THE MEANS TO THE MORAL OBJECTIVE
After this brief historical survey, let us turn to consider the means by which the moral objective, of subduing the enemy’s will to resist, can be attained. These means can be exercised in the military, the economic, the political, or the social spheres. Further, the weapons by which they are executed may be military, economic, or diplomatic—with which is included propaganda.
As war is our subject, the diplomatic and economic weapons, except in a military guise, are outside our purview. There appears little doubt, however, that the economic weapon in the struggle between rival national policies during so-called peace has possibilities still scarcely explored or understood. Again, the military weapon can be wielded in the economic sphere without any open state of war existing. In the Ruhr we saw the French aiming, by a military control of Germany’s industrial resources, to subdue the latter’s will to resist French policy, and with the further motive of a moral disruption between the German states.
What, however, are the ways in which the military weapon can be employed to subdue the enemy’s will to resist in war?
The question demands that we first examine how the moral attack takes effect, and how the will of an enemy people is reduced to such a degree that they will sue for peace rather than face a continuation of the struggle. Put in a nutshell, the result is obtained by dislocating their normal life to such a degree that they will prefer the lesser evil of surrendering their policy, and by convincing them that any return to “normalcy”—to use President Harding’s term—is hopeless unless they do so surrender. It is an old proverb that “So long as there is life, there is hope,” and this Ciceronian saw may be adduced to support the argument that in the case of people who fight best “with their backs to the wall” only death will end their resistance. This may be true of individuals, or even of considerable bodies of men; the annals of the Anglo-Saxon race afford examples—though such cases have almost always occurred when surrender was as fatal as continued resistance. As soldiers know well, time throws an heroic glamour over events of the past, and national pride leads to pardonable exaggeration of great deeds. Such résistance à mort is probably as rare as that mythical bayonet charge and hand-to-hand clash with cold steel so beloved of tradition and the painter of battle scenes. The latter myth was exposed by the long-dead Ardant du Picq, that French soldier-realist who refused to bow before the altar of the martial tradition. And the Great War finally dissipated it. Imaginative soldiers, especially those in the supply services, might write letters home describing such close quarter fights, war-correspondents safely behind the lines might retail such martial exploits for the benefit of a sensation-loving public, but the real fighting soldier soon found that two sides did not cross bayonets in mortal conflict. The weaker broke and fled, or else threw up their hands as token of surrender the moment they realized the actual shock could no longer be warded off.
The normal man, immediately he recognizes a stronger, directly he realizes the hopelessness of overcoming his enemy, always yields. Nor is man unique in this respect, as any study of animal life will confirm.
Armies and nations are mainly composed of normal men, not of abnormal heroes, and once these realize the permanent superiority of the enemy they will surrender to force majeure.
History, even Anglo-Saxon history, shows that nations bow to the inevitable, and abandon their policy rather than continue a struggle once hope has vanished. No war between civilized people has been carried, nor anywhere near carried, to the point of extermination. The living alone retain the power to admit defeat, and since wars, therefore, are ended by surrender and not by extermination, it becomes apparent that defeat is the result not of loss of life, save, at the most, indirectly and partially, but by loss of moral.
The enemy nation’s will to resist is subdued by the fact or threat of making life so unpleasant and difficult for the people that they will comply with your terms rather than endure this misery. We use the words “or threat” because sometimes a nation, directly its means of resistance—its forces—were overthrown, has hastened to make peace before its territory was actually invaded. Such timely surrender is merely a recognition of the inevitable consequences.
In what ways is this pressure exerted? Partly through the stomach, partly through the pocket, and partly through the spirit. In the “good old days” more forcible physical measures were practised, burning, pillage, and rapine. But in the present age the wholesale and avowed use of such persuasive aids is barred by the ethical code of nations—and press publicity, though, as the last war showed, still indulged in sporadically with or without the specious excuse of “reprisals.” But if the international conscience is too tender to permit this direct violence, it swallows its qualms where the people’s will to resist is undermined by the indirect method of wholesale starvation. Deprive individuals of food and there is an outcry, cut off the food supply of a nation and the moral sense of the world is undisturbed. Thus the naval weapon is pre-eminently the means of applying “stomach” pressure, because its blockade is indirect instead of direct, general instead of particular. As nothing more surely undermines moral than starvation, a blockade would seem obviously the best means to gain the moral objective were it not for two grave disadvantages. First, it can only be successful where the enemy country is not self-supporting, and can be entirely surrounded—or at any rate its supplies from outside effectively intercepted. Second, it is slow to take effect, and so imposes a strain on the resources of the blockading country.
Pressure through “the pocket” can be exerted directly by levies, confiscation, or seizure of customs—which require a military occupation—and indirectly by the general dislocation of business and the stoppage of the enemy’s commerce. Above all, as the military forces of a modern nation are but the wheels of the car of war, dependent for their driving power on the engine—the nation’s industrial resources—it follows that a breakdown in the engine or in the transmission—the means of transport and communication—will inevitably render the military forces immobile and powerless. Just as the engine and transmission of an automobile, because of the intricacy and delicacy of their joints and working parts, are far more susceptible to damage than the road wheels, so in a modern nation at war its industrial resources and communications form its Achilles’ heel. Mere common sense should tell us that if possible these are the points at which to strike.
Pressure on “the spirit” is intimately connected with that on “the pocket,” a thorough and long-continued interruption of the normal life of a nation is as depressing and demoralizing as the intimidation of the people by methods of terrorism—which, even if temporarily successful, usually react among civilized nations to the detriment of the aggressor by stimulating the will to resist or by so outraging the moral sense of other nations as to pave the way for their intervention.
In the past a military occupation of the hostile country has generally been the ultimate method of bringing to bear this pressure on the spirit, and may still be necessary against semi-civilized peoples spread out in little self-supporting communities, whose material wants are simple, and who offer no highly organized industrial and economic system for attack or control by an enemy.
But though the indignity and restrictions that arise from a military occupation are always galling, the conscience of the world forbids, or at least limits, the terrorism of earlier times and so makes the mere presence of an invading army less irksome. Conversely, with the growth of civilization the dislocation or control of an enemy’s industrial centres and communications becomes both more effective and more easy as the means by which to subdue his will to resist.
Every modern industrial nation has its vitals; in one case it may be essential mining areas, in another manufacturing districts, a third may be dependent on overseas trade coming into its ports, a fourth so highly centralized that its capital is the real as well as the nominal heart of its life. In most cases there is a blend of these several factors, and in all the regular flow of transport along its arteries is a vital requirement.
As warships are tied to the sea, they cannot penetrate into an enemy country; as, moreover, they are notoriously at a disadvantage against land defences, they cannot even occupy his ports. Hence they are limited to indirect action against the enemy’s vitals—either by blockade, by enabling troops to be landed, or nowadays by serving as a mobile base for aircraft which can strike at “nerve centres” within some 250 miles of the coast.
Armies have hitherto been the means of “direct action,” whether against the resources of the enemy nation, the intimidation of the people, or by the capture or overthrow of individuals who were the mainspring of the opposing policy.
Armies, however, suffer one serious handicap in subduing the hostile will. Being tied to one plane of movement, compelled to move across the land, it has rarely been possible for them to reach the enemy capital or other vital centres without first disposing of the enemy’s main army, which forms the shield of the opposing government and nation. It was because of this age-long limitation that the short-sighted, if natural, delusion arose that the armed forces themselves were the real objective.
But the air has introduced a third dimension into warfare, and with the advent of the aeroplane new and boundless possibilities are introduced. Hitherto war has been a gigantic game of draughts. Now it becomes a game of halma. Aircraft enables us to jump over the army which shields the enemy government, industry, and people, and so strike direct and immediately at the seat of the opposing will and policy. A nation’s nerve-system, no longer covered by the flesh of its troops, is now laid bare to attack, and, like the human nerves, the progress of civilization has rendered it far more sensitive than in earlier and more primitive times.