manifested themselves in all combatant countries, and that, instead of war leading to bankruptcy, hunger, ruin, and revolution, it leads directly to. an. immense artificial inflation of wages and prosperity, because war imnlies the socialisation of industry financed by the fitfte, while Capital, under the competitive system, is immediately given unlimited opDortunities to create opportunity tr wealth. Such is the condition nf wnr nt home— orgy. 'One mnv say that practically the only people -who are not better off _ in war than they were in pence are artists (barring those who fight)—men, that is, who create; for nearly all businesses can turn to what is called "war work." and as theiv is plentv of money about, and the soldiers on leave naturally require amusement, even the theatres and restaurants have had their share of the oriry—■ as, indeed, thnv depend upon it. All this is a now phenomenon in war. Thus modern, war means employment, good wages, a high deqree of comfortin short, a national industry vpon -which the armies in the field depend absolutely. The War Behind tjn Lines. That is the economic side, but it also has its military side, which is the one ire ought to consider, and this aspect has recently been brought home to us by the air raids over Londou. 'For what do these raids really mean? They mean, in the military sense, that the military objective 01 war is to-day almost as _ much behind tho lines as at the front, if as „a fact the true objective of strategy, is not positively the sources of supply of the Army instead of the Army itself. The industry of war being ,no\v the right arm of the Army, tho question to-day is, which is the Veal objective: the Army pi tho munitions of,the Army? And thiß, theoretically, is even to-day an open question. If, for instance, now or tomorrow iro and the Americans could demolish Essen and the great German shipyards from the air, and on succeeding days seek out and demolish all the big army industrial centres of Germany, it is clear that the -war could be brought to an end in a month. Because the Gorman Army, l having only its actual stock, could not fight beyond that point ,of exhaustion, and the submarines coul'd not be increased, and they would no longer havo any supplies. The blow would be decisivo. The highest objective of strategy would have been reached. With a minimum loss of life, the Germans would find themselves out-goneralled—in.the air, defeated, forced automatically to surrender. The question of feasibility need not be considered. That an air campaign of this kind is possible we know; that it has not been attempted, or even conceived, is merely evidence of tho want of imagination of soldiers, and bears no relation to the truth of the supposition. For obviously if fifty aeroplanes can bomb a town or position two hundred miles from their base, there is no sort of reason why 10,000 aeroplanes should not be ho employed, or 100,000 aeroplanes, seeing that it is merely a matter of construction, and equally obvious is it that this new condition of activity .postulates a new objective which is not primarily the Army, but the sources of the Army's supplies. . Now see -whither this new objective leads? It leads homewards. It points to the cities nnd establishments of the civilians. In a word; it introduces war among the peoples at home. We are probably only at tho beginning of aerial warfare, the -development _ cf which is now likely to increase rapidly and in over-rising intensity. The air cannot be entrenched or "barrnged" or positionnlised or gassed, and, given the machines, there would seem no limit to the number of air squadrons which may not in a year or so appear over the great cities.iearrying with them death and destruction. Now tliis is an entirely logical evolution gf the fightinj objective. As war has become a national industry, in which the women are no longer passive but active agents, and this industry is the chief part of war. it follows that the industry is, or should be, tho main military objective, not only because it represents the quickest and surest way to obtain the object of war. but because it may Intimately be questioned whether any decision on the field is realisable in modern conditions, short of annihilation of (he nnpnsing armies, which is not the result of the destruction of enemy sources of supplies. When, therefore, we cry oni here about German raids, we are not thinking as soldier'. In London munitions .ire made and handled by the ton. The demoralisation of the London twin service alone would justify a ( rnid. We cannot hare it both ways; moreover, what tho enemy can do we can do. But if tho civilians are all engaged in war work of some kind, and some eighty per cent, certainly are, it is ludicrous ti ••■•- that soldiers only are to be attacked while the millions who' work for the soldiers ore not to be subjected to,danger because thoy do not wear uniforms. That is illogical and unmilitarv. Kvrrv man or woman doing wnr work is i-erving Ms cnu.ntTy nnd helping tho Arm'-; he r.r she is_ therefore a combatant in modern conditions, and. as war is not Viw nnd is not a game played according: to rules, we shall have to accustom onrselves to recognise that the new element is the nnswer to the new conditions or industry of war. which in <he essentials make us all part nnd parcel of tho Army, and so liable to enemy attack. ■Lord Mnniatru intimeted this the other day. yet it seems to bo tiirionslv little understood. Formerly 'women took no part in war: to-day thoy are an indispensable part nf its machinery. The woman who makes shells is just'as much .i combatant as Hie uniformed man who «,.„<; n. P shell. That is /he position' arising out of war. as an industry. It makes ns all participant)!. Tt makes war a truly national concern and responsibility. Reprisals Really Offensives. If wo had ,10,000 aeroplanes and destroyed a large part df Berlin, wo should bo perfectly justiljed, because a large

part of Berlin is fighting us by making shells, fuses, airships, bombs, lnaehineguns, and what not. It is not a question of reprisala. The now element merely provides tlio opportunity to reach the sources, that is all, as if in justification of the now conditions of war, and probably if the German General Staff had realised the significance of the new element and prepared accordingly, the war would have opened will' imnieniio attacks on all our industrial centres of production as representing the main objective of the war. Similarly with us. Smash up Essen, and we virtually hamstring the German armies. We cannot help it. if tho German women are killed lin the process—all munition workers are to-day soldiers, or what the law might call abettors. It is a confusion of thought to talk about reprisals, for howover unpleasant it may be to realise that we aro constantly.liable to i.erial bombardment, tho truth is that we are all engaged in war industry, technically all members of. the A.S.C., and thus open to air "strafe"—all except tho old and the infirm and the handful of 'conscientious objectors. ~, That is the new condition of war. Everyone is a warrior. The smallest allot-ment-holder is fighting the Germans; the girl who drives a milk-cart is fighting the Germans; the Kadaver propagandist is fighting tho Germans—war, in short, is now an industry, and there can be little doubt but that in future wars the centres of production will be the first objects of attack, and quite possibly the central objective. War has, in fact, quite outdistanced international law, which never thought in two new elements; but now that experience has Lhown that armies can fly, we may expect to see war as fiercely waged in the air as on land, unconditioned by any zone of operations or rules about forts, which, inter alia, have themselves become obsolete. There is no sort of doubt about this. All tho big gun battles of trench warfare point to the conclusion that the gun is tho thing to "'knock out" rather than the infantry l , who automatically step into the positions flattened out by gun-fire. And so we have the lesson that the sunply is tho enemy,..that it is the supply that has to be destroyed, and that against the sources of guns and 6hells the principles of strategy will in future be directed. War is thus increasing its area, and without any question will in the future be waged behind the armies as relentlessly as in front of the armies. In time this condition may: drive humanity under-, ground, but those times are not yet. The thing to grasp now is to recognise the new condition and provide for its development both offensively and defensively. It is merely unscientific to argue about reprisals, whether legally or sentimentally. If we bomb out Dusseldorf, tho act is essentially one of war, because any amount of war stuff is made at Dusseldorf, and so it is with London. As war increases its area, it increases its terrors. But against that we have to set tho fact that we are all working soldiers to-day. men and women, and so we must .be prepared to give and take in the new element—like soldiers, for perhaps the time may come when a man may be safer in tho front line trenches than is his wife two hundred miles away in tho workshop.