Blue Shirt and Khaki: A Comparison

by James F. J. Archibald

American Officer at Siboney.

The Spaniards might have done better if they had not been so impressed with the unknown in the tactics and strategy of the American invaders. The Boers erred in having too much contempt for the British methods. After their series of extraordinary victories over superior forces at the beginning of the war, it was a common saying in Pretoria, “Fifteen or twenty of you men come up here; a British regiment is coming.” The echo of this jeer was at the evacuation, when a burgher said to me, as he swung himself on his pony, “If we only had even terms, like fifteen or twenty to one, we could lick them; but when they come forty to one we can’t do anything.” It is a mortal mistake either to overestimate or underestimate your enemy.

Tactics and strategy extend into technical military science, and can be treated in nice detail only by expert students. The following observations are offered accordingly, not from any technical point of view, but as the witness of one who on the field has watched the operations of a number of campaigns, and who has tried to see things not merely as they seem at the hour, but also as they look afterwards.

Tactics are not to be confounded with strategy. Strategy, speaking largely, is the planning of the thing which an army has to do; tactics is the manner in which an army does it. The strategy of a campaign may be carefully planned by the wise men of the War Department or by the commanding general. It may be infallible on paper; but if the tactics of the general officers in the field cannot follow the lines thus laid down, the strategy is a drag anchor on the success of the army. On the other hand, the tactics according to which the troops are disposed, moved, and fought may be so unpractical, so poorly adapted to the conditions of the country and of the hostile force, that the best conceived strategy will be made foolish.

In strategy the conditions of the Cuban and African campaigns were so dissimilar that a comparison is less significant than in tactics. The American War Department planned an invasion of Cuba near Havana. The spot actually selected was Mariel, a few miles west of Havana. Here, under cover of the fleet, a fortified camp, as a base of operations, was to be established, and Havana was to be invested. Admiral Cervera’s fleet, however, was first to be destroyed, the equipment of the army gathering at Tampa was to be completed, and the unhealthy summer season was to be escaped as far as possible by the delay. There seemed to be no other objective than Havana, for there were over 100,000 Spanish troops behind fortifications, the strength of which was never known until they were evacuated at last without a blow. Had those formidable works been attempted, the carnage would have been more frightful than the worst of the South African battles.

But the unexpected happened, and changed the entire strategy of the campaign. Cervera sailed into Santiago Harbor and refused to come out. To aid the navy in destroying him an army corps was despatched to Santiago, and the capture of that stronghold, together with the annihilation of the Spanish fleet, led Spain to acknowledge defeat. Thus the first strategic plan, which was both correct and costly, was abandoned in a sudden exigency for a diversion on a small scale, which turned out to be decisive. In all this development of strategy there was nothing histrionic; there was only an obvious common sense which suggests the method of sound business men going at a problem with determination and yet deliberation, with economy and yet quickness of adaptation. The first blow of the war at Manila was dramatic enough, but it was also plain, business-like strategy, which had been for silent months in preparation; and the final blow in Porto Rico was likewise very good business. Upon the whole, a survey of the problem offered by the conditions of the Spanish war reveals a shrewd and unerring strategy on the part of the United States. On the other hand, while we came to respect the Spanish in the highest degree as brave and dutiful men, we cannot regard the strategy of the Spanish War Office as anything but puerile. Spain saw the war coming before we did, and she might have put up a far better fight with no greater loss.

In overcoming the Boers Great Britain had a problem of appalling magnitude. Her soldiers were to be transported from the ends of the earth to the Cape, and then to march as far as from New York to Denver before they could reach the enemy’s capital. Their line of communication was to be guarded in force at every bridge, trestle, and causeway for the whole of that immense distance. Cape Colony, the base of operations, was itself almost a hostile country. Three besieged British garrisons were to be relieved, and they required three diverging armies of rescue. The keeping up of the soldiers’ spirits over such a prodigious march, and the maintenance of the trains that fed them, constituted a problem such as no other army of this century has had to face. That the War Office in London did undertake it, and did actually overcome the natural obstacles which were more formidable than any fighting force that could meet the British in the field, showed a mental comprehension and perspicacity, as well as a perfection of organization, that has properly engaged the admiration of every strategist in Europe. Whatever blunders of tactics in the field were thrown up by incompetent officers, there was a big, clear brain behind it all, that knew the immense business, kept it going, saw beyond the diverging armies, effected a concentration, captured the capitals of two states, and accomplished military results that seemed impossible. The strategy accomplishing all this is of the very first order, and is a power which the warrior nations of the world must take into account.

In the tactics displayed by the American and British armies there is naturally a more proper ground for comparison than in the strategy of the two recent campaigns. Strategy is necessarily the variable quantity depending on combinations of conditions; but tactics, as the immediate methods of accomplishing the requirements of strategy, are to be judged by the invariable gauge of practicalness.

The tactics of the American soldier have been the outcome of generations of Indian wars and of fighting in woods and mountains. Our colonial forefathers established the general principles of our present fighting methods when they learned the art of warfare from the natives of the wilderness. When Colonel Washington saved General Braddock’s defeated British regulars from annihilation by the Indians, he employed, in the main, the same tactics we now use. Washington implored the British general to dispose his men like the pioneer volunteers, as individual fighters; but the Royal officer disdained to take lessons from a colonial. The British stubbornness was in the end fortunate for the colonies, for the American victories of the War of Independence were won by the common-sense tactics natural to men who had handled long rifles from their boyhood, and who had learned to hide first and shoot afterwards. The slaughter of the retreat from Concord to Boston, the terrible losses at Bunker Hill, the defeats at Bennington and Saratoga, were the work of men who sighted their foe with the same precision that they aimed at wildcats, and took as few chances as possible themselves.

During that war an attempt was made by Washington to introduce the Prussian tactics into the continental army. Baron Steuben drilled the raw frontiersmen according to the rules of the Great Frederick, and the result was unquestionably advantageous, as the men gained military form and learned discipline. Had the Boers submitted themselves to such discipline and obedience to commanders, had they been content to do more “team work” and less determined to fight as individuals, they might not have lost their positions. But the American continental, with all his new-fangled discipline, never forgot that he was out to kill rather than to drill; he was a hunter, and the pomp of volley firing never led him to waste powder and ball. He kept his head, and his finger stayed on the trigger until the sights on the rifle had a perfect alignment on a red coat.