CHAPTER XXXIX
A RETROSPECT OF WHAT TANKS HAVE ACCOMPLISHED
Like all other human energies, war may be reduced to a science, and had this, throughout history, been better understood, how many countless thousands of lives and millions of money might not have been saved, and how much sorrow and waste might not have been prevented!
Science is but another name for knowledge—knowledge co-ordinated, arranged and systematised—from which art, or the application of knowledge to existing and ever-changing conditions, is derived and built up on unchanging principles.
The fundamental difficulty in the art of war is in the application of its theories in order to test their values. Like surgery and medicine, it demands its patients or victims as its training-ground, and without these it is most difficult to arrive at expert judgments and conclusions. It is an art which is neither directly commercial, materially remunerative, nor normally applicable, consequently it has generally been looked upon as a necessary evil, an insurance against disaster rather than the application of a science which should have as its main object the prevention of the calamity of war.
As an applied science, war is half human, half mechanical; it is, therefore, pre-eminently a live or dynamic science, a science which must grow with human understanding itself, so that its means of action, materialised in the soldier, may not only keep level with progress but absorb it to its own particular ends. When we look back on the history of war, what do we see? A school of pedants fumbling with the past, hoodwinked against the future, seeking panaceas in past victories, the circumstances under which these were won being blindly accepted as recurring decimals. Thus do they lumber their minds with obsolete detail, formulæ and shibboleths, precepts and rituals which are as much out of place on the modern battlefield as phlogiston or the philosopher’s stone would be in a present-day laboratory.
Time and again has it been asserted that war itself is the sole test of a soldier’s worth and that on the battlefield alone will the great be sifted from the little.
And why? Because, until to-day, we have never emerged from what may be called the “alchemical” epoch of warfare, the compounding of illusions without knowledge, the application of actions without understanding; we have not reduced war to a science founded on definite principles nor learnt that 99 per cent. of victory depends on weapons, machinery placed in the hands of man so that he may kill without being injured.
Galen was a great physician and so was Paracelsus, but who to-day would apply their methods when they can employ those of Pasteur and Lister? Where we have been so wrong and will continue to remain so wrong, unless we radically change our peace methods of warfare, is that we possess no process of producing great peace soldiers—scientists for war. We do not realise that an army is formed to prevent war, that it is composed of human points, that the good player will not lose many of these points, and that the bad player will go bankrupt. That the loss or gain depends on superiority of brains and of weapons and not necessarily superiority of rank and numbers of men. When we do realise this, then shall we cast the ancient balsams, solvents, and coagulants to the winds and set about developing the mental and mechanical sides of war in days of peace, so that, should wars become inevitable, we may win them with the minimum of human loss.
Soldiers have laughed at Joly de Maizeroy, Massenbach, and Maurice de Saxe for suggesting “victory without fighting,” “wars without battles”; but seldom are their eyes dimmed with a tear when they read of a victory which cost thousands of lives, and a victory which might have been won at the cost of a few hundreds. Yet surely is the saving of men’s lives and limbs as great an attribute of good leadership as the taking of those of the enemy; is it not in fact endurance, or the staying power in human lives, which is the backbone of victory itself?
In August 1914 the Great War opened to all intents and purposes as an exaggerated 1870 operation. The doctrine of the contending armies was 1870, its leaders were saturated with 1870 ideas, its weapons were improved 1870, it was 1870 in complexion, in tone, in manner, in thought, in tactics, and in movement. If this be doubted read the text-books prior to the war and compare them with those of 1872 and then with the events of the war itself. Take any great army of 1918 and place it over the same army of 1914: the sides do not coincide. What is the one great difference? Mechanical progress in weapons, not numbers of men, for men potentially had in numbers decreased; yet any 1918 equipped army would have beaten a 1914 one because of guns, heavy guns, super-heavy guns, mortars, shells, bombs, grenades, gas, machine guns, machine rifles, automatic rifles, range-spotters, sound-detectors, smoke, aeroplanes, lorries, railways, tramways, armoured cars, and tanks.