The nation-in-arms as the common foundation of all armies (except our own), brought up by railways, vastly increases the numbers in a modern battle from what they were in Clausewitz's day. Compare Austerlitz, Dresden, Leipzig and Waterloo, with Liao-yang and Mukden. It should be so with us also, for as General von der Goltz says in "The Conduct of War": "The BEST military organization is that which renders available ALL the intellectual and material resources of the country in event of war. A State is not justified in trying to defend itself with only a portion of its strength, when the existence of the whole is at stake."
In Great Britain the difference which the introduction of this nation-in-arms principle has made in our military strength compared with that of our future opponents, a difference relatively FAR GREATER AGAINST US than it was in Napoleon's and Clausewitz's day, is as yet hardly realized by the people, or by our statesmen. People forget the wastage of war, and the necessity for a constant flow of troops to repair that wastage. As Von der Goltz puts it: "It is characteristic of the strategical offensive that the foremost body of troops of an army, the portion which fights the battles, amounts to only a comparatively small fraction, frequently only a quarter or even one-eighth, of the total fighting strength employed, whilst the fate of the whole army throughout depends upon the success or failure of this fraction. Attacking armies melt away like snow in the spring." To condense his remarks: "In spite of the most admirable discipline, the Prussian Guard Corps lost 5000 to 6000 men in the marches between the attack on St. Privat and the battle of Sedan." "Napoleon crossed the Niemen in 1812 with 442,000 men, but reached Moscow only three months later with only 95,000." In the spring of 1810, the French crossed the Pyrenees with 400,000 men, but still Marshal Massena in the end only brought 45,000 men up to the lines of Torres Vedras, near Lisbon, where the decision lay. Again, in 1829, the Russians put 160,000 men in the field, but had barely 20,000 left when, at Adrianople, a skilfully concluded peace saved them before their weakness became apparent and a reaction set in. In 1878 the Russians led 460,000 across the Danube, but they only brought 100,000 men—of whom only 43,000 were effective, the rest being sick—to the gates of Constantinople. In 1870 the Germans crossed the French frontier with 372,000 men, but after only a six weeks' campaign brought but 171,000 men to Paris. And so on. The result of it all is simple—that a people which is not based on the modern principle of the nation-in-arms cannot for long rival or contend with one that is, for it can neither put an equal (still less a superior) army into the field at the outset (vide Clausewitz's first principle), nor even maintain in the field the inferior army it does place there, because it cannot send the ever-required fresh supplies of trained troops. Sooner or later this must tell. Sooner or later a situation must arise in which the nation based on the obsolete voluntary system must go down before a nation based on the nation-in-arms principle. Circumstances change with time, and, as wise Lord Bacon said long ago, "He that will not adopt new remedies must expect new evils." May we adopt the remedy before we experience the evil!
The Moral and Spiritual Forces in War
But though these changed conditions must, of course, modify Clausewitz's details in many important particulars, still (to complete our circle and leave off where we started) I repeat that, as human nature never changes, and as the moral is to the physical as three to one in war, Clausewitz, as the great realistic and practical philosopher on the actual nature of war, as the chief exponent of the moral and spiritual forces in war, will ever remain invaluable in the study of war.
Consider what unsurpassed opportunities he had for observing and reflecting on the influence of enthusiasm and passion, of resolution and boldness, of vacillation and weakness, of coolness and caution, of endurance and hardship, of patriotism and freedom, of ambition and of glory—on war, either by his own experience or by conversation with other equally experienced soldiers, during that long period of almost endless wars between 1793 and 1815.
The fervour and enthusiasm and boundless energy of the Revolution, which drove the French forward, smashing everything before them, at the beginning; the ambition, military glory, plunder and greed, which animated them later on; the patriotism, religious and loyal devotion, and stern endurance, which nerved the Russian hosts then as now; that awful Moscow winter campaign, when human nature rose to its highest and sank to its lowest, when the extremes of heroic endurance and selfish callousness were visible side by side; the magnificent uprising of the spirit of liberty and freedom from intolerable oppression in Germany, which gave to the Prussian recruits and Landwehr the same driving force that revolutionary enthusiasm had formerly given to the French; the passing, therefore, in 1813 of the moral superiority, the greater driving force, from the French to the allies. Clausewitz saw all this; he conversed intimately with such men as Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, who saw and guided it, too. All his friends had seen it also. No wonder, then, that such an unexampled series of warlike phenomena deeply impressed his reflective mind with the supreme importance of the moral and spiritual factors in war.
His opportunities for long-continued observation of warlike phenomena were far greater than those of any writer since his day, and it is to be hoped they will remain so. For we have no desire to see another series of wars such as the Napoleonic. It is fortunate for us that there was then such a man as Clausewitz to sum up for us so simply and so clearly the accumulated experiences of those long, long years of carnage and devastation.
Printed by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury.
[FOOTNOTES]
[1] Book IV. Chap. 10.