Ultimately, all Europeans have much the same potential moral. Different types of drill and different experiences in war, a different choice of leaders and the rest of it produce, however, different kinds of moral; different excellencies and weaknesses. Now in this department much the most remarkable general discovery in the war has been the endurance and steadiness under loss of conscript soldiers.
It had always been said during the long peace that modern conscript short-service soldiers would never stand the losses their fathers had stood in the days of professional armies, or longer service, or prolonged campaigns such as those of the Napoleonic wars. But to this theory the Manchurian campaign gave a sufficient answer if men would only have heeded it; the Balkan War a still stronger one, while the present war leaves no doubt upon the matter.
The short-service conscript army has in this matter done better than anything that was known in the past. Of particular reasons perhaps the most interesting and unexpected has been the double surprise in the German use of close formation. It was always taken for granted, both by the German school and by their opponents, that close formation, if it could be used in the field at all, would, by its rapidity and weight, carry everything before it.
Diagram VII. You have here 1000 men ready to attack. If they attack in long open waves of men as at A-A, it takes them a long time to spread out, and when they are spread out the effect of their shock is not overwhelming.
You have in Diagram VII a thousand men ready to attack. If they attack in long open waves of men as at A-A, it takes them a long time to spread out, and when they are spread out the effect of their shock is not overwhelming. They can only succeed by wave following wave.
Diagram VIII. If your 1000 men attack in denser bodies as at B-B, they can be launched much more quickly, and the effect of their shock when they come on is much greater.
If they attack in denser bodies (Diagram VIII), as at B-B, they can be launched much more quickly, and the effect of their shock when they come on is much greater; it is, to use the German’s own term, the effect of a swarm.
This seemed obvious, but the critics of the second system of close or swarm formation always said that, though they admitted its enormous power if it could be used at all, it could not be used because its losses would be so enormous against modern firearms. Your spread-out line, as at A-A, offered but a small target, and the number of men hit during an assault would be far less than the number hit in the assault of such bodies as B-B, which presented a full target of dense masses.