How far this is from Roman confidence!
In another place we have shown that in ancient times to retire from action was both a difficult and perilous matter for the soldier. To-day the temptation is much stronger, the facility greater and the peril less.
Now, therefore, combat exacts more moral cohesion, greater unity than previously. A last remark on the difficulty of obtaining it will complete the demonstration.
Since the invention of fire arms, the musket, the rifle, the cannon, the distances of mutual aid and support have increased among the different arms. [31]
Besides, the facility of communications of all kinds permits the assembling on a given territory of enormous forces. For these reasons, as we have stated, battle fields have become immense.
Supervision becomes more and more difficult. Direction being more distant tends more often to escape from the supreme commanders and the subordinate leaders. The certain and inevitable disorder, which a body of troops always presents in action, is with the moral effect of modern appliances, becoming greater every day. In the midst of the confusion and the vacillation of firing lines, men and commanding officers often lose each other.
Troops immediately and hotly engaged, such as companies and squads, can maintain themselves only if they are well-organized and serve as supports or rallying points to those out of place. Battles tend to become now, more than they have ever been, the battles of men.
This ought not to be true! Perhaps. But the fact is that it is true.
Not all troops are immediately or hotly engaged in battle. Commanding officers always try to keep in hand, as long as possible, some troops capable of marching, acting at any moment, in any direction. To-day, like yesterday, like to-morrow, the decisive action is that of formed troops. Victory belongs to the commander who has known how to keep them in good order, to hold them, and to direct them.
That is incontrovertible.