MAURICE'S MILITARY PRIZE ESSAY.
WLITARY questions are never likely to be very popular, but ji it is now more probable that such attractiveness as they possess will increase. The enlarged circle of readers is not due wholly to the great wars, or to the Autumn Manoeuvres, or to the military interest aroused by the Volunteers. These causes have helped to swell the total of persons who read military books, but there is another reason why the soldier-author finds a larger public. A change of unknown extent has come over the method of fighting. It has been brought about mainly by the invention of a breech-loading small-arm and a far-ranging field gun, but chiefly by the former. The truth is, that the deadliness of the breech-loader appeals to the imagination. It excites alike fear and curiosity. All the best heads in the military world assert that it will produce, nay, that it has produced, changes ; and we poor haulers want to know how far these innovations will stretch, and in what degree the novel tactics will affect our little Army. Do the new arms and new conditions militate for or against us ? If we are hurried into war, or go into it with delibera- tion, what sort of figure will British Infantry cut upon the field of battle ? Shall we be able to retain our solid yet slender formations, our long-stretching two-deep lines ? Mast we give-up fighting "shoulder to shoulder," and disperse the grand old line into a swarm of skirmishers? The public—such non-pro- fessional public, that is, as troubles itself with "soldiering "- entertains a dread lest that mode of fighting so familiar to its imagination may have to be abandoned, and it is exercised as to the substitute which will be provided, by lack or design.
Moved by these or similar considerations, the Duke of Welling- ton last year pat up to competition £100 for a Military Essay which should throw all the newest lights around the perplexing problem. He defined the subject thus :—" The system of field manceuvres best adapted for enabling our troops to meet a Con- tinental army ;" and he further defined the sub-divisions or sub- heads, restricting the essayist to specific investigations. The offer of that prize is one sign of that enlarged interest to which we have referred. There were many competitors, all officers, and many good dissertations, but the best, according to the judge, Colonel Bruce Hamley, was from the pen of Lieutenant Frederick, son of the late Professor Maurice. We are not prepared to say that it solves the troubled questions raised, but we are prepared to say that this brilliant and most readable treatise clearly sets forth the momentous issues, and points out the direction in which not only military chiefs, but statesmen must go, if our Army is to be brought up to that standard which will permit it to enter war on a level, in excellence at least, with contemporary armies.
The governing condition is this. Soldiers are now armed with accurate, long-range, rapidly loaded weapons, and the value of Infantry fire, always important, is vastly increased. But that is far from all. A rifle, in good hands, will kill or wound say at five hundred yards, not merely one man out of a mass in which he is standing, but the one man alone. Consequently fire which might miss the single skirmisher is certain to strike a body. The difference between firing at a single target and at fifty placed side by side is known to all who have ever practised at the butts. Nearly every shot will tell on the long line, only some shots upon the separated targets. At the battle of Gravelotte an experiment of this kind was tried with horrible results. The Prussian Guards formed to attack St. Privet in company columns, at the most six, at the least four deep. They were remote from the French chasse- pots, about fifteen hundred paces. In ten minutes some six thousand Guardsmen were hors de combat, smitten by the leaden hail from the distant hill-side. They retired out of range, and it is recorded that stringent orders forbad any attempt to attack again in what up to that moment was the orthodox formation. Now would it fare better with a line ? No doubt the mark would be less in depth, but it would still be analogous to a closely packed row of Wimble- don targets arranged for volley-firing. Moreover, there is this difficulty. Could any known infantry move regularly in line over 1,500 yards under fire and arrive in a condition to grapple with an enemy ? Is there any example of such a feat ? The only approximate experience we can call to mind is the advance of the Light Division at the Alma. But no one will venture to say that, after entering the enclosures, it ever was a line, any more than they will doubt that its transitory success would have been permanent had the first division, or only the Guards' Brigade been promptly sent
forward in support. We agree with Lieutenant Maurice that "an attack in rigid line, except for short distances, never was possible against properly posted enemies." But attacks cannot be restricted to short distances ; and thus the destructive effects of fire, com- bined with the old difficulty of rapid regular prolonged movements in line, discredit that formation altogether as a formation of attack. What, then, is to be done? Columns are infinitely more perilous, in fact, are instinct with defeat. Nearly seventy years ago we smote down columns with rigid lines, prepared, at the fit moment, to shout and attack at short distances. If, therefore, we are not to fight on the defensive wholly, if we are ever to attack—and attacks win victories—we must devise some method free from the certain death which attends the dense formation, and more man- ageable than the line. Is there any method other than that born on the bloody battle-fields of 1870,—the attack in open order? It is easy to write it on paper—attacks in open order—but if the reader has the faintest conception of all that it implies in the shape of training and leadership, he will experience some qualms of anxiety for the future of the British Army, an army whose very distinguishing excellence, at present, rests on the foundation of drill, solid, no doubt, but intended to make officers and men perfect in movements no longer possible within deadly rifle-
range. Lieutenant Maurice repeats more than once the assertion that it is no longer prudent to restrict the training of troops to drill, for the simple reason that drill is now not so much a preparation for war, as a school of discipline. If that be so, and we see no reason to doubt it, then parade-exercises less than ever will teach what is essential in warfare. And it follows from the altered conditions, that every nerve should be strained to fit the individual soldier for his new duties. We have already drawn this consequence from evidence accumulated during and after the war. Lieutenant Maurice is plainly impressed with the necessity of attending to that lesson. As soon as you pass from a system employing blocks of men to fight in machine-like order, and enter on a system which dissolves the collective blocks into separate units, the culture of the soldier is imperative. In the remark of an acute observer, who says that every Prussian is a petit tacticien, the whole change is indicated. The principles now insisted on are not radically different from those which animated the famous Light Infantry of the Peninsula, and Lieutenant Maurice is right in vindicating the claims of Colonel Gawler. But the difference now is that the whole Army must be more or less a Light Division, and each soldier a master, as far as he can be, of the essentials of good skirmishing. Lieutenant Maurice insists that the free action of every rank must be fully developed, in order that each may more effectually co-operate with and carry out the work assigned by its immediate superior. "All training must tend to develop the qualities which are essential to such a manner of action. The habit of command must cease to be the habit of exact prescription, and become the habit of clear in- struction. Men must be constantly accustomed to act under orders which they will have to interpret according to circum- stances; otherwise, when they find themselves under the necessity of deciding, they will think it essential to decide absolutely for themselves, instead of deciding how they can best carry out the views of those who command them." It will be seen how far we shall have got from the habits of the present when we have adopted views like these. But for our parts, after much reflection, we see no choice. Perhaps the reader will think that, under existing circumstances, purchase was abolished only just in time. '
We dwell on this point because it is really the core of the ques- tion. Practically what it comes to is this,—more brains and more character must be put into our Army, from top to bottom. In action, unable to live in close order under fire, a battalion, a regi- ment, or a brigade, if needful, finds itself dissolved into a shower of skirmishers. Although not left absolutely to their own resources, since officers, and serjeants, and corporals are there to help, stimu- late, direct, restrain, what is to become of the men, scattered over a wide expanse, probably of broken country, unless they have those qualities which enable them to exhibit alike self-reli- ance and co-operative activity? It is remarked of the German troops that they were so well trained that they developed new modes of fighting under stress of events. What we have to do is to produce a similar Army. We believe in the unlimited capacity of British troops to adapt themselves to any mode of fighting. But the capacity must be developed, not restrained within hide- bound forms, no longer applicable in actual collision with a foe. The whole question lies there, in the individual education of the soldier, so that on the field of battle there may be, as it were, a hierarchy of volitions blending together for the accomplishment of a common end,—victory. Lieutenant Maurice is probably right in contending for the retention of that old system of defensive fighting which has for centuries won renown for the British Army,—defence up to the point which ensures victory for the attack. He rightly considers that British soldiers will bear that " pounding " from artillery which is the orthodox mode of "preparing" an enemy's position for the onset of infantry ; and he is somewhat apprehensive of the consequences that might ensue, were our troops, trained as they are, to be flung loose into the arena. "A certain liberty of action for subordinates has always been necessary in taking the offensive. That liberty of action must now be very largely increased. But on the defensive it has always been essential for the General to have nearly the whole of his forces perfectly under immediate command. Circumstances have partly modified this, no doubt, since it seems essential, according to the evidence we have, that the means of counter-attack, even within a position, should be chiefly by skirmishing lines ; but the main fact remains as before. For this reason, then, if for no other, until a greater manceuvring facility, due as much to organisation as to training, has been acquired by our Army, the defensive would seem to be the role we ought to seek." Nevertheless we cannot rest content with that. "In moments of anxiety," the Duke of Wurtemberg shrewdly remarks, "the snail, it is true, shrinks into its house, and the tortoise into its coat of mail ; but for that reason neither tortoises nor snails will ever dictate laws to the world."
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