the methods resulting from these conditions, and the results achieved. Utterly dissimilar as were these two theatres of war, the underlying principles of victory are found, as always, to be the same. A firm faith in the offensive, concentration at the right time and against a suitable objective, surprise, and coopera- tion. The welding of all the forces, moral and physical, by the genius of the commander into one homogeneous whole, with one common inspiration, and directed to a common objective, namely victory. So far the two campaigns selected for illustration are in agreement with one another and with all the campaigns of the past; in every other respect the contrast is complete. On the one hand, in France and Flanders we find whole nations in arms, troops numbered by hundreds of thousands, and, as a necessary corollary, continuous lines, heavily fortified and without flanks to be turned, almost (one might say) without any vital line of communications, so complete were the railway and road systems available. As the result long periods of stagnation, infantry deriving no assistance from the mounted troops (except indeed when acting dismounted), and dependent in the first place upon artillery and latterly upon tanks as well. Movement, when at last it comes, is by slow stages, until when victory is won it is by the crushing of a nation rather than of the armies in the field-alone; for this was national war. On the other hand, in Palestine we find armies operating in a neutral arena, small in numbers with open flanks to the east, and each dependent upon a single line of railway; scope and objective not only for trained and disciplined mounted troops, making full use of their mobility, but also for light rapid-moving Arab levies harrying the Turkish communications, and achieving great strategical and tactical results, with but little loss to themselves, entirely by the power of movement. Artillery here plays but a secondary or even lesser r61e, for instead of congestion there is spacs space in plenty, and when that element is present light troops come in to their own; activity takes the place of force, and victory is over the field armies rather than over the civil population.
Between the two extremes of the western European front and Palestine lay such other campaigns as Mesopotamia and Mace- donia; but these, though interesting enough in themselves, add nothing to our present purpose and seem only to emphasize the same theory in less convincing form namely that each theatre of war, by its own distinctive physical features and climate, influences, if it does not actually dictate, the tactics by which battles and campaigns are won. Otherwise war might become an exact science instead of the most difficult of the arts.
This war of 1914-8, then, by its very size and variety, has solved no tactical problem, has answered none of the questions left by S. Africa in 1890-1902, or Manchuria in 1904-5, but, like all its predecessors, has raised many new ones. Strategy is still the art of bringing the enemy to battle on terms which are disadvantageous to him; tactics are still the methods employed for his destruction. In former wars this most desirable object was accomplished by a judicious combination of artillery, cavalry and infantry. To-day the object is the same, but the means have been complicated to a degree which in 1910 was altogether beyond human imagination. Railways have completed the work of Carnot and the French revolutionary generals, and made national war a complete reality; but through the perfec- tions of the internal-combustion engine war itself has taken on a third dimension. If a great master was formerly required properly to handle and combine the comparatively primitive means at his disposal, how much greater should the artist now be who is to use, and not to waste, the much more complicated tools which science has now placed in his hands. As science advances the art becomes more complex, things tend to become greater than men, and use more difficult than invention. Always change has followed along the same line, but so rapid have been the latest steps that the armies of 1921 were further from those of 1821 than Napoleon's armies were from those of Hannibal; yet the human imagination and capacity remain as they were two thousand years ago.
All through the ages changes in tactics have been brought about by improvements in the means of killing. Latterly
science has advanced with giant strides, yet the mechanism of slaughter appears to be only in its infancy. How difficult, therefore, to foresee even with what weapons later wars may be fought, and what may be the next steps in tactical evolution. It is easy, indeed, to let the imagination run riot, and to picture whole populations destroyed by infernal machines easily and efficiently controlled by wireless waves. The pebble is to be thrown in at Berlin, Stockholm, Moscow or anywhere else you will, and the influence carried to the uttermost parts of the earth. Equally easy it is to persuade oneself that there will be no change, and the next war will begin exactly where the last left off. History teaches us, unfortunately, that neither of these views is likely to be exactly fulfilled. Possibly they serve as useful correctives one to the other; but the difficulty is to strike the happy medium. When so many new questions have been raised and so few old ones have been answered, only one definite new principle seems to have been established. It is that, more than ever before, tactical methods must vary in accordance with the theatre of operations, and that methods suitable to one country are unsuitable to another. Indeed even this is hardly new, since it is clear that methods which sufficed to overthrow the Mahdi at Omdurman would have been quite unsuitable against the Boers in S. Africa. A short time ago we were satisfied with two classes " normal warfare " and " savage warfare"; that is to say, war against highly trained, well-equipped professional armies or against primitive races, of which every able-bodied man was an ill-equipped untrained soldier. Those distinctions no longer suffice. Here there is an initial difficulty, for in trying to imagine the tactics of the future we must first imagine the conditions under which war will be fought. Will they resemble the conditions of France and Flanders, of Macedonia, Mesopotamia or Palestine?
Conditions for Future Wars. One thing is certain, that the wit of man cannot devise a system which will be equally suitable for all. Principles there are, but nothing more. This is especially a British difficulty, for no army of the world is called upon to fight under such varying conditions as is the British; moreover, the British army of modern history has never fought in its own country. It is only necessary to reflect upon the history of the World War of 1914-8 to realize that, while Germans fought almost entirely on their own frontiers, if not in Germany, French- men in France, Italians in Italy, Turks and Bulgarians in Turkey and Bulgaria, the British army and troops from the British Dominions and India fought all over the world. French troops, it is true, fought in many distant campaigns, but except at Salonika the oversea campaigns were preponderatingly British, and cannot be considered apart from the British Dominions and India. The only other countries at all in like position are America and Japan, with few extra-territorial commitments.
As a further branch of this same problem we must for a moment consider the troubles of organization and equipment which are inseparable from those of tactics. The French army exists for the defence of France, the Italian army for the defence of Italy. Defence, no doubt, includes offensive action, especially in the case of Germany, but how simple these tasks seem compared with that imposed upon Great Britain with all her world-wide interests. It is easy to see with what confidence the general staffs of continental European nations can address themselves to their well-defined problems, and how much more complex are the manifold problems of the British general staff. Others can fortify their frontiers. Not so Great Britain or her Dominions, who must always be prepared to fight oversea in some theatre of war which cannot be foreseen with any degree of confidence or certainty. That is one fundamental and special complication, as the result of which tactics, organization and even equipment must always, from a British point of view, be something of a compromise, ready and able to be adapted to special conditions on the actual outbreak of war.
Let us consider for a moment what is to be the future of trench warfare. Will future wars reproduce the conditions of 1914 which led up to it? Will it be the normal warfare of the future, or was it no more than a passing phenomenon? Is it
