1914 and again in 1918. On each occasion they aimed at the envelopment of the enemy forces, for the very successes which had brought the Germans so close to Paris afforded to a com- mander, sufficiently skilful to seize it, the opportunity to deliver an enveloping counter-attack the very opening he needed. Thus it is clear that even to-day, provided the opposing armies are well led, neither can have the monopoly of enveloping move- ment or fire development, but that, as has always been the case in war, " everything must be the result of combination and talent." So it is that so soon as a great commander finds that, for one reason or another, the initiative has passed from him he will think only of the counter-offensive whereby he is to regain it. He cannot wait, like Wellington at Salamanca, or Napoleon at Austerlitz, and watch his enemy commit a fatal error, for modern battle-fields are too vast, and mistakes are committed too far from the field of action. His aeroplanes will no doubt bring him much useful information, but before he can turn it to advantage the whole situation may have altered. 1 He cannot, therefore, so plan his battle as to make the action of his reserve, or striking force, dependent upon some chance or fleeting opportunity. Instead he must form some new plan, some new combination of his own, and carry it through with undiminishcd audacity and resolution. It is, perhaps, this blindness of the commander which has brought about the greatest change of all in modern grand tactics, for he cannot now survey the whole even of his own force, and much more than formerly he is de- pendent upon his subordinates, who must, in Napoleon's phrase, " understand his system " if he is to be well served.
But there is another aspect of the matter. With weapons of still longer range and greater accuracy than our modern artillery, with small-bore weapons of still greater rapidity of fire than the Maxim or the Lewis gun, fronts will become more and more extended, and the establishment of continuous lines will be possible even to comparatively small armies. It will be easier to use natural obstacles for the protection of flanks, which will become more difficult to find and to turn. In this respect the defence would appear to have gained a distinct advantage over the attack, in that frontal assaults are likely to become more inevitable. The indirect result of the increased volume of fire seems, therefore, to be more important than the direct effect. Against this it is possible to put forward the suggestion that frontal attacks are actually less to be feared than they were. Formerly they had two disadvantages first, that they were desperately costly in life ; secondly, that at the best they resulted merely in the tactical retirement of the enemy, not to his destruc- tion or to any great and decisive strategical result. Now, how- ever, owing to the same increase of fire power which has strength- ened the defence, it is possible for the assailant to make all his dispositions for attack out of sight of and unperceived by any enemy who elects to stand purely on the defensive. Little more than a hundred years ago Napoleon drew up his army in front of La Belle Alliance in full view of Wellington on the slopes of Waterloo; a few years earlier Marmont had manceuvred in front of Wellington at Salamanca and met his doom exactly as had Kutusov, for exactly the same reason, at Austerlitz. All this is now changed, and in 1918 Ludendorff showed how, even without command of or even superiority in the air, it is possible for the assailant to make his arrangements for attack without being detected; and this instance is the more remarkable since his intention had been foreseen and his troop movements were at least suspected. It is this power of massing unseen against the portion of the front selected for attack that gives the assailant his principal chance of success, even should the attack not come as a complete surprise. Moreover, the very extension of the front which, by our hypothesis, has rendered the frontal attack inevitable, makes it extremely difficult for the defender to ensure that his reserves are best placed for resistance. Even with superiority in the air and good intelligence, a commander who has lost the initiative and has been forced to stand on the defen- sive cannot be absolutely certain when the blow will fall. With
1 Moreover, so many movements will be carried out at night that even the aeroplanes will miss a great deal.
his widely extended lines, it is more than probable that he ha? several delicate points to guard, failure at any one of which would give the enemy some considerable strategical advantage. Hence the disposal of the reserves intended to be used for defence becomes a matter of extreme difficulty, and unless the assailant's, intention is exactly anticipated, as is not very probable, much priceless time must be lost in moving them to the point of dan- ger, and meanwhile the assailant may have secured an initial advantage of which it will be extremely difficult to deprive him.
This brings us to the second weakness of frontal attacks thej difficulty of winning any real strategical result. That weakness. was very real so long as the only result of defeat was to compel' an army, as in the Russo-Japanese War, to retire along its line: of communications to a fresh position somewhat nearer to its base. But with modern lines, extended even more widely than in Manchuria, a new tactical idea has been evolved. Partly owing to our enlarged ideas on the massing and use of artillery, partly owing to the improved engines of destruction which brought a great accession of strength to the attack, and partly- owing to the tactical use of aeroplanes, there grew up that idea of a " break-through " which was completely realized in the World' War only in Palestine, but which came near to accomplishment; in France in March 1918. But perhaps the factor which con- tributes most to the chance of a successful " break-through " is: that very difficulty in the disposal and handling of reserves to' which reference has just been made. In this connexion it must! be remembered that tanks have given the attacking force anj altogether new power of pushing home an initial success with; rapidity and vigour. In place of the slow-moving infantry! which laboured painfully through the shell-torn swamps of the Somme or the Passchendaele ridges, we may well sec a strong force of tanks, able to move at a steady pace for several hours on; end, turning defeat into rout, disorganizing communications! and spreading panic before reserves can be brought from dis- tant parts of a widely extended battle-line. Hence it would seem that just those developments which give to the defender the; power to defend his flanks and to guard against envelopment' have at the same time given to the frontal attack a greater! chance of success than it ever had.
In this case it may be asked, How should the commander who has lost the initiative and been compelled to stand on the defen-j sive attempt to recover control of his campaign ? The answer is,; by exactly the same methods as those by which Foch recovered it in July 1918 that is to say, by counter-attack. There is nol other means. And this is true whether the attack be enveloping' or frontal, and it is if possible more essentially true than ever before, since, owing to the distance to be covered, reserves which are held for purely defensive action are in great danger ofj being too late. Not only can they not win a battle; they may I well be too late to save it. Thus even the briefest consideration of defence brings us to the old conclusion that attack must be met, by counter-attack, that offence is still the soul of defence, and that' the true role of the reserves in a defensive action is to convert it into an. offensive one. These are but the oldest principles of battle fighting, true from the days of Alexander the Great until to-day, but always put into practice by new means and new methods. This is the essence of Marshal Foch's own appreciation of Napoleon (London Times, May 5 1921):
" Often during the darkest days of the war we used to ask our- selves what Napoleon would do with the armies of to-day. . . . This is what he would have said : ' You have millions of men ; I never had them. You have railways, telegraphs, wireless, aircraft, long- range artillery, poison gases; I had none of them. Yet you make' nothing of them. Stand aside while I show you how to use them.' ! In a month, or perhaps two, he would have changed everything, reorganized everything, employed everything in some new way, and | crushed the bewildered enemy."
There in a few words we have the marshal's views on his great predecessor. It is not that he would have discovered some spectacular and dramatic way of winning the war, but merely that he would have bent scientific discovery to his own ends and put each new invention to its proper tactical use. Thus he would have won battles, and when he had finished his
