INVENTION AND WAR.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR:]
Sta,—There are several questions suggested in Colonel F. N. Maude's article in the April Contemporary Review which are of special interest, yet, I think, have hardly been clearly explained. Of course the various weapons used from the earliest times to the present day have little or nothing to do with the casualty-lists, because the great truth is that man, as we know him, can stand a certain amount of nerve-strain and no more, and it matters very little to him whether this is caused by bows and arrows or cordite shells. , On the contrary.
I think it can be shown that the earlier weapons were, in fact, the more destructive, because they were silent, for every one knows who has been on active service that the explosions of artillery fire have quite another effect than the mere physical injury they cause, in the " jumpiness " induced by them. It is well known that the little one-pound shell of the Vicars- Maxim gun (the porn-porn) did uncommonly little physical injury, yet there is probably no weapon which the men enjoyed less. Consequently it may be reasonably assumed that the breaking-point of nerve-tension is arrived at earlier with less physical loss in our later battles than in the olden ones. Moreover, modern scientists assert that our nerves to-day are not as strong as they were in the past, but of this I know nothing. The fact, however, is known that the proportion of killed and wounded to uninjured men is very much the same from Poictiers to Magersfontein, taking Blenheim and Mars la Tour on the way. Roughly speaking, the time when men find it convenient to take up a safer position, or find that they have important business elsewhere, is arrived at when from fifteen to twenty per cent, of their comrades have been killed or wounded. There was in earlier days often greater slaughter than this, but this was invariably caused by the amiable habit sometimes adopted of killing the prisoners. It was not, in fact, the casualties of the firing-line, but those which occurred when the fighting, as fighting, had finished. But Colonel Maude is undoubtedly correct when he says that one of the potent causes which will eventually put an end to war is expense. There are two, in fact,—expense and the shrinkage of the world.
In respect to the first of these, it will certainly be soon dis- covered by the peoples that the enormous extravagance of modern arms is futile in effect, in that they do not even kill more of the enemy than the cheaper ones of the " good old days," but that this expenditure has the unpleasant boomerang effect of coming back even on to the conquerors. The futility must be soon realised by "the men in the street," as it is now by all military students, and it will then probably be proposed at a Hague Conference, not that the armies shall be limited or reduced, but that the arms shall be. That this can be done we have proof in that even now we do not allow shells of less than one pound in weight, and there is no more reason for this than for saying we shall not have shells of more than fifty pounds. The effect of this in limiting expenditure would be immediate and salutary, for though in the firing-line (and this would satisfy the bloodthirsty ones) not a drummer-boy the less would be killed, yet the saving in material expenditure would be enormous. It has not generally been noticed that the casualty-list in modern wars is not represented completely by the sad register published in the daily papers after a battle. On the contrary, the withdrawal of many tens of millions of pounds from the current capital of the country concerned has the effect, direct though not immediate, of causing the death of many innocent women and children in crowded centres of industry who never heard a shot fired, and probably never knew why a shot should be fired. These may be called the post-bellum victims of war, and they should as certainly be added to the casualty-list as much as any of those who take part in the shooting. It is very unlikely that this fact will remain for long unrecognised by the peoples, and when you add to it the absurdity that with all this Gargantuan expendi- ture not a soldier of the enemy the more is disabled, it cannot be doubted but that this wastage will be terminated.
But I have said there is another potent reason for supposing that national competition ending in battles will soon cease.
I may be allowed to mention incidentally the fact that war, though in some ways ennobling, in that it presents an ideal to the peoples somewhat larger than individual success, must be condemned from a scientific point of view because it causes the negation of the principle of the survival of the fittest. It will be never known how much France lost by the sacrifice of her more virile citizens in the Napoleonic Wars, nor can we estimate the loss to England of the death of some of my comrades in South Africa. If we could only put the cowards and wasters in front—well, things might be different. The other potent agency making for peace is the shrinkage of the world. I have before me a letter from John Howard, the philanthropist, to my grandfather, dated Venice, 1786, in which he says: "I hasten home, but I have still about thirty days before me!" And during an election campaign in noq the leaders of some of my supporters among the Trade-Unions were almost in daily communication with French and Italian Labour organisations. In fact, in 1786 an English county was practically as large as a European country to-day in all matters of intercommunication, social intercourse, and the like.
In conclusion, I am glad to think that so spirited a writer as Colonel Maude realises the trend of things. I have tried here only to annotate his remarks in the Contemporary and in your article of April 4th.—I am, Sir, &Lc.,
FRANCIS P. FLETCHER-VANE, Captain.
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