Tanks in the Great War, 1914-1918

by J. F. C. Fuller

To enforce peace, power and the means of applying it will be needed by the greater nations who by law will never quarrel; here the mechanic steps forward and presents the nations concerned with the tank and the aeroplane as a means towards this end. He is perfectly right; the general introduction of mechanical weapons must bring with it the end of small wars if not also of civil disturbances.

Take the case of the defence of India. What has always been the great difficulty in our frontier expeditions? Not our enemy or his weapons, but the country which enables the Afghan to evade our columns and impede our advance. It is the resistance offered by natural obstacles which we have to overcome and not those imposed upon us by weapons which generally are vastly inferior to those with which our men are equipped.

Take the case of a punitive expedition starting from Peshawer and proceeding to Kabul. The force will consist of three bodies of troops—a small fighting advanced guard, a large main body protecting the transport, and strong flank guards protecting the main body. On account of the tactics which have to be adopted the advance is excessively slow. The main body proceeding along the roads, which almost inevitably coincide with the bottoms of the valleys, has to be kept out of rifle shot, consequently the flank guards have usually to “crown the heights” on each side of the road, which necessitates much climbing and loss of time. If the advance were over an open veldt land, as in South Africa, in place of in a hilly country, movement would be simplified, but still will the flank guards have to be thrown out because the main body, consisting of men and animals, is pervious to bullets. This perviousness to bullets is the basis of the whole trouble, and unless bullet-proof armour can be carried, when it does not matter whether the rifle is fired at a range of two yards or two miles, the only means of denying effect to the rifle is to keep it out of range of its target.

Though up to a short time ago the carrying of armour was not a feasible proposition, now it is, and there are few more difficulties in advancing up or down the Khyber with a well-constructed tank than across the open. Armour, by rendering flesh impervious to bullets, does away with the necessity of flank guards and long straggling supply columns, and our punitive expedition equipped with tanks can reach Kabul in a few days, and not only reach it but abandon its communications, as they will require no protection. If tank supply columns, which are self-protecting, are considered too slow, once the force has reached Kabul its supply and the evacuation of its sick (there will be but few wounded) can be carried out by aeroplane. The whole operation becomes too simple to be classed as an operation of war. Once impress upon the Afghan the hopelessness of facing a mechanical punitive force and he will give up rendering such forces necessary.

In our many small wars of the past we have frequently been faced with desert warfare, a warfare even more difficult than hill and mountain fighting. Here again the chief difficulty is a natural one—want of water, and not an artificial one—superiority of the enemy’s weapons. In 1885 Sir Henry Stewart started from Korti on the Nile to relieve General Gordon: his difficulties were supply difficulties, and it took him twenty-one days to reach Gubat, a distance of 180 miles. A tank moving at an average pace of ten miles an hour could have accomplished the journey in two days, and being supplied by aeroplane could have reached Khartum a few days later. One tank would have won Maiwand, Isandhlwana, and El Teb; one tank can meet any quantity of Tower muskets, or Mauser rifles for aught that; one tank, costing say £10,000, can not only win a small war normally costing £2,000,000, but render such wars in the future highly improbable if not impossible. The moral, therefore, is—get the tank.

From small wars to internal Imperial Defence is but one step. Render rebellion hopeless and it will not take place. In India we lock up in an unremunerative army 75,000 British troops and 150,000 Indian. Both these forces can be done away with and order maintained, and maintained with certainty, by a mechanical police force of 20,000 to 25,000 men.

What now is the great lesson to be learnt from the above examples? That war will be eliminated by weapons, not by words or treaties or leagues of nations; by weapons—leagues of tanks, aeroplanes, and submarines—which will render opposition hopeless or retribution so terrible that nations will think not once or twice but many times before going to war. If the civilian population of a country know that should they demand war they may be killed in a few minutes by the tens of thousands, they will not only cease to demand it but see beforehand that they are well prepared by superiority of weapons to terrify their neighbours out of declaring war against them.

Weapons we, therefore, see are, if not a means of ending war and ridding the world of this dementia, a means of maintaining peace on a far firmer footing than hitherto it has been maintained by muscular power. To limit the evolution of weapons is therefore to limit the periods of peace. An Army cannot stand still, it must develop with the civilisation of which it forms part or become barbaric. To equip our Army to-day with bows and arrows would not reduce the frequency of war, it would actually increase it, for according to his tools, so is man himself, and as an Army is built up of men, if these men are armed with bows and arrows they will in nature closely approximate to the age which produced these weapons, the age which burnt Joan of Arc. Equally so will the Army of to-day, if in equipment it be not allowed to keep pace with scientific progress, develop into a band of brigands, for in 2019 the rifle and gun of to-day, and the civilisation which produced them, will be as uncouth as the arquebus, the carronade, and the manners of the sixteenth century.

If a millennium is ever to be ushered in upon earth it will be accomplished through the development of brain-power and not through it becoming atrophied. If war is to be rendered impossible the process will be a slow evolutionary one, the desire of war gradually slowing down, and its motive force energising some other ideal. To restrict war by maintaining soldiers as ill-armed barbarians is to prevent it working out its destined course. Human nature, in spite of Benjamin Kidd, does not change in a generation, and the tendencies which beget war will out until human nature has outgrown them. The world has a soul, and like that of a man it must pass through years of love, hate, striving and ambition before attaining those of wisdom and decay.

There may yet be many wars ahead of us, but one thing would appear to be certain, and this is that small wars will disappear and great ones become less frequent, science rendering them too terrible to be entered upon lightly.