five, the British long-range field gun (for as such the 6o-pounder must be regarded), and indeed the German heavy howitzers had done all that had been expected of them, but one and all failed to compete successfully with the new factor. Infantry, even with the best available artillery support, could not be expected to assault with success the hostile lines, which were daily becoming stronger; and cavalry, which had been invalua- ble during the retreat of Aug. and the early days of Sept. 1914, as well as in the subsequent advance, could find no scope when Nov. and Dec. came. No vulnerable flank was offered, nor was there the slightest opportunity for those daring raids against the hostile communications which have sometimes offered such dangerous attraction to the cavalry leader. The conditions were indeed the exact opposite of those in S. Africa during 1890-1902. Similarly, the German army had been able to prove that the theory of tactical envelopment was the inevitable corollary of machine-guns and quick-firing artillery, for frontal attack was far too costly, and Joffre and French and their lieu- tenants had once more proved to the world that counter-attack was the soul of successful defence. It was not that the principles or theories were wrong; so far as they went they were correct enough, but the trouble was that they did not carry sufficiently far. Their basis was manoeuvre, and suddenly it was found that manceuvre was no longer possible, but that it had been displaced by the tedious processes of siege warfare. Infantry was still the conquering arm, but was now less dependent upon cav- alry and even more dependent upon engineers and artillery; while the Air Force was rapidly acquiring an importance which, though foreseen, had in peace always been put aside by consid- erations of expense. It was at this stage, too, that the bomb first made its reappearance as an infantry weapon, and its use increased to such an extent that, towards the end of the battle of the Somme, in the autumn of 1916, it threatened to supersede the rifle. Many new auxiliary services grew up, many new weapons were invented, and leading men in every branch of science devoted their great talents to the destructive art of war.
Yet amidst so much which was new the great central problem of war remained unchanged, for it was, as it always has been, the destruction of the enemy's field army. In the new condi- tions which had arisen this meant great innovations in army organization. The cry was for more technical troops of all kinds. A third field company (engineers) and a pioneer battalion were added to each British division; the signal service was greatly extended, and, above all, the demand for more and heavier artillery was urgent. Every month, almost every week, new needs were discovered and fresh demands from the armies in the field were reaching the British authorities at home, who were already more than fully employed in equipping Territorial divisions and in raising new armies. Put quite broadly, however, the problem of the capture of the German fortified lines, which could not be turned, was one of improved material and im- proved cooperation between artillery and infantry, each with the attendant services necessary to efficiency. That is the main thesis to which it will be necessary to return again and again.
Artillery and Infantry Cooperation. At this point it will be as well to look backward and to trace very briefly the history of the evolution of artillery and infantry cooperation for the pre- vious twenty years or so. It is the story of the contest between artillery and field fortification, which in some respects resembles that between the gun and armour at sea, or between ships and forts. It is, in fact, the old contest between attack and defence. For many years before the S. African War it was an accepted axiom of combined tactics that any attack by infantry must be preceded by an artillery bombardment, of which the principal purpose was partly to overcome the enemy's artillery and partly to shake the moral of his infantry. Accustomed as we have become during the last few years to think of guns at least in hundreds, it seems strange to turn to the official account of the battle of Magersfontein (1899) and to read that at 4.30 P.M., on the day preceding the attack which was to take place at dawn, the British force opened fire with one 4-7 gun, one battery of howitzers and three of field artillery, which " shelled Magers-
fontein Hill for two hours. . . . Though his guns had pro- voked no reply from the Boer, Lord Methuen felt confident that they had not only inflicted loss, but had produced consid- erable moral effect upon the Boer commander. This, however, was not the case. The fire had but one important result, that of warning the enemy that an attack was imminent." The fact was that in those days military science overestimated the powers of a few guns and underestimated those of hastily con- structed entrenchments, which were then in their infancy and almost an unconsidered feature of war. Again and again the same thing occurred, but so difficult is it to learn from any experience but one's own that we find the Japanese army making exactly the same mistake some four years later. Then, at the action of Ta-shih-chiao, the Japanese, with a vastly stronger artillery than the British had possessed at Magersfontein, bom- barded the Russian right for several hours. So heavy was the fire on this occasion that General Stakelberg declined to occupy his trenches, and reported to his senior officer that, should he be forced to do so in order to repel an infantry attack, he would certainly suffer very heavy loss. But no infantry attack devel- oped, Stakelberg's troops remained under cover, and the losses inflicted by the bombardment were almost negligible. From these and many similar . experiences the theory was deduced that, in order to get results from the fire of the guns, the artillery bombardment must be accompanied by an infantry attack. To cooperate successfully, the action of the two arms must be simultaneous instead of successive, for only in this way could the enemy be compelled to man his defences, to show himself above his parapets, and to expose himself to shrapnel fire. In the words of the French regulations of 1913: "Artillery no longer prepares the infantry attack, but supports it." The old term, " artillery preparation," belonged to a dead language.
Such, in a few words, was the generally accepted theory of infantry and artillery cooperation at the beginning of the World War, and during the earlier stages it proved to be remarkably correct. It was not until the field armies found themselves brought up short by deep trenches protected by wire entangle- ments, furnished with strong revetment, and strengthened by dug-outs, that the experts discovered that, curiously enough, new conditions must be met by old methods, and the discarded, not to say discredited, " artillery preparation " was revived.
Up to this point, too, it may be fairly claimed that the actual artillery material with which the various armies took the field in the autumn of 1914 had stood the test well, although natu- rally subjected to the restrictions on ground of expense which are inevitable in times of peace. Each artillery, English, French and German, had, however, developed on somewhat different lines, corresponding to the mentality of the different nations, their theories of battle fighting and the amount of money avail- able for each experiment. Each of the three armies had a mobile field gun, England the i8-pounder, France her famous 75-millimetre and Germany the 77. France, thinking always of rapid movement either in retreat or advance, and always refus- ing to consider the possibility of standing on the defensive, had concentrated on the light, rapid-firing and very accurate field gun, with an organization on a divisional basis. England also believed in the divisional organization, but in addition to the i8-pdr. she had the 4- 5-in. howitzer for high-angle fire, which had been found so necessary in S. Africa, and the 6o-pdr., whose long range, commanding the roads and often forcing premature deployment of the German infantry, was invaluable during the retreat. The German army alone possessed heavy howitzers and high explosive, no doubt because the general staff always considered the possibility of being forced to engage permanent fortifications on the French and Belgian frontiers, but it was weak exactly in those points upon which the French and English had specialized. The 77-mm. was inferior as a field gun both to the 75-mm. and to the i8-pdr.; it possessed nothing corresponding to the 4- 5-in. howitzer; and its heavy artillery, while possessing great shell power, was lacking in range. Thus it came about that, when expense was no longer a ruling factor, each army began to borrow ideas from the other and to adopt material
