The Progress of the Century

by Unknown

In Europe the United Kingdom stands absolutely apart. The existence of the British Empire depends less upon our armies than on our fleets. India is garrisoned by a small but costly army, sufficient for present needs, but insufficient to meet their probable growth. The home army, kept mainly in England and Ireland (and in Ireland now only because life is cheap in Ireland and the country healthy and well fitted for the drill and discipline of troops), has been chiefly a nursery for the white army in India, and will be for that in South Africa and in India. The expeditions which the country is obliged to send from time to time across the seas have but a domestic interest, and are unimportant when viewed from a world-wide military stand-point. In the event of war the attention of the country would be concentrated upon her fleets, with a view to retain that command of the sea without which her old-fashioned army would be useless.

Belgium has an old-fashioned army of another type. A small force of conscripts is “drawn” and the men are allowed to find substitutes for money. But Belgium and the other smaller Powers, except Switzerland, Roumania, and Bulgaria, may be neglected in our survey. Switzerland has developed an excellent army of a special local type, a cheap but highly efficient militia, the most interesting point about which is that, while field artillery is supposed to be difficult of creation and only to be obtained upon a costly and regular system, Switzerland produces an excellent field artillery upon a militia footing. The garrison artillery militia of Great Britain have longer training than the field artillery of the Swiss Federation, but the results of the training are very different. Similarly, while cavalry is supposed to be in the same position as artillery in these matters, Hungary produces a good cavalry upon a militia system. It is, however, to the native army in India that we have to turn if we want to see what long service cavalry in past centuries used to be, for in these days of shorter service cavalry at least has suffered a decline, and, so far from cavalry, on the whole, presenting us with a picture of military progress in the century, the cavalry of the present day is not to be compared with the cavalry of the past. Roumania and Bulgaria, although small countries, have remarkable armies of the most modern type, of great strength when considered proportionately to their populations; but these need not come under our examination, because substantially they are on the Prussian plan.

Russia differs from Germany, France, and Austria in having an immense peace army. Her peace army is indeed as large as that of the whole of the Triple Alliance, and the enormous distances of Russia and the difficulties of mobilization and concentration force her into the retention and development of a system which is now peculiar to herself. The armies of Russia resemble more closely (although on a far larger scale) the old armies of the time before the changes which followed 1866 than the French, German, and Austrian armies of to-day. Italy is decreasing her army, and has been driven by her financial straits to completely spoil a system which was never good except on paper. It is doubtful whether now in a sudden war the Italians could put into the field any thoroughly good troops, except their Alpine battalions, which are equal to those of the French. The Austrian system does not differ sufficiently from those of Germany and of France to be worthy special note, although it may be said in passing that the Austrian army is now considered by competent observers to be excellent. We may take as our type of the armies of to-day those of Germany and of France. These armies are also normal as regards their cost. Great Britain having no conscription, and being in the habit of paying dearly for all services, is extravagant in her military expenditure for the results obtained. Switzerland and Russia, with their different systems, and for different reasons, obtain their armies very cheaply; and if we wish to know the cost of the modern military system it is to Germany and to France that we should turn.

Those who would study the French or German army for themselves will find a large literature on the subject. The principles which govern the establishment of an armed nation upon the modern Prussian scale, improved after the experiences of 1866 and again after those of 1870, are explained in the work of Von der Goltz, The Nation in Arms. Those who would follow these principles into their detailed application, and see how the armies are divided between, and nourished and supplied from the military districts of one of the great countries, will find the facts set forth in such publications as the illustrated Annual of the French Army, published each year by Plon, Nourrit, et Cie., or in the official handbooks published by the Librairie Militaire Baudoin.

In the time of Bonaparte and even in the time of the Second Empire in France army corps were of varying strength, and there was no certain knowledge on the part of administrators less admirable than the first Napoleon himself of the exact numbers of men who could be placed in the field. In 1870 Louis Napoleon was wholly misinformed as to his own strength and as to that of his opponents, which were, however, accurately known to Von Moltke. In these days such confusions and difficulties are impossible. The army corps of the great military powers are of equal strength and would be equally reinforced in the extraordinarily rapid mobilization which would immediately precede and immediately follow a declaration of war. The chief changes in the century have been a greater exactitude in these respects, a general increase of numbers (especially a great increase in the strength of field artillery), and in these last years a grouping of the army corps into armies, which exist in Germany, France, and Russia even in time of peace, with all their generals and staffs named ready for war. In each of the great military countries the army is guided by the counsel of a general staff. Around the chief of the staff and the Minister of War are the “generals of armies,” and in France a potential generalissimo (who on the outbreak of war would often be superseded by another general in the actual command). In the case of Germany the command would now be exercised by the young Emperor. In the case of France it would be exercised by the generalissimo, with the chief of the staff as his “Berthier” or major-general. Enormously important duties in the case of armies so unwieldy as the entire forces of the first line and of the second line in Germany or France and of the first line in Russia would be exercised by the “generals of armies.” These generals in time of peace are called “inspectors of armies” in France, Germany, and Austria, and they inspect groups of army corps which would be united in war to form the armies which these generals would actually command. These generals also form the council of war or principal promotion board and committee of advice for the generalissimo and chief of the staff. In Germany and in Austria-Hungary the German Emperor and the Emperor-King respectively are virtual general inspectors-in-chief of the whole army, but in France and in Russia there is less unity of command. The Minister of War in Russia, in Germany, and in France is intended to be at the head of the supplies of the army in time of war, directing the administration from the capital, and not taking his place in the field.

The Prussian system, as far as the men are concerned, was adopted after the disasters of Prussia early in the century, in order to pass great numbers of men through the ranks without attracting attention by keeping up a large peace army. The system is now maintained by Germany, Austria, and France for a different reason. Such powers desire to have an enormous force for war, but, for budgetary reasons, to keep with the flag in time of peace the smallest force which is consistent with training the men sufficiently to enable them upon mobilization to be brought back to their regiments as real soldiers. It is these considerations which have induced the younger and more thoughtful of the Prussian generals to force on Germany a reduction of the period of infantry service to two years. The army in time of peace becomes a mere training-school for war, and the service is made as short as possible, given the necessity of turning out a man who for some years will continue to have the traditions of a soldier. It is a question whether something has not been sacrificed, in France, at all events, to uniformity. A longer period of training is undoubtedly necessary to make an efficient cavalry soldier than is necessary to make an efficient infantry private; and a man who has served about two and a half years only in a cavalry regiment cannot in the majority of cases be brought back into the cavalry after he has returned to civil life. Cavalry, in the modern armies, is likely to be a diminishing force as war goes on. The armies will enter upon war with a number of infantry which can be kept up, the losses of war being supplied by reserve men as good as the men of the first line; but each army will enter upon war with a force of cavalry which will be rapidly destroyed if it is much used, and which will not be replaced in the same manner. The reserve cavalry of which the French press boasts is a paper force, and the pretended mobilization of two of its regiments a farce. The French would take the field with the cavalry of the first line only, seventy-nine regiments of five hundred horses (all over six years old), or less than half the eighty-four thousand cavalry with which Napoleon marched in 1812. The same thing might possibly be said of artillery as is said of cavalry but for the fact that Switzerland tells a different story as to the possibility of rapidly training artillerymen with a considerable measure of success. The French improvised artillery of the latter part of the war of 1870 were also a creditable force, while it was discovered to be impossible to create a cavalry.

The efficiency of the reserves in France, Germany, and Austria is tested by the calling out of large portions of them every year for training, and they are found, as far as the infantry go, thoroughly competent for the work of war. The difficulties as regards cavalry are so obvious that it is becoming more and more recognized by Germany and by France that the cavalry will have to take the field as they stand in peace, and that their reserve men will have to be kept back with a view to the selection among them of those who are fit to serve as cavalry, and the relegation of the greater number to the train and other services where ability to ride and manage horses is more necessary than the smartness of a good cavalryman. France and Germany nominally look forward to the creation of two kinds of armies in time of war, one of the first line to take the field at once, and the other to guard the communications and garrison and support the fortresses, but in fact it is the intention of these powers to divide their armies into three—a field army of the first line, a field army of the second line, out of which fresh army corps will at once be created on the outbreak of war, and, thirdly, a territorial army for communications and for fortress purposes and as a last reserve. It is a portion of the French and German system that each army corps of the first line—and the same would be the case in war with the second line corps—has its separate organization of ammunition train and baggage train, and draws as largely as possible its supplies from its own territorial district.

The peace strength of the great modern armies is for France and Germany about five hundred thousand men each, and the war strength between four million and five million men each. The peace strength of Russia is now over nine hundred thousand men. Of the war armies the training is not uniformly complete, but there are in Germany, France, Austria, and Roumania sufficient reserves of clothing and rifles to equip the war armies of those powers for the field.

The cost of the system of a modern army is very much less than that of the old-fashioned armies. The United Kingdom spent till lately (including loan money) about eighteen million pounds sterling upon her army, India rarely less than fourteen million pounds sterling and an average of fifteen million pounds, and the British Empire, outside the United Kingdom and India, two million pounds, or an average of thirty-five million pounds sterling in all upon land forces. The expenditure of the United Kingdom upon land forces has been permanently increased to an enormous extent by the South African war and cannot now be estimated. The expenditure of France and Germany upon land forces is greatly less; and of Russia, large as is her peace army, less again. But France and Germany in the event of war can immediately each of them place millions of armed men in the field in proper army formation and with adequate command, whereas the United Kingdom can place a doubtful three corps in the field in India with great difficulty, and, in the true sense of the word, no organized force at all at home without an incredible amount of reorganization and waste of time after the declaration of war. It is contended by the authorities responsible for the British army that two army corps could be placed in the field at home, and elaborate paper arrangements exist for this purpose; but the facts are as I state them, and not as they are professed to be. It is pretended that three corps of regulars were despatched to South Africa. But the cavalry and artillery were, in fact, created by lavish expenditure a long time after the war had begun and after disasters caused by their non-existence.

Centralized as is the administrative system of France and Germany in everything except war, the necessities of modern warfare have forced upon the governments of those countries a large amount of decentralization as concerns military matters, and the less efficient military machines of the United Kingdom and of Russia are far more centralized than are the more efficient machines of Germany and of France. The army corps districts have in the latter countries so much autonomy as to recall to the political student the federal organization of the United States rather than the government of a highly centralized modern power. As soon, however, as war breaks out, the military states of time of peace would be grouped, and the four or five groups known as “armies,” also, of course, theoretically, brought together under the directing eye of the generalissimo. In the case, at all events, of Germany, unity of direction is perfectly combined with decentralization and individual initiative.