OBJECTIONS TO THE AIR-ATTACK
To this use of aircraft to gain the moral objective there are, however, two possible objections, one economic, the other ethical. The economic limitation is that by destroying the enemy factories and communications we may so cripple his commerce and industry as seriously to reduce his post-war value as a potential customer. There is a certain weight in this argument, for if one lesson stands out clearly from the last war it is that the commerce and prosperity of civilized nations are so closely interwoven and interdependent that the destruction of the enemy country’s economic wealth recoils on the head of the victor. The obvious reply, however, is that even the widespread damage of a decisive air attack would inflict less total damage and constitute less of a drain on the defeated country’s recuperative powers than a prolonged war of the existing type.
The ethical objection is based on the seeming brutality of an attack on the civilian population, and the harmful results to the aggressor of any outrage of the human feelings of the neutral peoples. The events of the last war have, however, in some measure acclimatised the world to the idea that in a war between nations the damage cannot be restricted merely to the paid gladiators. When, moreover, the truth is realized that a swift and sudden blow of this nature inflicts a total of injury far less than when spread over a number of years, the common sense of mankind will show that the ethical objection to this form of war is at least not greater than to the cannon-fodder wars of the past.
But self-interest as well as humane reasons demand that the warring nations should endeavour to gain their end of the moral subjugation of the enemy with the infliction of the least possible permanent injury to life and industry, for the enemy of today is the customer of the morrow, and the ally of the future. To inflict widespread death and destruction is to damage one’s own future prosperity, and, by sowing the seeds of revenge, to jeopardize one’s future security. Chemical science has provided mankind with a weapon which reduces the necessity for killing and achieves decisive effects with far less permanent injury than in the case of explosives. Gas may well prove the salvation of civilization from the otherwise inevitable collapse in case of another world war. Even with the lethal gases of the last war, the use of which was decried as barbarous by conventional sentiment, statistics show that the proportion of deaths to the numbers temporarily incapacitated was far less than with the accepted weapons, such as bullets and shells! Moreover, chemistry affords us non-lethal gases which can overcome the hostile resistance, and spread panic for a period long enough to reap the fruits of victory, but without the lasting evils of mass killing or destruction of property.
Yet we still find that, in defiance of reason and history, the governments are again striving by international legislation to prohibit the use of gas, and to confine the blows of aircraft to the traditional military objectives.
It is a strange reflection on the all-too-frequent lack of vision and common sense, that the opposition to the use of gas in war comes from an alliance between those unwonted bedfellows, the traditional militarist and the sentimental pacifist.
The humanization of war rests not in “scraps of paper,” which nations will always tear up if they feel that their national life is endangered by them, but in the enlightened realization that the spread of death and destruction endangers the victor’s own future prosperity and reputation.
This deeper understanding of war and its goal, and consequently more humane methods, can only come by stripping war of its professional and pacifist catchwords, and grasping that the true national objective in war lies in the after-war. If the civilized world is to be saved from collapse, there is an urgent need to produce true grand strategists to replace the colour-blind exponents of mass destruction, who can only see “red.”
No more terrible portent for the future exists than the fact that the militarist nations are awaking to the destructive possibilities of the new weapons, while the Anglo-Saxon peoples, who are the leaders of constructive human progress, and hence might be expected to take longer views, refuse to think or talk about the subject, either from war-weariness or natural antipathy to war. Like the legendary ostrich burying its head in the sand, they seemingly hope to escape the danger by shutting it out of sight.
Absorbed in building the Temple of Peace, they neglect to take into account the stresses and strains the edifice may have to bear—and then, as before in history, are surprised when their plaster and stucco temple collapses under the rude blast of international storms.
Of these two new weapons, air supremacy is possessed by France, chemical resources by Germany. A significant fact is that France lacks the foundations on which to build up a great chemical plant, whereas Germany, in her rapidly developing civil aviation, has a potential instrument whereby to employ her chemical weapons, with relatively slight adaptation. Thus it may not be inapt to quote the views of a high German authority, General von Altrock, in the Militar-Wochenblatt: “In wars of the future the initial hostile attacks will be decided against the great nerve and communication centres of the enemy’s territory, against its large cities, factory centres, munition areas, water, gas, and light supplies; in fact, against every life artery of the country. Discharge of poisonous gases will become the rule since great progress has been made in the production of poison gas. Such attacks will be carried to great depths in rear of the actual fighting troops. Entire regions inhabited by peaceful population will be continually threatened with extinction. The war will frequently have the appearance of a destruction en masse of the entire civil population rather than a combat of armed men.”
The curtain is raised a little more in the new German manual Der Chemische Krieg, which was ably summarized recently by the Berlin correspondent of The Times. As this manual has a number of quotations from the present writer’s views on future warfare, he proposes to repay the compliment by quoting certain most significant remarks by the authors of this manual: gas is termed “a vital weapon put into the hands of the nation most highly developed in science and technology,” and one which will “confer world importance or even world power, on the nation which shows supreme capacity in the field”—if we did not guess it, a study of Germany’s other post-war manuals would leave us no doubt that the Fatherland is the country cast for this rôle. This conclusion is reinforced by the comments of The Times correspondent: “The authors of this handbook declare that since the end of the war no military question has been the field of so much research, and we may conclude that Germany, with her highly-developed chemical industry, has not lagged behind in this respect. ‘It is understandable,’ they say, ‘that a thick veil of secrecy obscures these preparations....’”
Of the military advantage of gas, especially for a surprise at the outset of war, there is no question. It is the only weapon which is a commercial product, manufactured from chemicals which are an essential requirement of peace time industry. In secrecy of manufacture it is unrivalled, and so can defeat the intelligence service of other powers. All other weapons are, in part at least, destined for a definite military purpose, and therefore their production in quantity cannot be kept a complete secret. In speed of discharge it is necessarily supreme because it is continuous, which not even the quickest firing gun can be, and in surprise of discharge also, because it is noiseless and, if used at night or combined with smoke, invisible. Its volume and area of effect is infinitely greater than any projectile—the most rapid-firing-missile-projector, the machine-gun, can only fire 600 bullets a minute, whereas the gas cylinder can discharge millions of invisible bullets or particles in the same time; unlike any projectile it leaves no voids unswept in its beaten zone; it requires no skill in aiming, and is therefore unaffected by the conditions or physical defects of the firer.
Such are the properties of this ideal weapon, which international jurists fondly believe their parchment decrees will rule out of future war! However blind to the lessons of history, do they really believe that a nation which plans a military coup, or a “revanche,” will discard its strongest trump?
If, then, gas seems destined to replace the bullet and the shell, so equally does the aeroplane appear likely to supersede the gun as the means of projection—and, like gas, aircraft are a weapon not exclusively military, but resting on a civil basis. Their transformation from a civil to a military use is far simpler than with any of the old-established arms. This fact has a vital bearing on the present world situation, for the geographical situation of the continental countries, France and Germany in particular, lends itself to the expansion of air transport far better than that of Great Britain, and thus in any race for air supremacy the former obtain a “flying” start difficult to over-value. In the present stage of aircraft development the central position of these continental countries makes them the natural hub of Europe’s air routes. England, in contrast, is thrown back into her mediæval position, before the Age of Discovery led to the development of trans-ocean shipping—in semi-isolation on the edge of the continental transport system. Though the aerial successors of Columbus have already linked the New and Old Worlds, it must still be some time before trans-ocean flying becomes a normal service. Then, and only then, will the axis of air communications again be shifted to the British Isles, as was that of sea transport by the original discovery of America.
As for the two great Pacific powers, the United States are in an excellent position for the growth of a strong civil aviation, because the vast breadth of North America places a premium on any new and speedier form of transport, whereas Japan suffers, in greater degree, the disadvantages of England’s insular and border situation, so that her air development must perforce be an artificial military growth instead of springing naturally from civil “roots.”
Moreover, these can only grow firmly and spread in an industrial soil—in the mechanical future of war supremacy will go to the nation with the greatest industrial resources.
But Americans would do well to remember that the Japanese military leaders are disciples of Clausewitz, and that one of his axioms reads: “A small state which is involved with a superior power, and foresees that each year its position will become worse,” should, if it considers war inevitable, “seize the time when the situation is furthest from the worst,” and attack. It was on this principle that Japan declared war on Russia, and for the United States the next decade is the danger period.