THE ART OF WAR.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXV, Issue 34, 11 February 1915, Page 4

THE ART OF WAR.

Discussing the ‘‘Art of War,” a correspondent of a northern journal recalls that during the dark days of the great Boor war it was stated that certain regrettable incidents were due to a want of technical knowledge on the part of the British officer, and asks the question: Can one gain from books that ‘art of war’ exactly suited to any one campaign? Attempting a reply to this he says: After 1870 the English drill book was revised and modelled on a pattern made iu Germany—close formations gave place to clouds of skirmishers advancing in open order. Then came the Zulu business, opening with the terrible disaster at Isandula, which debacle was due to meeting, iii skirmishing order, the attack of a massed body of plucky savages armed only with assegais and knob-kevries. After that experience we gained a wisdom of our own, not taught in text hooks, laagered wagons if we had any—constructed barricades of mealie -bags, biscuit boxes, or of anything that might stop a rush or, as at TJlundi, formed a square of humanity the biggest on record, and thus repelled and almost annihilated the pluckiest crowd of sable warriors that ever trotted to a war chant. Then came the Transvaal trouble of 1880, and our wipe out at Majuba, because. we again fought per German tactics, Boer farmers who took cover and shot straight. After that little affair came Egypt and the Soudan, in which campaign, taught by Zulu experience, we met fearless fanatics with the British square that not even cavalry can break. In the late Boer war we attempted frontal attacks on a hidden foe using smokeless powder, and the result of such folly was disaster till bettor methods were taught by dire experience. For the present great war we find Germany discarding the loose order that, after ’7O, England had adopted from her, going in for the massed front after the style of a Zulu impi. Take this trench fighting that is being carried on over hun-dreds-of miles of parallels. Does the latest work on field fortifications give the slightest hint in regard to the style of dug-out in vogue on the Continent to-day? A fashion, indeed, that is more like the excavations of troglodytical cave dwellers than any type depicted in standard works on the subject. A Royal Engineer might have studied every system of fortification from Vauban to present date. Yet the advent of the 18-inch howitzer must shatter all his preconceived bookworm notions on the subject. The cross and long hows, bolts, and arrows are resuscitated in the flechettes of steel dropped from ’ French ’planes; these unpleasant darts dropped from a great altitude will attain a velocity sufficient to pierce cap-a-pie any poor human in the way of its passage to earth. Instruments after the ancient ballister type are now used by the Germans for flifiging bombs into the Allies’ trenches, and the Teuton soldier, though not in coat of mail, carries his metal mess-plate strapped to his abdomen in order that this important part of the anatomy may ho protected from the bayonet of the British Tommy.