The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1927. THE WAR OF THE FUTURE.

Hokitika Guardian, 17 September 1927, Page 2

The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1927. THE WAR OF THE FUTURE.

The years 1914.-18 left many wit'll the conviction that the principles upon which modern war is waged are obsolete. The expenditure of prodigious effort brought insignificant gains. The defence had an overwhelming advantage. A handful of men in a pillbox with machine guns could hold up a battalion. Surprise was impossible save in small and local operations. War, in a word, had ceased to be decisive in the strict sense, because even defeated armies remained intact. The outstanding engagements of the conflict were Tannenberg. .in the early phases when it was still a war of manoeuvre, and in Palestine, where it was open warfare from beginning to end. But with huge armies entrenched a definite issue cannot be obtained, and a stalemate is the inevitable result. This theory was developed by Dr ,T. Holland-Rose in a book which attracted a great deal of attention when it was published, and it is carried further, remarks a reviewer, by Capt. B. H. Liddell Hart in “The Remaking of Modern Armies.” Capt. Hart’s contention is briefly that t-lie day of large armies in which infantry predominates is past. “The infantry entered upon the war in 1914 as in name the decisive arm; they finished it as a fact a subordinate arm. The infantryman entered the war as a simple rifleman ; at the end of it he was a human Christmas tree.” Even when the wire entanglements and the machine guns of the enemy permitted him to advance. the weight of bis equipment held him hack. The keynote of wars of the future, will be mobility. This will he secured hv the use of machines which, again, will allow the fighting to be done by comparatively small numbers. Tanks will be the weapon par excellence, tanks big and small, even cavalry tanks controlled by one man. Captain Hart describes one of these in action at Cambcrley. “Before my eyes swept a menacing ar-mour-clad form, similar in .size " and build, if not in motive power, to the mediaeval knight on horseback. But instead of the horse’s unprotected

legs, this mount had steel tracks, and in place of a couched spear that infinitely more deadly weapon—a machine gun, tearing down the road as fust as the knight could have galloped this 1925 man-at-arms, mounted in his mechanical charger, drew rein, turned his steed’s head to an almost perpendicular bank, fully four feet high, and mounted it with a sure bound Then, racing over rough ground, smothered knee deep in gorse that concealed many a hole and ditch, he showed off his mount’s paces, moving faster than any horseman would have dared to attempt without risk of a broken neck. Next he turned .towards a steep' sloping hill and climbed it unhesitatingly at a speed that never fell below six or seven miles per hour. Finally, after threading his way through a tree plantation so thick as to be barely traversable by horse or pack nude, he swept round and round in narrow circles, no more than sixteen feet in diameter.

This- last performance would have turned his mediaeval predecessor or a circus rider or a taxi-driver green with envy.” The new tanks, moreover, are very hard to stop. Nothing short of a direct hit will put them out of action, and direct hits are uncommon. By exhaustive tests at Larkhill the average was found to lie one in 22 rounds. If this is the record, when the “firing is in tranquil conditions and at deliberately manoeuvred dummies it is not difficult to estimate the decrease in efficacy when, as in war, the tank’s direction of approach is uncertain, when fhe target is a swarm of tanks in a swift nerve-shasteri.ng onrush, and when the target is simultaneously pouring a hail of fire at the gunners, Ip

naval gunnery practice before the war about 75 per cent, of bits were registered : in battle this fell to 21 per cent. Such is the influence of nervous tension and other factors. Captain Hart challenges the doctrine formulated by Napoleon and Clausewitz that the national object ill war can only lie attained by the destruction of the main mass of the enemy’s army. This doctrine governed strategy for more than a century. The real object is the subjugation of the national will of the enemy, and the defeat <if Ids army is only one of several menus by which this end can he achieved. Others are propaganda, blockade, or attack upon the venires of administration and population. In this connection the author makes an interesting revelation. Reflection on the disaster of Ala roll, 1918, showed that it was due far more to the breakdown of command and staff control than to the collapse ol the infantry resistance. Accordingly. a scheme was evolved lo launch under cover of a 1 ■moral offensive, a fleet oi light tanks, which should pass through the German lines and. neglecting the fighting troops, aim straight for the command and communication centres in rear of the front. By the anniliiliation of these the disoganisation ami capitulation of the combatant units were visualised. This plan was adopted hv Marshal Fooli ns the basic tactical idea for 1919. Its execution was unnecessary. History, says Captain Mart, demonstrates the fallacy of the Napoleon doctrine. At Cannae, the Roman army was wiped out by the Carthagenians. hut Rome remained undefeated. Conversely, in March and April. ISM, Napoleon won a brilliant though delusive series of successes in Germany, hut left Paris uncovered. The Allies marched on the capital am; entered it with little opposition. Napoleon's victorious army retualnod to France in hot haste. It. was too late. Tim occupation of the capital had done its work. The germ of defeatism infected the Eronch troops all liesh from their triumphs, and Napoleon had to abdicate. Captain Hart thinks in future wars the principal method of subjugating the national will will he by t.hc aerial bombardment of towns. And though this may seem inhumane it is not real I v so, [or “a swilt and sudden blow inllicts a total of injury far less, than when spread over a number of years.” Also gas in farms which have been invented since the war, is quite a humane weapon. Indeed, “gas promises ta do for warfare what chloroform Ims done for surgery.”