WAR TO-DAY AND YESTERDAY
There has appeared in the present campaign a number of situations so different both from what was known of war in the past and from what was expected of any great modern war in West Europe that opinion upon the change is confused and bewildered. Sometimes it is thrown right out of its bearings by the novelties it witnesses. And, what is more grave, opinion is sometimes led to misjudge altogether the nature of war by these novelties.
For instance, you find people telling you that a war such as this can end in a “draw” or stalemate. They say this foolish thing simply because they are impressed by the present unexpected and apparently unprecedented phase of the war.
Or, again, people tell you vaguely that “the question of finance will end the war,” because they are bewildered by the magnitude of the figures of expense, forgetting that the only five things a nation needs in order to prosecute war are men, arms, clothing, shelter and food, and, these things being provided, the whole hotch-potch of reality and imagination which is called finance is indifferent to it.
Now, to prevent false judgments of that kind and the misleading of public opinion, there is nothing more useful than to distinguish between the things in which modern war between great forces, fought with modern weapons and by men trained to utilize their powers to the utmost, differs from and resembles the wars of the past.
Let us begin with the differences.
When you are dealing with many miles of men whose armament is not only destructive at a great distance, but also over a wide belt of ground, you have, in the first place, a vast extension of any possible defensive lines. It is in this, perhaps, that the present war is most sharply distinguished from the wars of the past; and I mean by the wars of the past the wars of no more than a generation ago.
There have been plenty of long defensive lines in the past. Generals desiring to remain entirely upon the defensive, for any reason, over an indefinite space of time (for no one can remain on the defensive for ever), have constructed from time immemorial long lines behind which their men, though very thinly spread out, could hold against the enemy.
They have been particularly led to do this since the introduction of firearms, because firearms give the individual man a wider area over which he can stop his enemy. But in every form of war, primitive or modern, these great lines have existed.