1. The rules of strategy and tactics have not been modified. The mode of fighting alone is different.
2. Violation of the laws of warfare. Influence of science.
3. Fighting units. The Army. The Army Corps. The Division. The Command. The Staff.
1. Strategy and tactics are unchanged. Strategy is the art of manœuvring large armies over a great extent of country.
Tactics is the art of handling the troops on the battlefield.
One might be inclined to believe that, in the present war and since the victory of the Marne, the general rules of strategy and tactics have been modified. Not at all. The ways of fighting and the armament only have undergone a transformation.
The opposing lines have buried themselves in mazes of entrenchment. On both sides old methods of warfare and weapons forsaken or forgotten for centuries have again been gradually resorted to. The “Minenwerfers,” the trench guns, are nothing but the old-fashioned mortar much improved upon. The jet of liquid fire driven by compressed air, finds its prototypes in the Greek fire of Constantinople and the hand-thrown combustibles—boiling oil and burning pitch—of the Middle Ages.
Strategy. The rules of strategy remain immutable. They still consist in attacking the enemy on one of his wings; in attempting to outflank him on one side; in trying to cut his line in two by a blow in the centre; in organizing a system of transportation so that the necessary forces may be quickly assembled at the points which are to be attacked or protected; in taking advantage of a superiority due to the possession of well-organized interior lines. Such are the ancient basic principles, that, in various combinations, have been applied by contending armies since the dawn of military science.
Examples. When the Germans attacked on the Yser front, their purpose was twofold: 1st. To outflank the left wing of the Franco-Anglo-Belgian Army; 2d. To force their way towards Calais and Dunkirk so as to prevent England from using those harbours for the concentration of her armies in France.
After her failure on the Yser front, Germany made use of her superiority in interior lines, composed of the railway lines existing before the war, supplemented by new ones built as they were needed for military operations. Owing to her central geographical position, Germany is able at all times to dispatch forces from the heart of her Empire to the various fronts; from Russia to the French Front, and vice versa. To these interior lines is due the facility with which she has quickly concentrated large masses of troops at any desired point, notably on the Roumanian front at the end of 1916.
When she had firmly consolidated her Western Front she rapidly collected all her available forces on the Eastern Front in an effort to crush the Russians.
When, in February, 1916, the Germans launched the gigantic attack against Verdun, it was with a twofold strategic purpose: 1st. To pierce the French line between right wing and centre and resume the march on Paris. 2d. In case of a partial success, to strengthen themselves by the occupation of Verdun, with a view to preventing the French armies from reaching the right bank of the Meuse, while at the same time guarding their own left wing and their communications with Metz, should circumstances ever force them to withdraw behind the Meuse.