Part 10 (2/2)

To-day the temptation is much stronger, the facility greater and the peril less.

Now, therefore, combat exacts more moral cohesion, greater unity than previously. A last remark on the difficulty of obtaining it will complete the demonstration.

Since the invention of fire arms, the musket, the rifle, the cannon, the distances of mutual aid and support have increased among the different arms. [31]

Besides, the facility of communications of all kinds permits the a.s.sembling on a given territory of enormous forces. For these reasons, as we have stated, battle fields have become immense.

Supervision becomes more and more difficult. Direction being more distant tends more often to escape from the supreme commanders and the subordinate leaders. The certain and inevitable disorder, which a body of troops always presents in action, is with the moral effect of modern appliances, becoming greater every day. In the midst of the confusion and the vacillation of firing lines, men and commanding officers often lose each other.

Troops immediately and hotly engaged, such as companies and squads, can maintain themselves only if they are well-organized and serve as supports or rallying points to those out of place. Battles tend to become now, more than they have ever been, the battles of men.

This ought not to be true! Perhaps. But the fact is that it is true.

Not all troops are immediately or hotly engaged in battle. Commanding officers always try to keep in hand, as long as possible, some troops capable of marching, acting at any moment, in any direction. To-day, like yesterday, like to-morrow, the decisive action is that of formed troops. Victory belongs to the commander who has known how to keep them in good order, to hold them, and to direct them.

That is incontrovertible.

But commanders can hold out decisive reserves only if the enemy has been forced to commit his.

In troops which do the fighting, the men and the officers closest to them, from corporal to battalion commander, have a more independent action than ever. As it is alone the vigor of that action, more independent than ever of the direction of higher commanders, which leaves in the hands of higher commanders available forces which can be directed at a decisive moment, that action becomes more preponderant than ever. Battles, now more than ever, are battles of men, of captains. They always have been in fact, since in the last a.n.a.lysis the execution belongs to the man in ranks. But the influence of the latter on the final result is greater than formerly. From that comes the maxim of to-day: The battles of men.

Outside of the regulations on tactics and discipline, there is an evident necessity for combating the hazardous predominance of the action of the soldier over that of the commander. It is necessary to delay as long as possible, that instant which modern conditions tend to hasten--the instant when the soldier gets from under the control of the commander.

This completes the demonstration of the truth stated before: Combat requires to-day, in order to give the best results, a moral cohesion, a unity more binding than at any other time. [32] It is as true as it is clear, that, if one does not wish bonds to break, one must make them elastic in order to strengthen them.

CHAPTER VII

PURPOSE OF THIS STUDY WHAT WOULD BE NECESSARY TO COMPLETE IT

Any other deductions on this subject must come from the meditations of the reader. To be of value in actual application such deductions should be based upon study of modern combat, and that study cannot be made from the accounts of historians alone.

The latter show the action of troop units only in a general way.

Action in detail and the individual action of the soldier remain enveloped in a cloud of dust, in narratives as in reality. Yet these questions must be studied, for the conditions they reveal should be the basis of all fighting methods, past, present and future.

Where can data on these questions be found?

We have very few records portraying action as clearly as the report on the engagement at the Pont de l'Hopital by Colonel Bugeaud. Such stories in even greater detail, for the smallest detail has its importance, secured from partic.i.p.ants and witnesses who knew how to see and knew how to remember, are what is necessary in a study of the battle of to-day.

The number of killed, the kind and the character of wounds, often tell more than the longest accounts. Sometimes they contradict them. We want to know how man in general and the Frenchman in particular fought yesterday. Under the pressure of danger, impelled by the instinct for self-preservation, did he follow, make light of, or forget the methods prescribed or recommended? Did he fight in the manner imposed upon him, or in that indicated to him by his instinct or by his knowledge of warfare?

When we have the answers to these questions we shall be very near to knowing how he will conduct himself to-morrow, with and against appliances far more destructive to-day than those of yesterday. Even now, knowing that man is capable only of a given quant.i.ty of terror, knowing that the moral effect of destruction is in proportion to the force applied, we are able to predict that, to-morrow less than ever will studied methods be practicable. Such methods are born of the illusions of the field of fire and are opposed to the teachings of our own experience. To-morrow, more than ever, will the individual valor of the soldier and of small groups, be predominant. This valor is secured by discipline.

The study of the past alone can give us a true perception of practical methods, and enable us to see how the soldier will inevitably fight to-morrow.

So instructed, so informed, we shall not be confused; because we shall be able to prescribe beforehand such methods of fighting, such organization, such dispositions as are seen to be inevitable. Such prescriptions may even serve to regulate the inevitable. At any rate they will serve to reduce the element of chance by enabling the commanding officer to retain control as long as possible, and by releasing the individual only at the moment when instinct dominates him.

This is the only way to preserve discipline, which has a tendency to go to pieces by tactical disobedience at the moment of greatest necessity.

<script>