WEATHER.—The weather is an important factor in war, and its influence appears to have increased in modern times. Mists and fogs militate against observation by aircraft, and poor visibility interferes with the work of artillery. Roads are broken up by the weight of modern traffic, and in a shelled area the craters become impassable after a few days rain, making the supply of food, stores and ammunition a serious problem. Such conditions multiply the difficulties of attack, as the ground of the encounter consists principally of hastily dug trenches which become running streams of mud; and they assist the defence, as the pursuit is delayed, while the ground behind the defending force is less liable to be churned up by shell fire. The bad weather of September, 1916, caused a delay in the Allied advance against Sailly-Saillesel and Le Transloy and made it necessary to abandon the plan at the moment when previous successes seemed to have brought it within the grasp of the commanders. As the season advanced and the bad weather continued the plans of the Allies had to be reduced, and the brilliant successes already achieved afforded some indication of what might have been accomplished had the weather permitted the plans to be carried out as originally intended.
HEALTH.—"Wars may be won or lost by the standard of health and moral of the opposing forces. Moral depends to a very large extent upon the feeding and general well-being of the troops. Badly supplied troops will invariably be low in moral, and an army ravaged by disease ceases to be a fighting force. The feeding and health of the fighting forces are dependent upon the rearward services, and so it may be argued that with the rearward services rests victory or defeat" (Marshal Haig).
HUMAN NATURE.—Human nature is affected by discipline, fear, hunger, confidence in or distrust of leaders, and by a variety of other influences, and human {14} nature is more important than armament and numbers. "No great deeds have ever been performed by an army in which the qualities of courage and steadfast endurance are wanting" (General Sir E. B. Hamley), and the steadfast endurance of a nation and of its leaders is also a factor of supreme importance. Time occupied in preparation for battle, or in manoeuvring for the "weather gauge," is seldom wasted; but it involves the risk of a weak-kneed executive yielding to popular clamour. Against the strategical and tactical genius of Hannibal, Quintus Fabius Maximus invoked the aid of time to afford him opportunities to strike. His "Fabian Tactics" have become proverbial, and earned for him at the time the opprobrious epithet "Cunctator," which the epigram[3] of Ennius has immortalised in his honour. Popular clamour led to a division of authority with Varro, and to the disaster of Cannae (B.C. 216). General G. B. McClellan was recalled from the Army of the Potomac on account of his failure to convert the drawn battle of the Antietam (Sept. 17, 1862) into a victory, and the army was handed over to General Burnside, who suffered defeat at Fredericksburg (Dec. 13, 1862) with terrible slaughter. "But the stout heart of the American nation quickly rallied, and inspired by the loyal determination of Abraham Lincoln the United States turned once more to their apparently hopeless task" (Colonel G. F. R. Henderson). McClellan's forte was organisation, and although at first slow in the field, he had assembled and trained a magnificent fighting force, with which he was "feeling his way to victory." He suffered defeat indeed at Gaines's Mill (June 27, 1862), the first act in the drama of the Seven Days' Battle around Richmond. Day after day he fell back through swamp and forest, battling with Lee's victorious troops. But there was no further disaster. Under the most adverse and dispiriting circumstances the Army of the Potomac fairly held their own until {15} they reached the impregnable position of Malvern Hill. There McClellan turned at bay and repulsed with heavy slaughter the disjointed attacks of the Army of Northern Virginia. He had withdrawn his army intact and had effected a change of base, unknown to the Confederate General Staff, from the York River to the James. This proved his strategic power, as did the dispositions at Malvern Hill (July 1, 1862) his tactical ability, and his work was accomplished in spite of the intrigues of politicians and the opposition of the executive, and in face of the military genius of Generals R. E. Lee and T. J. Jackson. At the Antietam he forced the Confederates to give battle, and although tactically indecisive, the engagement caused the withdrawal of Lee's army into Virginia. McClellan's successors were far less competent, and the magnificent Army of the Potomac met with frequent disasters, until it formed the solid nucleus of the forces of General Meade, which inflicted upon Lee his first defeat and saved the Union at Gettysburg (July 1-3, 1863), and finally under Grant, in conjunction with the Armies of the West, crushed the life out of the Confederacy at Appomattox.
General G. H. Thomas, in command of the U.S. Army of the Cumberland, refused battle with the Confederates in Nashville until he had prepared cavalry and made every other arrangement for pursuit. Constancy of purpose was the salient feature of Thomas's military character. He would not fight until he was ready. The civil authorities urgently demanded that he should advance. So great was the tension that Grant finally sent General J. A. Logan to supersede Thomas; but before Logan arrived Thomas had won the Battle of Nashville (Dec. 15-16, 1864), the most crushing victory of the war.
Lord Roberts landed in Cape Town on Jan. 10, 1900, and popular expectation was degenerating into impatience when a co-ordinated advance of French's cavalry and the Sixth and Ninth Infantry Divisions {16} resulted in the relief of beleagured cities distant from the field of battle, and in the surrender on the field of Cronje's force at Paardeberg (Feb. 27, 1900), on the anniversary of Majuba.
THE SPIRIT OF FRANCE.—In all calculations on which a declaration of war is based the moral fibre of the actual and potential enemy nations is fully considered. It is difficult to imagine that the Headquarters Staff of the German and Austrian Armies failed to bring under review the moral of the nations against whom their armies were to be launched in July, 1914. The Spirit of France had shown no signs of deterioration, but was to be quelled by a rapid advance through neutral territories, to bring about a bewildered collapse, as in 1870, before the Russian mobilisation was complete, and "Nous sommes trahis" was again to be heard from the disheartened troops. But the calm determination of the commander and his generals in the dark days of August, 1914, prevented the bewildered collapse, and the Defence of Verdun from February to August, 1916, and the cheers of the poilus, as they recaptured the Chemin des Dames in April-July, 1917, replaced the capitulation of Sedan and of Metz and the "Nous sommes trahis" of 1870.
GREAT BRITAIN.—Britain was not expected to take an active part in the struggle, and if she did the affairs of Ireland, the Suffragette movement, and the general decadence of the nation would prevent a whole-hearted prosecution of the war. A small force only could be sent to Europe; it would be swallowed up in the "bewildered collapse," and no reinforcements could be spared. The extent of the miscalculation is shown in Mr. Lloyd George's speech in the House of Commons on July 3, 1919, in which the Prime Minister stated that the British Empire had put 7,700,000 men under arms, had raised 9,500,000,000 pounds in taxes and loans, and had suffered upwards of 8,000,000 casualties on land and {17} sea. It was also shown that during the last two years of the war the British armies had borne the brunt of the heaviest fighting on the Western Front in France and at the same time had destroyed the armed forces of the Turkish Empire in the East. The risk of compelling Britain to take part was undertaken, and the first great strategical blunder of the war was committed.
AMERICA.—In the third year of the War America had gradually been brought into the arena, and a further miscalculation arrayed the hundred millions of a free and united nation against the autocracies of Central Europe.
LORD ROBERTS.—Other brains than German had considered the possibility of an armed conflict in Europe. For many years Lord Roberts had advocated universal military service in the United Kingdom, as a procedure beneficial in itself, and imperative on account of the clear intentions of the Headquarters Staff of the German Army. "Germany strikes when Germany's hour has struck," was his warning note, and although apparently unheeded by the nation, his warning was not without effect upon the training of the Regular Army.
COLONEL HENDERSON.—Military writers in the United Kingdom had also considered the possibility of a conflict with the armed forces of Germany, and in all their treatises the moral of the nation was passed under review. Colonel G. F. R. Henderson, in "The Science of War," had even envisaged a struggle in which not only the troops of Britain and the Overseas Dominions but those of the United States would take part, and his estimate of the moral of the race on both sides of the Atlantic, and in both hemispheres, was fully justified by the events of the War. Colonel Henderson found in the race something more than toughness in its moral fibre, for he adds, "Tactical ability is the birthright of {18} our race. . . . In a conflict on the vastest scale (the American Civil War) the tactics of the American troops, at a very early period, were superior to those of the Prussians in 1866. In Strategy, controlled as it was on both sides by the civil governments and not by the military chiefs, grave errors were committed, but on the field of battle the racial instinct asserted itself. Nor were the larger tactical manoeuvres even of 1870 an improvement on those of the American campaigns. . . . But in 1878, Skobeleff, the first of European generals to master the problem of the offensive, knew the American War 'by heart,' and in his successful assaults on the Turkish redoubts he followed the plan of the American generals on both sides, when attempting to carry such positions; to follow up the assaulting columns with fresh troops, without waiting for the first column to be repulsed." After the Civil War, General Forrest, a cavalry leader of the Confederate States Army, was asked to what he attributed his success in so many actions. He replied: "Well, I reckon I got there first with the most men," thereby stating in a nutshell the key to the Art of War. "At Nachod, the Austrian commander had numbers on his side, yet he sent into action part only of his forces, and it was by numbers that he was beaten" (Marshal Foch). With regard to the moral of the race Colonel Henderson makes this emphatic statement: "In the last nine months of the American Civil War, time and again, according to all precedent, one side or the other ought to have been whipped, but it declined to be anything of the sort. The losses show this. This was due in no small measure to the quality which the troops on both sides inherited from the stock that furnished his infantry to the Duke of Wellington. Never to know when they were beaten was a characteristic of both North and South."