‘Sergeant-Major Smith died at Mons.’
When the lecturer finished this anecdote, a terrific cheering burst from all the school, and there was just a suggestion of something dim about the lecturer’s eyes. He was thinking of how Sergeant-Major Smith had held up a whole German battalion when all his officers were wiped out.
‘I hope you will excuse my giving you this story of Smith. But, really, that is better than all the pamphlets on psychology. Smith might have ended up on the gallows. Instead of that, he died as a warrant-officer and a hero. You will now see how important it is to study the human mind. And I hold that if you can master the mental meandering of your platoons, you may rightly aspire to the General Staff. When you are a G.S.O., III., II., or I., you will realise what platoons, companies, regiments, and brigades can do, and will never issue orders likely to cause discontent and endanger our moral.
‘Now, the psychology of your own army is an important thing, but the psychology of the enemy is doubly important. We are up against a most cunning, brutal, and ungentlemanly foe. Great victories can be secured only by clever reading of enemy thought, and astute counter-tactics. Take the battle of the Marne. Joffre brilliantly defeated the Germans, not by superior man or gun power, but by superior strategy, based on a correct reading of the enemy’s power, vanity, and historical beliefs. In this work we also assisted. The Germans were stupid enough to believe that Lord French would throw the B.E.F. into Belgium. This was the German scheme and their dream. Lord French declined the bait, and the Germans lost precious days before they found out their stupid analysis of our psychology. As for Joffre, he certainly had no intention (originally) to fight it out at the Marne, but the blunder of a French general before Namur compelled him to select this field. His retirement was a glorious trick in which he pandered to the Paris dream of Von Kluck, tickled the enveloping theories of the Crown Prince, and drugged the whole German nation—Kaiser and all—into the belief that the end of France was near. Time and again he resisted tempting opportunities for a general action, till the Marne was reached. Then, when the German General Staff was drunk with victory, when their line was lengthened, their munitionment and rationing tedious and difficult, their troops tired with their hitherto magnificent marching, he launched his blow—faulty in parts, but staggering and effective as a whole. With a crash he killed the Paris dream. With a bound he swept corps after corps of the hardest-trained troops in the world into a tragic rout and irredeemable disaster. The Marne was the defeat of Germany. Since then they have simply been fighting for terms. And this glorious victory, for which we ought to thank our God, was helped immensely by the ability to read the enemy’s mind, and the refusal to accept his preconceived theories of the Allies’ action in such a war.
‘Since the Marne we have improved. Take Byng’s thrust at Cambrai. For three years we used preliminary bombardments before making a great assault. And at Cambrai the enemy knew of our coming attack. But he waited for our bombardment. Instead of that, Byng’s men took up their beds—and walked for miles into the enemy’s lines. This was entirely unexpected, and therefore successful. Byng, I say, is a most excellent student of psychology.
‘But we must also admit that the enemy has improved. At Cambrai we massed our reserves in the centre to meet the counter-attack which would be launched in accordance with known German tactics. The Germans, however, discovered the weakness of both of our flanks, and struck sledge-hammer blows. Had it not been for the supreme courage of the Guards, of London and Highland Territorials, Cambrai might have been the funeral of our High Command. This proves that we have no monopoly of psychology.
‘While I ask you to respect and never underrate the power of the enemy, do not fear the enemy. And do not believe he is superior. The German clings with frenzied energy to trench warfare. He is afraid of the open—afraid of the British and the French in open manœuvre. He remembers the Marne. He remembers the Russian push into north Germany, the success of Brussiloff in Galicia, the brilliant strategy of Maude, and the glorious work of Allenby and Smuts. In open warfare we can beat the German to a frazzle because of our mental alacrity, willingness to scrap original orders, and to adapt ourselves to sudden and unexpected onslaughts. The German is a worker, a thruster, and a courageous fellow; but a mere handful of troops, with only shrapnel and bayonets, held up one million Huns at Ypres. Lord French outmanœuvred the enemy there. Ypres was the grave of German Push-and-Go.
‘The German is helpless in open warfare.
‘The enemy is not afraid of shells or bayonet, but he is afraid of superior intelligence. The camouflage of Allied military thought is more distressing to Germany than lyddite or gas. Our naval policy in refusing to disclose the facts about the number of German submarines sunk, and how we have sunk them, is destroying the moral of the German Navy. Our counter-propaganda is smashing his propaganda. While he may console himself with the Russian Revolution, he is suffering the fires of hell from the intervention of America. This suffering is easily explained. The American brain is the most resourceful, the most subtle, the most deadly in the world. I am speaking commercially, of course. No Von Kühlmann, Ballin, Hindenburg, or Von Boy-ed can master it. The American discovery and exposure of the German plot in Mexico was a masterly feat in intelligence. The use of German ships to transport American troops to France is a business-like answer to Germany’s submarine campaign. The prompt organisation of an American Propaganda Department in Switzerland, to inform the enemy—free of charge—about his impending doom, is excellent. Ford’s creation of anti-submarine boats, which are being turned out like sausages, will stagger the gentlemen of Kiel. In short, the American knows the German. American aid is the death of Germany, in the military, political, and commercial sense of the term. And the entry of America, like our own entry into this war, was due to faulty German psychology, a stupid reading of the national mind, failure to understand the spirit and soul of America—as of Britain—as well as blind reliance on bluff, bombast, rapine, terror, corruption, and assassination for the intimidation of neutrals.
‘The Allies are more intelligent than the Germans.