The Two Maps of Europe, and Some Other Aspects of the Great War

by Hilaire Belloc

Still, it may be of interest to compare the length of lines thus drawn apparently during the course of a campaign in the past with those drawn in the course of the present campaign, and in the first diagram I show the contrast. It is striking enough.

Another novel feature in which this war differs even from the Balkan War is the new value which has been given to howitzer fire, and in particular to its domination over permanent fortification. This is perhaps the most important of all the changes which this war has introduced into military art and it is worth while understanding it clearly. Its main principles are simple enough.

Mankind at war has always used devices whereby he has been able with a small number to detain the advance of a larger number. That, for instance, was the object of a castle in the Middle Ages. You built a stronghold of stone which the engines of that time could not batter down or undermine save at a very great expense of time, and you were certain that for every man able to shoot an arrow from behind such defences ten men or more would be needed for the work of trying to batter them down. So when you knew that your enemy would have to go through a narrow pass in the mountains, let us say, or across an important ford of a river, you built a castle which, as the military phrase goes, “commanded” that passage; that is, you devised a stronghold such that with, say, only 1000 of your men you would quite certainly hold up 10,000 of your enemy.

If your enemy passed by without taking your castle the thousand men inside could sally out and cut off his supplies as they passed down the mountain road or across the ford, and so imperil his main forces that had gone forward.

Your stronghold would never, of course, suffice to win a war—its function was purely negative. You could not attack with it; you could not destroy your enemy with it. But you could gain time with it. You could check your enemy in his advance while you were gathering further men to meet him, and sometimes you could even wear him out in the task of trying to reduce the stronghold.

Now the whole history of the art of war is a history of the alternate strength and weaknesses of these permanent fortifications; the word permanent means fortifications not of a temporary character, hurriedly set up in the field, but solidly constructed over a long space of time, and destined to permit a prolonged resistance.

Diagram I. A striking comparison of the length of lines in some past campaigns with the present. The characteristic novelty of the present war is the rapidity with which such lines are established by the great numbers now facing each other, armed as they are by weapons of very long range.

When cannon came and gunpowder for exploding mines underground, the mediæval castle of stone could be quickly reduced. There was, therefore, a phase in which permanent fortification or permanent works were at a discount. The wars of Cromwell in this country, for instance, were fought in the middle of such a phase. The castles went down like nine-pins. But the ingenuity of man discovered a new form of defence valuable even against cannon, in the shape of scientifically constructed earthworks. The cannon ball of the day could not destroy these works, and though they could be sapped and mined, that is, though tunnels could be dug in beneath them and explosives there fired to their destruction, that was a long business, and the formation of the works was carefully designed to give the garrison a powerful advantage of fire over the besiegers.

Works of this kind made the defensive strong again for more than two hundred years. Just as there used to be a stone wall surrounding a town, at intervals from which people could shoot sideways along the “curtain” or sheer wall between the towers, so now there was earthwork, that is, banks of earth backed by brick walls to hold them up, and having a ditch between the outer parapet and the inner. These earthworks were star-shaped, sending out a number of projecting angles, so that an attack launched upon any point would receive converging fire from two points of the star, and the entrances were further protected by outer works called horn works.