CHAPTER V.
THE WAR BETWEEN RUSSIA AND JAPAN.
In devoting a whole chapter, and an important one, to the study of the Russo-Japanese war, I have not merely yielded to a very natural desire to examine events which are so much the more interesting on account of their recent occurrence. I have been particularly led to do so by the firm belief that this war abounds in experimental lessons in strategy and tactics, that it is also valuable for its numerous teachings regarding errors to be avoided, and that for divers reasons it demanded an examination in detail.
So far as the errors are concerned, we can say at once, even before an actual examination, that the number committed by Russia was beyond measure.
In the night of February 8-9, 1904, Japanese torpedo-boats attacked the Russian squadron anchored in the outer harbor of Port Arthur. This beginning of the campaign, as savage as it was deceitful, without preliminary declaration of war, might well surprise and afflict sensitive souls; yet, in the logic of events, it was the natural consequence of the Japanese temperament and the English education of their navy.
This carelessness on the part of the Russian sailors, their absolute neglect of the most elementary precautions in the matter of watchfulness, in the midst of a time of political tension, despite the suggestive warnings of English naval wars, have everywhere been charged against them as a grave fault which weighed heavily upon all their succeeding operations.
Their lack of care, undoubtedly blameworthy, dear as its cost to Russia was (for by the putting out of action of two battleships, the Cesarevitch and Retvizan, and the protected cruiser Pallada, she found herself from the start in a condition of undoubted inferiority), is nevertheless only a fault of detail, only a single term, among many others, in a long series of errors of the Russian policy, which can all be classed as the result of an absolute lack of understanding of the preponderant importance of naval preparation for war with Japan.
THE POLITICAL STRATEGY OF RUSSIA.
The first of the series of errors occurred ten years before, when by her lease of Port Arthur, followed by the invasion of Manchuria, Russia inaugurated an active policy of expansion in the Far East.
From that moment, for two chief reasons, a war was inevitable, sooner or later, between Japan and Russia.
The self-esteem of Japan, a new recruit to Western civilization, and so much the more sensitive that her initiation had been rapid and was of very recent date, could not pardon her dispossession by the allied forces of Europe of a naval base which she believed to be her own by right of conquest. The time was to come when the beneficiary would have to bear the consequences of this resentment. When there is added the uneasiness which the encroachments of the great Russian Empire upon Chinese soil could not fail to provoke, and that Empire's constant approach to Korea, for centuries the object of the desires of the Empire of the Rising Sun, the probabilities of this war must appear numerous in the eyes of the most skeptical.
In stating this, I am taking into account the aspirations of her people. I know very well that, even at the beginning of the year 1904, no one thought there would be war, any more in Japanese governmental circles than in Russia. By a very curious coincidence, two days after the night attack at Port Arthur there was given to me to read a letter just come from the Far East, written consequently a month before the opening of hostilities, by a person well situated to know the sentiments of the Japanese authorities, and in which the opinion was clearly expressed that only in Europe could anyone believe that a conflict was possible. The proximity of date of the reception of this letter and an event so decisive as the torpedo-boat attack is suggestive of consummate irony.
They had forgotten, in the Far East, that there are many instances in history where the current of a super-excited public opinion, stronger than all the combinations of diplomats, recognizes no obstacles, hurries on governments impotent to resist and bears nations irresistibly towards inevitable encounters.
From the very beginning of the policy of expansion, then, it was necessary to prepare for war carefully and decisively. And this was so much the more needful because, though the repeated military successes of the yellow race are to-day a revelation for the immense majority of Europeans, accustomed to regard all the nations of Asia with the same contemptuous disdain, they should have been no surprise to all those who, scarcely twenty years ago, had opportunity to compare the warlike ardor of the Japanese with the submissive inertness of the Chinese, even in the most trivial affairs.
Russia to-day is paying the penalty of this capital fault of not understanding the pressing necessities to which her policy of expansion condemned her, a fault before the act as it were, and one compared with which all the others committed after the opening of hostilities, although they derive from the same false principle, are yet but of secondary importance. To make clearer my idea, I will say that Russia is now bearing the consequences of a fundamental error of strategy which from the beginning involved the fate of her arms and in advance marked her for defeat.
The question is worth pausing to consider, for unhappily Russia is by no means the only power in the world which has neglected this great duty of preparing for war which every far-sighted and strong nation fulfils along with a policy of expansion.
To found colonies, and to sow in them with liberal hand the riches which enhance their value, without developing at the same time the means of protecting them from the covetous, is to play the part of dupe and to work for others.
From the moment that the lease of Port Arthur was signed it was therefore urgently necessary to prepare for war with Japan, and the period of nearly ten years which followed would certainly have sufficed to secure Russia such a preponderance that the classic proverb would have once more proved true and peace been assured.
This being granted, how ought this war to have been prepared for? Here the problem becomes definite. For those who firmly believe that in the teachings of the military history of the past there are to be found laws and lessons from which modern wars can profit, this preparation must be above all and almost exclusively naval.
The future adversary was, in fact, an insular nation, and although undoubtedly possessed of a strong army, this could only act by the efficient help of a powerful fleet, and one so much the more powerful as, its base of operations being beyond the seas, the condition necessary to its success rested on the retention of command of the sea.
Therefore it was necessary to be prepared to strike decisively at this navy. And such was in very truth the set problem. Let us suppose it for the moment solved, that is to say let us imagine that Russia had, at the beginning of 1904, in the seas of the Far East, a superiority of naval force, incontestable and admitted, over Japan. The disembarkation of the Japanese armies upon the Korean and Manchurian shores would have been perfectly impossible; and, if reason is insufficient to compel conviction upon this point, the teachings of the past furnish arguments beyond dispute. The study of our centuries-long struggles with England is particularly profitable in this regard.
While invasion of England by French forces has been an exceptional event in the course of naval history, the descents of the English upon the soil of France have been extremely numerous. In the one case, as in the other, these operations of invasion have always been carried on by that one of the two nations whose fleets were in command of the sea.
For if, from 1377 to 1385, with Admiral Jean de Vienne, several descents upon the British Isles could be successfully executed, it must not be forgotten that this was owing to the genius of that great seaman, who first in France was able to understand the exceptional value of dominion over the sea and to conquer it by profiting by the momentary eclipse of the English naval power.
It is thus, thanks to their uncontested superiority upon the sea, that the English were frequently able to make landings upon our coasts, and even to retain guarantees there for so long a time Calais, Dunkirk, etc. which it would have been impossible for them to hold without the support of a fleet which was sovereign mistress of the maritime avenues of revictualment and re-enforcement.
It was from the absence of this indispensable condition that all the projects of invasion of England, conceived in the reigns of Louis XIV and particularly of Napoleon, could have no chance of success.
Egypt was virtually lost to France after Aboukir.
In our own days, if Great Britain can continue to regard as a useless luxury the organization of an army whose function it would be to safeguard her territory, it is because she has full consciousness that her formidable fleet constitutes for her the most invulnerable of protections. Quite recently indeed, the Prime Minister, replying to a question in the House of Commons, rejected as a quite impossible hypothesis the invasion of England, so long as the English naval forces dominated the sea.
It may be said, therefore, that a military expedition beyond seas cannot be successfully carried out except with the previous condition of freedom of the sea.
Thus that which contributes to the strength of England and of Japan, their insular situation, is also their weakness in the case of a war of conquest. And so it was the Japanese navy, above all, that the Russians should have thought of holding in check.
But from 1894 to 1904, that is in ten years, the Russian navy gained twenty-one units, namely: eighteen battleships of a total displacement of 199,800 tons and three armored cruisers altogether of 33,000 tons. And as a matter of form I mention 58,500 tons of so-called protected cruisers, which are not counted as fighting ships.
If a mere comparison of figures were to be made, perhaps the Russian effort could be thought acceptable, since in the same period the Japanese fleet only gained fourteen fighting ships, of a total displacement of 160,000 tons. But so superficial a method of valuation can lead only to gross errors, since it takes account neither of the quality of the fighting units nor of their personnel.
While the Japanese built the four fifteen thousand-ton battleships of Shikishima type, which by themselves alone represented a considerable power, and the seven armored cruisers of Asama type, to which were added, before the war was declared, the Nisshin and Kasuga, bought from Ansaldo of Genoa, all similar modern units, constituting a formidable homogeneous force, the Russian Naval General Staff laid down successively a number of far too unlike types, from the Admiral Oushakoff to the Cesarevitch, no one of which came near to equaling in value the powerful Japanese units, and finally three armored cruisers having very few points in common, the Rossia, the Gromoboi and the Bayan.
In this absence of continuity of ideas, of any fixed principle in the matter of new constructions, in these too numerous trials of different models, a new proof must be seen of the Russian government's
lack of understanding of the greatness of the part which its
navy could and ought to play in case of war with Japan.
On the sea, even more than on land, combinations of heterogeneous
forces are not conducive to victory, and command of the
sea cannot be maintained with a naval museum of samples.
The Russian effort during the period of incubation of the inevitable hostilities will appear still more insufficient when it is remembered that, besides the new requirements of their Asiatic expansion, the Muscovite diplomacy had to take account of their ancient interests in Europe, of their preponderating role in the Balkan peninsular, of the jealousies of Germany as well as of England, all causes which imposed upon them a strict obligation to maintain a powerful navy in home waters. The Japanese policy, for its part, on the contrary, had as sole field of operations the seas of the Far East.
If to govern is to foresee, it is therefore quite exact to say that the Empire of the Tsars was badly governed, since it did not comprehend that the constitution of a powerful fleet, which, in the ten years' respite at its disposal, it could easily have formed of eighteen fighting units of the first class, would have been a great economy. This imposing and homogeneous force would have sufficed to calm all the belligerent ardor of Japan, and would thus have prevented the mad squandering of money and of human lives which the war entailed.
The needful effort .would have required an addition to the special budget of expansion in Manchuria of an annual supplementary credit of from one hundred to one hundred and twenty millions (francs); that would not have been beyond Russia's means. It represented the premium on insurance that progress towards the East should continue and that an ice-free sea should not be put out of reach. The parsimony with which the Russian General Staff treated its naval force, in its ignorance of the preponderating services which common sense strategy assigned to the navy, can be recognized by another sign.
If, at every period of naval history, fleets have had pressing need to secure "advanced Bases," centers for laying up, revictualing, etc., where the ships can go to be repaired, to get new supplies, or even merely to rest, above all during the winter, from the fatigues of long cruising, never have these "bases of operations" been more indispensable than nowadays.
When the wind was the only moving force, a fleet well provided with food and ammunition could, if need there were, keep the sea for long months, at a pinch even put in to port on a foreign coast. It is thus that our great Suffren, in his immortal campaign of the Indies, remained away from Reunion, his only friendly port, during twenty-two consecutive months. I hasten to recall, furthermore, that he would have had no rest if he had not conquered the advanced base which he lacked, which he accomplished by capturing Trincomalee.
In our time, needs of this kind are infinitely more pressing. Though modern ships of war carry enough food to suffice for the nourishment of their crews for several months, on the other hand they only hold the coal necessary for the maintenance of propulsive power for a few weeks, one may even say a few days. The obligation to return frequently to port for fuel is therefore imperious. Moreover steel hulls in sea water become covered with grass and barnacles; under penalty of seeing the high speeds which are a strategic factor of the first importance greatly reduced, periodic visits to a dock are necessary.
Thus far I have considered only the exigencies of the daily life of fleets. What must there not be added, when one thinks of the needs entailed by bad weather, of the repairs of all sorts necessary to restore to fighting trim the ships composing a naval force which has been in battle, even if victorious.
Modern bases of operations, therefore, require considerable supplies of provisions, ammunition, coal, lubricants, spare articles, raw materials, etc., dry docks, repair shops well equipped with tools, etc., all under the safeguard of defences which cannot be too strong, since the question is to guarantee the security of the preparations of naval operations.
Remember that it was much more from the almost complete lack of means of action of this sort than from the individual weakness of his ships, that Admiral Cervera's unfortunate squadron perished at Santiago de Cuba; for his four cruisers would still have been able to play a good part if they had been active, if they had been provided with the things most essential to their very life.
What we know to-day of the events of the Russo-Japanese war permits us to believe that, at Port Arthur as well as at Vladivostok, none of those judicious arrangements which indicate a wise and
farsighted preparation for war had been planned and executed.
The damages of the Cesarevitch, of the Retvizan and of the Pallada, in the unexpected Japanese attack which gave the signal for war, could only be repaired by improvised means. This was a demonstration of the poverty of naval resources at Port Arthur. The subsequent events of the war furnished a later occasion to see that Vladivostok was not much better provided.
The characteristic of this war, so far as the Russian side is concerned, is truly then the lack of prevision of the primary part which was to fall to the navy to play. Nothing can be improvised in war, to-day less than ever, and proper preparation for it takes a long time.
It is because of having ignored these essential truths that Russia pays penalty to-day; that great and unfortunate nation had no faith in her navy, she did not understand that by itself it would be the best guarantee of her policy; she pays dearly for that initial error.
"No colonies without a navy," said Napoleon on the occasion of the cession of Louisiana. A striking truth, to be constantly borne in mind, and particularly applicable to the case of Manchuria. And this error on Russia's part was so enduring that even after the war had begun she had no perception that from the navy alone could her salvation come.
To the strategical errors of the government are to be added those of the chief command. How really can the strange carelessness which exposed the Russian fleet to the night attack of February 8 be less severely spoken of? It was already too much when, in the full period of political tension, war ships rested each night in careless and complete quietude in the outer harbor of Port Arthur; the continuation, after the breaking off of diplomatic relations, of such dangerous misconduct, which exposed valuable righting units to the chance of a possibly total destruction, is inexcusable.
A striking comparison enables us to foresee what henceforth are to be the very different methods adopted by the adversaries for the conduct of the war. On the side of the Japanese, whose sailors are brought up on English naval doctrines, there will be the bold and energetic offensive, the sudden attack which disconcerts and demoralizes the enemy, in a word the method of which the application has given victory to the great captains of all ages, Alexander, Caesar, Hannibal, Napoleon, Suffren, Nelson.
In the Russian camp, on the contrary, there will be adopted a timorous defensive, a passive attitude of waiting, a depressing inactivity, and, to say all, the system which has brought upon us Frenchmen our most grievous naval defeats from the battle of Sluys to Aboukir and Trafalgar.
Moreover the choice of Port Arthur as the point of concentration of the Russian naval forces was not a happy one. The hydrographic conditions of that port were hardly suited to the establishment of a principal advanced base or base of strategic operations; the inner harbor too small to shelter a fleet; no safe outer harbor insuring to a squadron at anchor perfect and absolute security; absence of any outer roadstead in which a fleet could form in order of battle under the protection of defensive works; difficulties of organizing the naval defence; possibility of closing the entrance; finally a situation at the end of a long and narrow peninsular, exposing it to attacks from the rear; all these unfavorable conditions were more numerous than should have been necessary logically to compel the commander-in-chief to chose Vladivostok instead of Port Arthur as a base of operations.
Another still more important disadvantage to be mentioned is the eccentric position of the second of these two ports relative to the Sea of Japan, the probable theater of war.
Beyond doubt the ice blockade of the great Siberian port, during the severest months of the winter, made it apparently the inferior, I say apparently, for this fault was attenuated by the presence of the ice breaker Ermak; but, on the one hand, this relative immobility would only occur during a short period when the excessive rigor of the climate of necessity interferes with all operations of much scope, and, on the other hand, the blockade by the elements was, during this period, the most efficacious of safeguards against a blockade of a different nature.
Vladivostok moreover offered many advantages which Port Arthur was without: a large fine harbor, numerous exits, facilities for defence, many means of replenishment by railroad, highways, etc., difficulty of investment by land, and finally a position at the very center of the theater of war.
It is not alone in the objectionable choice of the point of concentration of the naval forces that a strategical error on the part of the Russian commander-in-chief appears; another is to be found in the very incompleteness of this concentration. The strict obligation to secure the assemblage at a given point of superior forces, should have forced upon the admiral the resolution to gather under his flag all the ships present in the Far East. The isolation of the Varyag at Chemulpo, there to succumb with glory but to no purpose; and that of the Rossia, the Gromoboi, the Rurik and the Bogatyr at Vladivostok, are not in accord with any military idea. Did the commander-in-chief of the Russian fleet have even one single military idea? We may well doubt it.
I have thought it useful, before any analysis of the actual events of this war, to set forth the initial errors which from the very beginning inclined the balance of fortune, for, in my opinion, no other method would have so clearly revealed the lessons which pertain to our special line of investigation.
Although we have not yet summed up the philosophy of the general doctrines of military history, the preceding chapters have sufficiently familiarized us with certain fundamental ideas to make me think myself authorized to preface the narrative of events by a critical review of initial conceptions.
The great moral bearing of the facts will be only the better understood.
Nor must we expect to find on the Japanese side, during the whole course of this campaign, the evidence of a profound mastership in naval affairs; there was far from being any revelation of a man of genius, and it may be said that the striking successes of the Japanese sailors were much more the results of the incapacity of their adversaries than of the special excellence of their own admirals.
But in all justice we must recognize the latters' merit of having always known what they wanted and having pursued it with energy and determination. Thanks to these qualities of the first rank, powerfully aided by a preparation for war which, contrary to that of their enemies, was marvelous in its method and logic, they won the victory.
The example is all the more striking for us, because it affords a new proof of the preponderant influence upon success exercised in our days by patient and methodical preparations in time of peace, as well as of the possibility of winning success without of necessity possessing any great man.
THE JAPANESE OFFENSIVE.
The surprise of the night of February 8 finds its justification on the side of the Japanese in their anxiety to destroy, to their own profit, as quickly as possible, the balance of naval forces in the Far East. This result, by assuring to them control of the sea, alone could permit them to disembark troops in Korea with all the conditions of safety which comport with such an operation. Freedom of the sea was therefore, for the Japanese navy, the principal objective.
They secured it, in fact, from the first day of hostilities, thanks to their vigorous attack, and this in spite of the relative non-success of that attack, for the Russian fleet was from that moment reduced to five battleships, Petropavlovsk, Sevastopol, Peresviet, Pobieda, Poltava, and five cruisers, Bayan, Askold, Diana, Boyarin and Novik, of which the first alone was armored; a condition of undoubted inferiority with regard to the principal Japanese forces, which constituted two squadrons, the first of six battleships and the second of an equal number of armored cruisers.
I have said relative non-success. It is in fact difficult to explain, otherwise than by the inexperience of the personnel of the Japanese destroyers, how a surprise attack, made at night and with a smooth sea, upon a squadron at anchor in an open roadstead, without lookouts, and to such an extent undefended that watch is being kept as in times of peace and the assailants are taken for Russian torpedo-boats, did not give results more decisive and more complete.
But, it may be asked, were not the destroyers of a type too big for the mission confided to them, which required a handiness and maneuvering qualities that are combined to a much higher degree in torpedo-boats? It would be extremely valuable to be informed upon this important point, but exact knowledge of the facts is wanting. All we know is that the ten destroyers which took part in the attack fired twenty torpedoes, only three of which made hits. Taking into account the exceptionally favorable circumstances of the attack, such as cannot reasonably be expected to occur again, this result is poor.
Putting aside the Cesarevitch, on account of her special construction and her particular system of protection against torpedoes, the performance of which appears at first sight to be promising, the injuries of the Retvizan and especially of the Pallada, merely a protected cruiser, are out of proportion to the explosive charges of the torpedoes which struck them. Judging from the experiments made in France and England, upon caissons representing sections of the hull of modern ships, these two vessels should have sunk.
Precise information is lacking to explain this anomaly. Must it be attributed to the nature of the charge, very probably of melinite, as the beginning of asphyxiation felt by several men on the Pallada after the explosion seems to show?
The one certain lesson, incomplete though it be, that we ought to derive from this attack is the very grave influence of the practical experience of the personnel upon the success of such enterprises. They require infinitely more of it, in fact, than any other undertaking whatever that occurs in naval wars.
There appears to have been altogether too little practice with torpedo-boats in most countries; and I do not hesitate to find in this circumstance the explanation of the quite insignificant part played by them, on both sides, in the course of this Russo-Japanese war.
I dwell upon this point; because only a few years ago, at our school for torpedo-boat officers, night firings were very considerably reduced in number, for the single purpose of avoiding losses of torpedoes. This strange conception of preparation for war needs no comment, for such an economy of old exercise-torpedoes may, some day, cost very dear.
On the next day, February 9, the Japanese fleet made its appearance before Port Arthur; it was the logical consequence of the attack of the preceding night and the first effective manifestation of the command of the sea by the Japanese.
Before anything else the latter endeavored to attain this principal objective, and they attained it by coming, on the opening of hostilities, to blockade in their place of refuge the forces of their adversaries. Thus they showed their understanding of the true principles of war, and they gave a second proof of it by the rational composition of their fleet.
That which presented itself before Port Arthur was divided into three main groups, the first composed of six battleships commanded by Admiral Togo, the second of six armored cruisers under the orders of Admiral Kamimura, and the third of five protected cruisers under the flag of Admiral Dewa. It is impossible not to see in this arrangement a faithful application of the principle of homogeneous forces. We shall see in the course of events that the Japanese respected that principle knowingly, and as rigorously as possible.
THE EVENTS AT CHEMULPO.
The events of February 8 and 9 before Port Arthur were intimately connected with other operations of which Chemulpo was the scene at the same moment. The severe cold, by limiting the number of landing points not blocked by ice, and moreover the need of securing from the beginning of the war the submissive support of Korea and of the Korean government, indicated this port as the initial place of invasion of the first Japanese troops.
On the evening of February 8, the Russian gunboat Korieits sailed from Chemulpo to join the fleet at Port Arthur. Just outside she conies upon a flotilla of four Japanese torpedo-boats, the advance guard of a division of cruisers commanded by Admiral Uriu, which, without any provocation, fire their torpedoes at her. One of these torpedoes sinks in its course; the other two miss. This very bad shooting at short range, a real firing exercise against a harmless target, for the Korieits had her guns secured for sea, does not give a high idea of the training of the Japanese torpedo-boats; it gives still more weight to the importance already pointed out of having as much actual firing as possible in peace time.
I shall not dwell upon the attack of the Varyag by the Japanese division in the Chemulpo passage; that attack is but a secondary incident of the first and really important act of the great military drama of the conquest of command of the sea, of which the two capital scenes are the night and day attack at Port Arthur and the simultaneous disembarkation of the first Japanese troops at Chemulpo under the protection of Admiral Uriu's naval forces. Furthermore, this fight, or more exactly this massacre without glory for the Japanese sailors, is as little instructive as possible for us, since so unequal a struggle as five ships against one caught in a trap, and necessarily overcome under the inexorable law of numbers, could not to any extent furnish matter for profound discussions.
The sole detail of this incident of a nature to call for some consideration would have to do with the regrettable hesitation of the commanders of the foreign war ships in the harbor to remonstrate against so flagrant a violation of the neutral waters of Korea, a violation which constitutes on the part of the Japanese a real act of brigandage; but its examination belongs to international law.
There is one fact of primary importance to note; from the very origin of this war the Japanese fleet had taken upon the coast of Korea a base of naval operations. The real position of this base is not yet very exactly determined; whether it was at first at a point situated near Chemulpo, and then, after the melting of the ice, at Hai-ju bay, is of little consequence to us. It is the principle that we have especially to bear in mind, and it is of interest to emphasize the fact that, despite their proximity to the Japanese shores, despite the exceptional facilities for obtaining supplies and resources of all sorts that this proximity assured to them, the Japanese squadrons adopted an advanced base, at the very center of naval operations, the nearest possible to their point of attack, and suitable for covering the landing operations of the Japanese armies on the Korean coast.
The chosen position would, under all circumstances, afford an excellent anchorage, defended against the possible attacks of torpedo-boats by natural obstacles, reefs, shallows, narrow passages, etc.
It is to this base that the Japanese fleet always went to anchor in the intervals of its operations against Port Arthur.
The first very distinct period of these operations extends from February 9 to May 15; it is characterized by an effective and undisputed control of the sea by the Japanese navy. They go freely to and fro, and their transports, without the least anxiety in the world, land the Japanese armies upon the Korean and Manchurian shores.
Repeated appearances before closely watched Port Arthur and artillery duels with the sea front batteries of that port have for their object the maintenance of the blockade of the Russian naval forces, and the keeping busy of the defence of the place, much more than attempting to reduce it. These successive attacks coincide, indeed, with the disembarkations of the armies of occupation at Chemulpo and at other points of the coast, and they are intended to protect these disembarkations against any possible offensive action of the forces of Port Arthur. In this respect, their success is complete.
SUBMARINE MINES.
The study of this period is interesting not alone from the foregoing points of view; an event occurs, notable from its frequently repeated consequences even in this relatively short space of time, and forces attention to the important part played by the automatic torpedo, or submarine mine, as a powerful means of destruction, in modern wars.
Employed on both sides, its brutal and blind force strikes blows, so much the more terrible that it is still under little control, against both.
First it is the Yenisei, a mine-planting ship, which, after having placed nearly four hundred machines of the sort, explodes one and sinks on February 11; it is a serious matter, for this accident deprives the Russian defence of valuable information as to their exact situations. Moreover, on the next day a violent storm displaces these torpedoes, of which several come to the surface and drift away. Three days later, on February 14, the cruiser Boyarin runs upon one of these mines and, receiving a mortal blow, sinks.
In the night of April 12, the Japanese, favored by darkness and steady rain, succeed in their turn in mooring submarine mines on the line of the entrance to Port Arthur, without their action being discovered by the Russians.
On the 13th, the Russian squadron, composed of five battleships and three cruisers, gets under way in the morning; but, finding itself in presence of forces too greatly superior, takes a course to return to its anchorage. It is in this maneuver of retreat that the Petropavlovsk encounters one of the Japanese mines, and, after a tremendous explosion, undoubtedly due to the ship's magazines, following that of the mine, sinks in two minutes, carrying down in a glorious death the valiant Admiral Makaroff, a moral loss for the Russian sailors more harmful even than the material losses.
The battleship Pobieda also is reached by the explosion by shock of another Japanese mine, which opens in her side a rent ten meters long, extending over four compartments. Till then only the Russians had been tried by mines; the turn of the Japanese was to come.
On May 12 and the following days Admiral Kataoka, with three cruisers and four flotillas of torpedo-boats was supporting off Kerr bay the operations of the army, holding the Russian troops in check by his fire. His torpedo-boats were engaged in clearing the bay of mines planted by the Russians when, on the 13th, one of these mines exploded and cut in two torpedo-boat No. 48, which immediately sank. On May 14, the cruiser Miyako in her turn runs upon another mine and in less than half an hour disappears in the abyss.
Finally on May 15, a grievous day for the Japanese, while cruising off Port Arthur, the battleships Yashima and Hatsuse strike successively, the first a mine and the second two connected mines. The Yashima escapes, very seriously damaged but still able to keep afloat, but the Hatsuse goes down in a few minutes.
It is impossible not to be struck by the importance of the part which circumstances gave to engines of this character to play in a period of time of quite brief duration. And the use which may be made of them, in future wars, in closely blockading a naval force in port, in barring a passage, etc., is at once apparent. For this reason it was essential to point out the services rendered by them to one side and the other during the war in the Far East. And it is not without interest to note the frequent and systematic use of the torpedo-boats by the Japanese to clear bays or neighborhoods obstructed by mines. Finally, the laying out of these engines was done, on both sides, by special vessels: the Yenisei and the Amur for the Russians, the Koryo Maru for the Japanese. In all of which there are valuable hints for the future.
THE ATTEMPTS TO BLOCK THE ENTRANCE TO PORT ARTHUR.
During this same period the Japanese made three attempts to bottle up the Russian squadron in Port Arthur. These operations were always carried out in the same way; transports laden with hydraulic cement, and with just enough men to handle them, approached the passage at night, supported by flotillas of torpedo-boats whose function it was to make a diversion; they endeavored to sink themselves in the middle of the channel so as to obstruct it. Either on account of wrong movements, due to the difficulty of exactly marking the position, or because they were distracted by the efforts of the defence the gun fire, torpedoes, etc. none of these attempts was crowned with complete and decisive success. Up to May 2 the Japanese had sacrificed in these enterprises not less than seventeen steamships, of displacement ranging from one to three thousand tons, without having succeeded in preventing the Russian squadron from going out.
We may draw various lessons from this practical example; in the first place, the advantage of establishing principal or secondary bases of operations as far as practicable in ports having more than one entrance; then the urgent need of as complete as possible an outer defence, assuring the discovery and destruction, at points far removed from the entrances, of structures sent to close them with their wrecks. Whatever may be the difficulties of such an undertaking to the assailants, this vigilance and these ways of acting are indispensable to exclude any possibility of a success of which the consequences would be irreparable.
THE VLADIVOSTOK CRUISERS.
I have taken the date of May 15 as ending one period of the war, because it corresponds to an apparent cessation, or I may better say a momentary hesitation, in the offensive ardor of the Japanese. Thus they give up a fully prepared combined operation against Nieu-Chwang, from which they withdraw their forces; and thenceforth they adopt Taku-Shan as their point of disembarkation. This modification of the original plan is solely due to the very appreciable naval loss which the Japanese have just experienced, and which, by notably diminishing their strength upon the sea, makes them fear that their superiority thenceforth will be too slight to justify the risk of operations of very great boldness.
This loss of strength has another after effect upon the general plan of naval operations. Till then Admiral Kamimura had had more particularly as mission the establishment, in the Sea of Japan, of a guard intended to keep watch upon and hold in check the Russian division of three armored cruisers.
After May 15, Togo, considering that his superiority upon the principal scene of action is not sufficient, retains part of Kamimura's ships. The repair by the Russians of the battleships Retvizan, Pobieda and Cesarevitch made this a measure of imperious necessity to him. It is true that he weakened a secondary strategic point, but it was to maintain an effective force at the principal point. This incident emphasizes once again the very great importance of the navy's work.
It is this relaxation of the guard which permits Admiral Bezobrazoff to go out from Vladivostok and to execute a raid which takes him to the neighborhood of Yokohama.
From the beginning of the war, the role of this Russian division had been a very insignificant one. After a first sortie, effected two days after the opening of hostilities, in very bad weather, and in the course of which its action was limited to the capture of a Japanese steamer, it had returned to port.
Closely watched by Kamimura's squadron, which appeared several times before the Siberian port, and the numbers and composition of which, five armored cruisers and two protected cruisers at least, established too great a disproportion of forces to permit fighting successfully, the Russian division only risked itself at sea once, on April 25, when it went as far as Gensan. During this cruise of forty-eight hours in the Sea of Japan, they stopped a fine Japanese transport of six thousand tons, the Kinshu-Maru, loaded with troops, and sunk her by means of a torpedo.
Favored by a thick fog, they passed undetected within a few miles of Kamimura both going out and returning. This momentary good fortune was but the passing luck of the gambler, which lures him on to the final and irremediable fall.
The relaxation in the Japanese guard about Vladivostok, after their losses before Port Arthur in the month of May, though it gave the Russian naval division relative freedom of movement, did not give to it what it really needed, that is to say a force sufficient to change the course of events.
It is very true that the Russian cruisers profited by this liberty to explore the Korean strait, as well as that of Tsugaru, during the month of June; that they repeated this expedition at the beginning and at the end of the following month, this time giving it a wider range, since they went within sight of Tokio. It is equally true that in the course of this cruise they seized a number of merchant steamships of various displacements, some with and some without troops and war material. I hasten to acknowledge also that the moral effect of this raid upon the Japanese sea coast population was considerable; that the Japanese commerce was for that very reason interfered with to an appreciable extent; that the cost of maritime insurance was raised sensibly; and finally that the money losses which were the natural consequence of these various disturbances were far from being negligible, since they were estimated at fifteen million yen for a period of a few days.
I am the more ready to establish these facts because they give greater force to the conclusion which we are bound to come to that all these captures of ships, non-belligerents or carriers of contraband of war, all these raids seemingly so bold but really inoffensive, had, in the final analysis, absolutely no influence upon the course of events and the military solution of the problem. It is the more interesting to note this because as a matter of fact the Russians did nothing else than apply the method of war known by the entirely inappropriate term guerre de course, and which in our days is merely the use of war ships in the pursuit and capture of merchant ships.
Upon this point it is needful to be precise; I do not pretend, in my previous remark, to condemn a system of action, but rather the exclusive use of that system. The total strength of a country is made up of the aggregate of all the forces which that country disposes of; military forces first in importance, then industrial, commercial, financial forces, etc. If then, as it is reasonable to believe, the objective of war, its very raison d’être, must be to paralyze the adverse forces, it is logical and legitimate to attack all those forces, without neglecting a single one of them, but only on the express condition of understanding that their totality is the only real power to be destroyed.
Because they were without effect upon the Japanese military forces, the division of Bezobrazoff could have multiplied its raids and have captured still more merchant ships without thereby advancing by a single day the end of the war, without even changing to the very smallest degree its conclusion. Much more, for the same reason, was it marked for certain destruction, after long or short delay, on account of its lack of strength and the obligation which was imposed thereby to shun combat, instead of seeking it as the sole efficient means of destroying the balance to its own advantage.
Although the Russian division on July 1, suddenly finding itself in sight of Kamimura's squadron, in the Korean strait, at nightfall, was able to escape from that superior force by extinguishing its lights and using full speed, the evil day was, could only be, postponed. To retreat, always to retreat, has never been considered an advisable procedure in a duel, for it sooner or later happens that a material obstacle, or some other unforeseen incident, puts the one who retreats at the mercy of the attacking sword of his adversary.
Success in war cannot be, never in any period can have been, obtained by evading battle. History teaches us, on the contrary, that the destiny of fleeing squadrons has always been the same—to be destroyed.
And I do not fear being taxed with tiresome repetition when I recall once again this expression of Tourville: "From the moment that the two fleets are in sight, so as to be able to make each other out, it is impossible to avoid a fight." Certain principles, after the lapse of two centuries, have lost nothing of their truth. And so, on August 14, at daylight, the three Russian cruisers, Rossia, Gromoboi and Ritrik, finding themselves thirty miles to the north of the strait of Korea, perceived all at once, about eight miles to the north-northwest, Kamimura's division of four armored cruisers. Without further delay, the Russian ships stood away to the northeast, making every effort to attain their highest speed.
For us, who ought to seek to see beyond mere facts, trying to extract from them their philosophy, it is worth observing, as a new proof of the moral weakness of the Russians, this instinctive feeling which dictates to them flight as the sole means of safety. Doubtless they were under the disadvantage of inferiority of numbers, three ships against four, but a military force is not measured solely by the absolute number of its units; it is further necessary that the unities be of the same kind in order that such a measure may be exact.
And in this case each of the Russian units taken separately was sensibly superior to those of Kamimura. It is true that a little later the protected cruiser Naniwa came to reinforce the Japanese; but in spite of everything, under the control of an energetic and resolute chief, the Russian division commanded by Admiral Yessen could have accepted the gage of battle without too great a disadvantage. But it was necessary to fight, and it is truly extraordinary to observe, in the course of history, the surprising number of men, individually brave beyond dispute, who in the practice of the military art have a profound and instinctive dread of battle.
| Rossia | Gromoboi | Rurik |
Displacement | 13,675 tons | 13,220 tons | 10,933 tons |
Maximum speed | 21 knots | 20 knots | 18.8 knots |
Anything was better, in any case, than flight, in which the lack of homogeneousness of the Russian division must have evil consequences. By a comparison of the characteristics above set forth of the three cruisers, it is very quickly seen that the actual speed of the Rurik, a relatively old ship, being sensibly less than that of the other two, became of necessity the real speed of the division if the latter remained intact, in which case it could not escape the pursuit and was forced to the necessity of engaging in battle under conditions more disadvantageous, consequently, than if battle had been energetically sought for.
If, on the contrary, in the excitement of their flight, the elementary principle that in union alone is strength was forgotten, each cruiser would attain her highest speed and the fatal result would be the isolation of the slowest ship.
That is what happened to the Rurik, which had to support almost the whole fire of the Japanese concentrated upon her, and this so much the more because an injury to the steering gear, caused by a shell almost at the beginning of the engagement, prevented her maneuvering. At that very moment, the Rossia and Gromoboi afforded the best of all proofs of what they could have accomplished if their commanders had been imbued with the true conceptions of war. In order to disengage the unfortunate ship, they went to her assistance to enable her to make repairs, and succeeded in holding the Japanese cruisers in check by a steady fire which did serious damage to the Idsumo, the flagship. But, as if this fortuitous effort had used up their reserve strength, blind instinct urged the Russians to retake their mad course towards Vladivostok the instant that the Rurik signaled that her damage was repaired.
This time, nothing could stop the Rossia and Gromoboi in their flight, and to use a familiar but imaginative naval expression, the Rurik was soon "left."
While the two leaders supported the fire of the four Japanese armored cruisers, the Rurik, several miles astern, had to oppose the Naniwa and two other protected cruisers which had joined her. The unhappy ship, left to her own resources, much weakened by the fire of her opponents, soon had her guns put out of action one after another and her commander killed, and finally she is sunk by opening the sea valves.
And yet there was a good chance still for the Russian division, since Kamimura, after five hours' fighting at six thousand meters range, abandoning the pursuit of the Rossia and Gromoboi, suddenly stood away for the Korean coast, doubtless because his armored cruisers were themselves too much distressed and especially because they were out of ammunition. By turning back again to the aid of the Rurik, these two ships would very probably have delivered her from her relatively feeble adversaries and saved her from the final catastrophe.
They limited themselves to stopping to repair their greater damages and then, without disturbing themselves, steered for Vladivostok. The results given by their weak and indifferent behavior justify counting upon the very different one which an energetic and vigorous offensive would have given. So, in analyzing this incident of the war, I do not think that I am deceived in believing that on this occasion the Russians had success within their grasp. A man was wanting to them, and the confidence of success that comes from the perception of a wise preparation for war.
This sortie of the Vladivostok division, effected on August 12 and terminated so tragically on the 14th, had had for its special object to facilitate the escape to that Siberian port of the naval forces still stationed at Port Arthur.
THE SORTIE OF AUGUST 10.
The period from May 15 to August 10 is characterized by the slow but continuous investment of the stronghold of Port Arthur by the Japanese armies, the progressive shortening of the iron circle which closes in upon it until the Russian war ships, hidden in the harbor, have left only a choice of two alternatives, either passively to let themselves be destroyed at anchor by the fire of the siege artillery, or to seek to break the blockade and gain Vladivostok.
During these three months what was left of the Russian fleet remained completely inactive or very nearly so. The Japanese fleet could appear frequently on the coast, engage in artillery passages with the batteries of the defence, support from the rear the offensive operations of the troops all along the shore; nothing could succeed in arousing this do-nothing fleet from its torpor. It is almost certain, and this would explain such incredible inactivity, that several improvised batteries on the sea front were armed with guns taken from the ships. If this be true, it is one of many proofs of the persistence of the strategical error committed by the Russians; if anything had to be sacrificed, it surely was not the naval force, the most valuable of all, but much rather the purely nominal base which had no raison d’être except for the existence of the fleet.
Once only, on June 23, this squadron gives a sign of life: it gets under way with Admiral Vithoft in command; it is made up of six battleships, Cesarevitch, Peresviet, Pobieda, Poltava, Retvizan, Sevastopol, of the armored cruiser Bayan, of the protected cruisers Askold, Diana, Pallada, Novik, and of ten torpedo-boat destroyers. At three o'clock in the afternoon, it stands out to seaward; towards five o'clock the Japanese squadron is in sight, formed of four battleships, seven armored cruisers, ten protected cruisers and thirty torpedo-boats. The Russian admiral changes course, then turns completely round and heads for Port Arthur, pursued by Admiral Togo's forces, which, however, do not get near enough to open fire; towards nine o'clock in the evening he anchors in the outer roadstead and on the following morning takes his ships back into the harbor. All the narratives, in relating this incident, agree in making clear the disastrous effect of this futile sortie upon the morale of the Russians.
We may well ask what Vithoft could really have hoped to gain by this sortie. He evidently had no intention of fighting, since the mere sight of the Japanese fleet dictated to him the fatal resolution to return to anchor; neither is it any more credible that he intended to try to reach Vladivostok, for the hour of the departure would have been, in that case, very badly chosen. The first principles of the profession of seaman and of blockade runner show that the most favorable conditions for success in that sort of enterprise are to be found all together at night. It was only by taking advantage of the night, directing the bulk of his forces, which were very far from being negligible, against one wing of the blockading line, while the torpedo boats made a diversion at another point, that he could have any chance of getting through.
It is quite likely that the Russian admiral really did not have any very clear objective. Of all the conditions of war this is surely the most fatal, for better even a poor plan than no plan at all. Another bad feature, and not a small one, of this unfortunate sortie was that it convinced the Japanese sailors that, with adversaries as timid as the Russian sailors, anything could be dared.
This conviction was already half of success, as it had been for Nelson before Villeneuve's sortie from Cadiz.
On August 10, the Russian squadron was finally obliged to leave its resting place, under penalty of being destroyed by the Japanese fire opened from Wolf hill, to which they could not effectively reply.
The six battleships got under way at eight in the morning, followed by the three cruisers Askold, Pallada and Diana, preceded by the Novik convoying seven destroyers. At nine o'clock they headed for Shantung Promontory at a speed of thirteen knots (Plate I). Almost immediately the first Japanese squadron is made out to port; it consists of the Mikasa, Shikishima, Asahi and Fuji, battleships, and the Kasuga and Nisshin, armored cruisers, together with a considerable number of destroyers or torpedo-boats, about forty altogether; then a little later the second squadron is seen on the starboard quarter. These forces are very far apart; the first, composed of four battleships and two armored cruisers, to the east; the second, composed of the Yakumo and three protected cruisers to the west-southwest.
The Japanese fleet steers on a slightly converging course and gains in the chase. The Russian squadron continues in the same direction, which is that leading to Vladivostok, until noon; then it turns to the northeast, very probably intimidated by the thick screen of hostile torpedo-boats which have placed themselves across its path. These torpedo-boats, it is said, visibly scattered over the surface of the sea buoys, kegs and other things which could from a distance be taken for mines. The morale of the Russians evidently could not stand against this terrifying appearance (Plate II, Fig. 1).
At one o'clock an artillery contest, at extreme range, is begun with Togo's squadron on the starboard hand, but there is no great damage done. At five in the evening, the two lines were still seventy-five hundred meters apart, and were exchanging shots; at half past six a shell struck the Cesarevitch and killed Admiral Vithoft, while at the same instant control of the ship was lost through an injury done to her helm (Plate III).
This serious damage, attributed somewhat too hastily in the first advices to a projectile having struck the rudder below the water line, was the result of a 12-inch shell exploding in the sighting holes of the conning tower and destroying the steering apparatus as well "as all the means of communicating orders (Plate IV, Fig. 1).
A first version attributed to the other battleships a vigorous attack upon the enemy with a view to getting about the Cesarevitch and protecting her while she repaired her damages; but the night was coming on, and Admiral Ukhtomsky, who had assumed command, judging his ships too weakened to be able to hope to force their way through and reach Vladivostok, resolved to return to Port Arthur and made signal to follow his movements. He thus rallied five battleships that he was able to lead back and, on the following morning, take into the port which he had just left; but he did not take back there his honor as a leader; that was lost forever in this affair (Plate IV, Fig. 2).
The analysis of this sortie of August 10 is suggestive in more than one respect. In the first place it illustrates that instinctive repugnance to fighting which throughout the past has always characterized timid nations and which is to-day the undeniable trait of the Russian navy. That Russian squadron of six battleships was a force of considerable strength, sufficiently homogeneous and powerful to compensate by these qualities for its numerical inferiority relative to a fleet which, excepting the Mikasa, Shikishima, Asahi and Fuji, comprised only ships of incomparably less military value. This composition, for the first time very much mixed, of the Japanese fleet, can only be explained by their considerable losses in the operations off the Liau-Tung peninsular.
Yet not for a single instant in the course of that interminable artillery duel in cruising order, which lasted hardly less than eight hours, did the Russian commander-in-chief have the appreciation of his real strength. It never even occurred to him that perhaps there was something better to do than run away, that by falling resolutely with his main body upon one of the Japanese squadrons, he would have a chance of annihilating it and of opening for himself a passage.
When they went out from Port Arthur, the Russian naval forces had the rare good luck to find the two Japanese squadrons separated by a distance great enough to offer a fine opportunity. If, instead of changing course to the northeast at noon, the Russian commander-in-chief had boldly assumed the offensive by bearing down upon Togo's squadron to the eastward, there is no doubt that he could have offered fight under conditions of equality of forces sufficiently satisfactory to give him hopes of success. If the Japanese admiral had accepted the challenge, and everything indicates that on that day he would have submitted to rather than sought close action, the losses experienced by his ships would have had a decisive influence upon the remainder of the campaign. If, on the contrary, the Japanese admiral had refused the fight by standing away, this maneuver would have favored the Russians' object.
Therefore such an energetic attitude could not have failed to be of profit to them in all ways. But it would have required the will to fight and take risks, and they never even suspected that that could be of any use; even more, far from seizing the opportunity offered by the separation of the Japanese forces, they did everything to facilitate the latter's concentration and thus to give to them the superiority of forces which they lacked.
How many truly disconcerting events in war prove the imperious necessity of a doctrine!
In speaking of the commander-in-chief, I refer to Vithoft in particular no more than to Ukhtomsky; the personality is of no importance, it is the system which it represents and which is named indecision or want of will.
And this time again it may be asked: Why, if the Russian squadron wished to evade battle and merely to break through the blockade, why, in that case, did it go out in the daytime?
From the result obtained while the Cesarevitch, stopped, repaired her damages, we can judge what an energetic and bold chief with his five other battleships would have secured. This is not an unwarranted hypothesis, for it is impossible not to characterize Togo's action as also very weak. Numerous incidents of the affair prove it. Not only did he fail, during an entire day, to secure a decisive result against a manifestly demoralized enemy, but when the latter was beaten and his forces dispersed, he did not succeed in barring a passage to them.
While the five battleships are going to Port Arthur, the Cesarevitch, almost wrecked and only able to make four knots speed, proceeds at that tortoise gait to Kiao-Tcheou, and arrives there on the following evening without having been troubled otherwise than by a torpedo-boat attack just as she left the field of battle.
According to a more recent version, the Russian battleships did not turn back at all to help the Cesarevitch, but the latter, taking a great sheer on account of her helm damage, ran into the midst of the enemy's line, throwing them into disorder. This account, much more in accord with the Russian demoralization, and which I regard as probable until time permits the truth to be known, does not invalidate the preceding argument; far otherwise, indeed.
The light division, commanded by Admiral Reitzenstein, had energetically forced a passage through the Japanese squadron, and that, characteristically, not in an endeavor to preserve its forces for their country but to flee, always to flee. The Askold succeeded in reaching Wusung, the Diana got as far as Saigon, and finally the Novik, excepting the Retvizan the only example of valor in the whole affair, after having stopped less than twenty-four hours at Kiao-Tcheou, proceeded to Saghalien where, after a combat with a Japanese cruiser, her commander sunk her.
More proof than is necessary may be found there to show how indecisive and vacillating the Japanese pursuit itself was. With a Suffren at its head the Russian squadron might have hoped everything, and I make this remark to note in passing how great the importance of moral worth is among all the various forces whose close union constitutes the military strength of a nation.
It is not to be doubted that the feebleness of Togo's pursuit was an error of doctrine. It has been claimed as his excuse that the Japanese admiral, on his own initiative or under orders from his government, wished to be sparing of his ships in prevision of the arrival of the Second Pacific Squadron. The error would be a great one, for the opportunity of destroying the forces, even partial, of the enemy, is always too valuable to be allowed to escape. He would much more surely have secured the final preponderance of force by the destruction of the Port Arthur squadron, even at the cost of damages to his own ships, than by letting it escape almost intact.
Though this error of principle did not have great consequences, not the less it was committed; none can foresee the future, and Togo forgot, on August 10, that Suffren and Nelson never postponed to a later day what they could do then and there.
Just as in the case of June 23, the causes of this inconceivable cowardice on the part of the Russians must be sought in a foolish, unreflecting fear of the attacks of torpedo-boats which, as night came on, spread through all their ships illusion and fright, hypnotizing all their faculties upon a single object, flight. That alone can explain why both the attempts to break through the blockade were made in full day.
And yet there was no occasion to dread so much the attacks of those little vessels. I do not say this, you may be sure, on the mere ground of personal opinion. I should have no right to do so here, where I am under strict obligation not to advance any proposition which is not supported by practical examples readily to be found.
At the moment of the breaking up of the Russian squadron the light division had been attacked by the Japanese torpedo-boats; four of them fired, each a single torpedo, at the Askold unsuccessfully, arid one of the four was sunk by the Askold's gunfire. This attack was not renewed, and the torpedo-boats disappeared.
The greater part of the flotilla had joined in the pursuit of the five Russian battleships fleeing to Port Arthur. During the night these ships were the object of repeated attacks in which the Japanese torpedo-boats fired not less than sixty torpedoes without any result.
Finally, in spite of the reduced speed which made her a very easy prey for her adversaries, the Cesarevitch, in leaving the field of battle, withdrew unharmed from an attack by another group of torpedo-boats which fired ineffectively a dozen torpedoes.
These far from brilliant results justify, I believe, what I have already said in regard to the insignificant part played by torpedo-boats in the Russo-Japanese war. If it were not for certain more encouraging facts of previous wars, and particularly if one did not know to what a degree, in this special branch of the naval personnel even more than any other, patient preparation and training in time of peace influence results in time of war, it would be legitimate to doubt the value of the instrument. Here again the conditions were such that none better could be desired.
In regard to the principle itself of the sortie of August 10, it can be said that it was perfectly legitimate, on condition that its object was battle and not flight. By so acting, and we have seen that the conditions were favorable, the Russian squadron of Port Arthur would have prepared the way for the Second Pacific Squadron much better than by gaining Vladivostok without fighting. The ends of war are met by seeking the enemy and not by running away from him. The formal orders of the Emperor, if it be true that such had been given, would not have sufficed to fetter the initiative of a true military leader conscious of his responsibilities.
However that may be, the return of the Russian battle fleet to Port Arthur consummated definitely the ruin of the last hope of saving that fleet; it buried itself living in its tomb, for some months later the voluntary destruction of its units, before the surrender of the place, was but a mere formality. It really died, as a moral force even more than as a material force, the day of its return to port. We shall speak of it no more.
THE SECOND PACIFIC SQUADRON.
While these events were happening in the Far East, Russia was preparing in her European arsenals a new naval effort to regain naval supremacy. A naval force, which later was called the Second Pacific Squadron, armed in the Baltic ports with the Far East as its destination.
Further on we shall have to study in detail the operations of this fleet, but it seems to me useful, in conformity with the method of analysis thus far employed, to make a preliminary examination of the motives which dictated sending it and above all the directing ideas and intentions.
To tell the truth, I am very sure that these motives were purely sentimental, and that at the origin of this measure, so important in its consequences, there was not any seriously developed strategic plan. The long delays in the preparation of this naval force, the indolence in the labors of arming its ships, the indecision betrayed by the announcements, as numerous as false, of its constantly postponed departure, all, even to accidents caused by ignorance or by malice, denotes a situation from which every military conception is absent.
These half-hearted preparations give the impression of a decision taken much rather to afford a sham moral satisfaction to the national self-esteem than to carry out a logical and deliberate plan of war.
And surely there was opportunity, even at that moment, for a strategic combination of large scope, capable of restoring victory to the Russian banners. But for that it would have been necessary to renounce the delusion of that long ribbon of steel, the Manchurian railroad, and to shake off the dream of a constant communication, more theoretical than practical, afforded by that iron way with the immense, inexhaustible resources of the Empire.
By the middle of May, this railroad could still only carry eight hundred men a day. This figure reached about fifteen hundred at the beginning of June and two thousand at the end of that month, but it fell back to eighteen hundred at the beginning of November.
At the end of January, 1905, the Russian army still comprised only three hundred thousand men at the most. The battle of Mukden was fought with this force, about two-thirds that of the Japanese.
Above all it would have been necessary to understand how much the celebrated expression of the "Kaiser," "The future is upon the sea" was applicable to the situation.
Let a Russian fleet, even after the unfortunate sortie of August 10, make its appearance in the Far Eastern waters, in sufficient force to take away naval supremacy from the Japanese, and the whole course of events would be reversed. The mere evocation of this possibility immediately makes all its consequences appear. They were first the immediate rupture of the communications of the Japanese forces of invasion with their home base, the impossibility of their receiving new re-enforcements or fresh troops, the suppression of regular arrivals of supplies, food as well as munitions. To sum it all up, loss of command of the sea must be, for the Japanese, the sudden shutting off of the reservoir which generously fed the Japanese military effort by supplying it with life and energy.
The certain result would have been to force the Japanese armies of occupation to a precipitate retreat, a worse one than that of 1812, for Napoleon and the Grand Army at least were not cut off from their base of operations.
The prospect was good enough to justify the necessary effort on Russia's part; there only was safety for her. This effort was quite possible, moreover, at least so far as material was concerned, for by calling upon all the naval resources still available in her home ports there were enough elements to make up a very strong fleet, notably superior, at any rate, to that which the Japanese could still put in line.
It would be easy to draw up a comparative table in which the units, distributed in as homogeneous squadrons as possible, would give an idea of the greatness of the effort permitted by Russia's still remaining resources, and of the probable power of resistance of their adversaries. But this is not necessary; a glance over the lists of the two fleets is enough. Under the leadership of a great chief the game would still have been a good one; and here I am almost compelled to stop short; in my desire to present, in the very spirit of the principles of naval strategy, an example which was a true practical lesson, I was about to lose sight of the fact that all this available material was good for nothing without a personnel capable of bringing out its value, that these ships represented only a virtual energy, if they lacked men able to put life into them, that finally, had they been ten times as numerous, the Russians would still have been beaten because they did not have to any extent the most essential of all the elements that make up military strength moral force.
These just reflections nevertheless take nothing away from the preceding argument. It is not permitted to make war lightly, and in the case which we are considering either it was necessary to send to the Far East a naval force capable beyond any doubt of gaining command of the sea, or not to do anything at all. All war plans can be defended excepting half measures. The Rozhestvensky expedition was only a half measure; it was for that very reason impotent even before it set out.
It will be noted that in the preceding reference to the available Russian forces I have taken account of the ships stationed in the Black Sea, while the Second Pacific Squadron did not include any of them. It would seem, therefore, at first sight that my argument, resting upon a feeble support, since the Russian Government did not believe it possible to utilize these resources, would have at most the value of a theoretical criticism. Such is not the case, and although the subject is apparently one outside our field of investigation, I shall discuss this objection because it raises an interesting question of political strategy.
Forgetting this maxim of Napoleon: "When you wish to fight a battle, assemble ALL YOUR FORCES, do not neglect any, one battalion sometimes decides the fate of a day," a doctrine wonderfully applicable to naval war, the government of the Russian Empire did not dare to utilize its important forces of the Black Sea, and, acting thus, it allowed itself to be intimidated by a simple written document, thus giving to the world another example of its hopeless feebleness.
My reference is to the treaty of Paris, and at once there is felt such a disproportion of cause and effect, between the restrictions put down on a piece of paper by diplomats assembled about a green table and the forced inactivity of an important military force necessary to the safety of a great nation that simple common sense refuses to accept it.
It would have been difficult, moreover, to make common opinion understand that the clauses agreed to in 1856, at the end of a general European war, could be applicable to war between two belligerent nations one of which had no recognized existence when the treaty was signed.
Furthermore, the preamble of the treaty of Paris reads thus: "Their Majesties the Emperor of the French, the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the. Emperor of all the Russias, the King of Sardinia and the Emperor of the Turks, animated by the desire to put an end to the calamities of the war, and wishing to provide against the return of the complications which have given rise to it, have resolved to agree with his Majesty the Emperor of Austria, upon conditions for the re-establishment and maintenance of the peace by assuring, through efficacious and reciprocal guarantees, THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE TURKISH EMPIRE."
The object of the treaty is wholly contained in the last underlined words, and there was no other.
It would be necessary to possess great mental obliquity, or the inexhaustible faculty of discussion of a shrewd diplomat, to see in this agreement anything but the single care to safeguard the integrity of Turkey and thereby to maintain the European balance of power. How then could it have been held that the bonds placed upon Russia by the contracting powers to assure this single object could not be cut in case of conflict with Japan, nonexistent in 1856 and in any case not having, far or near, any interest in the Oriental question!
Article 7 of the treaty further states: "Their Majesties (the contracting powers) agree, each on his own part, to respect the independence and territorial integrity of the Turkish Empire, guaranteeing in common the strict observance of this agreement, and they will regard, in consequence, any act of a nature to violate it as a question of general interest."
Any other intention than respect for the integrity of the Turkish Empire being evidently omitted from these written instruments, it would have been necessary to demonstrate that the departure of the Russian naval forces from the Black Sea threatened the security of the Sultan in order to make them applicable to the Russo-Japanese war, the mere supposition of which would have seemed to the plenipotentiaries of 1856 the wildest of dreams.
Such a demonstration would have been the more difficult, because the notable weakening of the Russian navy in the waters of the Black Sea would, on the contrary, admirably satisfy the spirit of the treaty.
The fundamental principle of the treaty failing, an argument has frequently been based upon its article 11, relative to the neutrality of the Black Sea. "The Black Sea is made neutral: open to the merchant marine of all nations, its waters and its ports are, formally and forever, interdicted to war ships either of the adjoining powers or of any other power."
But the stipulations of this part of the protocol of 1856 remain inoperative to-day from the single fact that there is a Russian squadron of the Black Sea.
There is the less room for doubt in regard to this particular question because, by a special agreement signed after the treaty, Russia and Turkey made a mutual solemn engagement to each maintain in the Black Sea only "sir steam vessels of fifty meters waterline length, of a displacement of eight hundred tons at the most, and four light vessels, steam or sail, of a displacement not to exceed two hundred tons each."
It is quite curious to note that these little vessels would be represented to-day by torpedo-boat destroyers; this remark emphasizes the strained construction of the treaty, and the bitter irony of the eternal (! !) engagements entered into by diplomats.
A last argument remained to those who, under an affirmation of respect for treaties, really mask their incurable fear of action; it relates to the act annexed to the treaty of Paris, by which the signatory powers of the London Convention of 1841 reciprocally agreed to respect the ancient rule of the closure of straits to foreign warships.
But the text of this act contains only a single declaration of principle on the Sultan's part, which the other powers agree to respect, but the observance of which belongs to him alone to enforce. We may well believe in this matter that the Porte would have viewed with pleasure a squadron's definite departure which would have freed it from a permanent threat in its immediate neighborhood and would have put everything in conformity with the spirit as well as the letter of the treaty of Paris.
All the reasons called upon to justify the inaction of the Black Sea Squadron are therefore bad. There is much more to be said on this subject, but it would exceed the limit I have set for myself. It is sufficient to have made it clear that once more the new plan, upon which depended the whole effort to win the victory, was not inspired by any strategic idea. To conclude, there is one single and only cause why unhappy Russia must inevitably have been beaten; neither before nor during this disastrous war has she ever known what it was to prepare her operations. Finally and above all, neither her diplomacy, nor her strategy, governmental, military and naval, nor her tactics in the theater of war, have known how, or wished, to dare.
This long digression will not seem useless, for it will tend to a better understanding of the reason for the complete failure of the Second Pacific Squadron.
The study of this squadron's operations comprises two absolutely distinct phases: a purely maritime expedition and an act of war. The first, certainly interesting, gave better promise for the second than was borne out.
The task imposed upon Admiral Rozhestvensky was really a hard one. To lead an imposing fleet from the Baltic Sea to the Far East, without other resources than those obtained wholly by way of the sea, in the absence of advanced bases, of well provisioned stopping places on the route, appeared to the sailors of all countries a more than difficult, almost impossible, enterprise, and many were convinced that he would fail completely.
The success is entirely due to the indomitable energy of the leader of the Russian fleet, for all the information gathered relating to this voyage agrees in attributing the fortunate completion of so long a cruise, with completely demoralized crews, solely to his tenacity of purpose and iron will. It is regrettable that this man did not have the military sense as well developed as the seaman's sense.
The study of the arrangements to be made, with a view to overcoming the considerable difficulties of all sorts to be met with in the course of so extraordinary a journey as this one, is too far removed from my chosen subject. I shall be satisfied here, after the foregoing statement of the results obtained by a leader's moral force, even under quite unfavorable circumstances, with formulating some reflections on the subject of the Hull incident.
All of its details are known, and, to perceive the exceptional qualities of coolness and judgment necessary to the making of a great naval chief, the entire report of the international commission must be read.
For ourselves, who are not bound to the same reservations of indulgence and of diplomacy as the members of that commission, we can very well say that the presence of Japanese vessels on the Dogger Bank, during the night of the Russian squadron's passage, was more than doubtful. The single cause which provoked the Russians' fire against the inoffensive and peaceable trawlers is the same as that which made the sortie of August 10 abortive; it is a measureless fear, akin to madness, of the torpedo-boat, of the phantom torpedo-boat, which assumes, to the anxious eyes of the Russian sailors, the most extraordinary shapes. The special details in the case of the Kamtchatka, which exhibit this vessel delayed in rear of the squadron, seeing torpedo-boats everywhere, to the extent of opening fire upon every vessel she met, are a particularly good proof.
Thus, as soon as this affair, unique of its kind, became known, the value of the military force of a squadron in which indications of such a moral depression were shown could already be doubted.
THE BATTLE OF TSUSHIMA.
On May 27, at five o'clock in the morning, the Second Pacific Squadron was sighted by the Japanese scouts off the Eastern passage of the Korean Strait, towards which it was directing its course.
Admiral Togo, informed by wireless, immediately got under way from his base and steered for the same point with all his forces. Thenceforth the encounter was inevitable.
But the inclinations were far from the same on both sides. In the Japanese fleet they went eagerly to the battle, on the Russian side they submitted to it. Rozhestvensky's objective was so evidently and so exclusively to get to Vladivostok at any cost, that he had not arranged for any battle formation even then when contact with the Japanese scouts should have convinced him of the certainty of an approaching attack. He advanced towards the enemy in the same order, in columns, which he had prescribed for cruising, the right column made up of the Rozhestvensky and Folkersham divisions, the left column of Nebogatoff's coast defence ships and Enquist's cruisers, and the convoy protected by these cruisers following behind the squadron (Fig. 1).
Before entering the strait, the commander-in-chief seemed to have become aware of the disadvantage of his formation in the event of an attack, for he formed single column by placing his own ahead of the left column (Fig. 2). But almost immediately afterwards he displayed to all an irresolution which augured ill by again displacing the first division of his column to the right, so that the double column formation was reconstituted. No formation could be more unfortunate; for when the Japanese naval forces, debouching by the north of Tsushima, came into contact with the Russian fleet, it was the left column, much the weaker of the two, that they could first attack, without the more powerful battleships of the right column, whose fire was interfered with by the interposition of the other, being able to reply energetically to the fire of the Japanese guns. And moreover, the battle once engaged, it would be very difficult to change so unmanageable a formation.
Quite otherwise was the Japanese order. Their fleet, divided into three homogeneous groups, of battleships, armored cruisers and protected cruisers, following" the movements of the commander-in-chief, but each of them under the effective direction of its squadron commander, exhibited as much flexibility, by the development of three independent columns, as the Russians showed want of it in the maneuvers of their compact formation. Finally, to complete the wholly unfavorable dispositions of the Russians, the sun's position, in the direction of the Japanese fleet, prevented their making out accurately its movements, formation, and distance.
At the moment when the battle is about to open, the situation of the two squadrons is as follows:
The Russians in two columns; to the right, the Sonvaroff, Alexander III, Borodino and Orel; to left, the Osliabia, Sissoi-Veliki, Navarin, Nakhimoff, Nicolas I, Admiral Apra.rin, Admiral Seniavin and Admiral Oushakoff; the cruisers Jemtchug and Isumrud to the right of the two columns; astern, quite far off, the Oleg, Dmitri-Donskoi and Vladimir-Monornach, protecting the transports. The speed is from eleven to twelve knots (Fig. 3).
On the side of the Japanese fleet, the first and second squadrons in a single column, at first standing to the southwest as if to pass on a parallel course to the port of the Russian squadron, suddenly at 2.05 p.m. turn by head of column to the east, at a speed of 15 knots. The third squadron steers to attack the convoy from the rear.
At 2.15 the Japanese fired their first shots, though the Russians, on account of their excessive nervousness, had then been firing at them for some minutes at extreme range. At 2.45, that is at the end of a half hour, the fate of the battle could be considered to be definitely determined. In the artillery duel which took place between the two squadrons, at a distance always between fifty-five hundred and twenty-five hundred meters, the Osliabia, at the head of the left column, had suffered greatly from the intensity of the fire concentrated upon her; completely disabled, and having lost her commander, on account of her position as leader she threw into disorder the ships Which were following her.
The relative positions of the two naval forces at 2.30 p.m. (Fig. 4) clearly shows the critical situation of the Russians.
The Souvaroff and Alexander III are on fire, the coast defence Armor-clads have scattered; there is no longer any order in the Russian fleet, which no effort thenceforth can save.
From this moment till the end of the day the battle will continue with alternating periods of relaxation and of renewed attacks, but the mortal wound has been given. The Japanese keep up a speed of 14 to 15 knots, that of the Russians being 11 to 12; they follow a gradually changing course, seeking to get ahead of the Russian squadron. The latter follows this movement in a sort of passive resignation, changing its course correspondingly in the same direction. It irresistibly makes one think of the frightened gesture of a child who tries to ward off, with arm bent above his head, his mother's punishment. The evocation of this tragic scene is frightfully sad. The Russians' torpor is such that the protected cruisers as well as the convoy, sticking obstinately to the tail of the column, follow all its movements with disconcerting tenacity, even undergoing the attack of the Japanese protected cruiser squadron through holding their position with a precision worthy of praise anywhere else than in battle.
At three o'clock the movement to get across its head of column has proceeded so far that the Russian squadron fears being caught between two fires; it turns sharply to the north, in order to endeavor to escape by passing around the rear of the Japanese column. The latter performs a right about movement, in a particularly interesting way from the point of view of battle tactics, and finds itself again parallel with the Russian forces, upon which it once more gains, endeavoring to get in front and bar the way (Fig. 5).
The Russian's repeat their maneuver, this time turning to the east, at 3.45, and the Japanese immediately make a right about movement in the same manner as before (Fig. 6).
At 7.30 in the evening, after a momentary disappearance of the Russians in the fog and a renewal of the engagement, the destruction of the Second Pacific Squadron is almost consummated; Admiral Togo orders the firing to cease. The Osliabia has sunk; the Souvaroff, a complete wreck, has met the same fate, having been finished by a torpedo from a destroyer; the Borodino has blown up; finally the Alexander III has capsized, as have also several other less important armored ships. (The sketch gives an exact representation of the battle.)
In putting an end to the action, Admiral Togo orders the flotillas to attack during the night. During the whole day, in fact, the torpedo-boats have played no part on account of the weather conditions, a strong breeze from the west and a heavy sea, which prevented their leaving the shelter of the coast. At night, the wind having fallen, they were able to put to sea in spite of a quite heavy swell. Their attacks lasted all night, but a study of them would have no great interest for us, since they were directed against fighting units already mortally wounded and which they merely finished.
The following day, in the morning, the Japanese cruisers regained touch with the coast defence ships of Nebogatoffs division, which surrendered at the first shot.
Thus was completed the destruction of the Second Pacific Squadron, and this time there was a final end to the Russian naval power in the Far East.
I have described only in broad outlines this battle of Tsushima, which has already made floods of ink to flow and will continue to do so for a long time yet: this has seemed to me to be sufficient. I do not believe, in fact, that all the wonderful things are to be found in this battle that people have wished, with a little too much imagination, to see in it. Some, with the enthusiasm of poets, have wished to establish a likeness between Trafalgar and Tsushima, to compare Togo with Nelson; that, in my opinion, is doing too much honor to the Japanese admiral.
A very lively imagination would be needed to compare the enveloping maneuver of the two Japanese armored squadrons, using their superior speed, to the wedge formed by Nelson's and Collingwood's squadrons at Trafalgar and intended to break through the center of the French-Spanish fleet. The reality is more simple. The Japanese commander-in-chief, discarding his timidity of August 10, this time advanced boldly to battle, and profited greatly by his boldness. He did it, moreover, without complicated maneuvers, without learned evolutions, in simple column.
One important fact dominates throughout this battle of Tsushima, and that is the artillery combat at long range. Better still than Punta-Agamos or the Yalu, it afforded proof that henceforth the gun is to be the sovereign arbiter of the fate of naval battles.
Furthermore, on this memorable day, May 27, 1905, which will be a notable date in naval history, the advantage derived from the development of modern rapid fire guns and smokeless powder was to bring about a result in accord with the immemorial and natural tendency of men to increase their fighting distances. I say that this tendency is natural; an artillery duel is, in fact, an eminently unstable state of equilibrium. Just as soon as the balance begins to turn in favor of one side, and a single lucky shot may sometimes be enough for that, this advantage rapidly increases at least as much by reason of the continuous weakening of the moral forces of the adversary as by the material work of destruction which influences them.
It is important then, in the highest degree, to acquire as soon as possible that superiority of fire which demoralizes the hostile personnel by striking down everything round about it, and takes from it all strength to resist.
This conclusion is so unquestionable that since the battle of Tsushima an irresistible development, previously advocated in France, forces all navies towards the adoption of calibers of more and more power and of firing exercises at great range.
If a comparison must be made, it would be quite exact to affirm that, after the lapse of a century, the same errors have brought about the same disasters; that there is a striking analogy between the strategical or tactical ideas of Villeneuve and those of Rozhestvensky.
The two beaten leaders had, to the same degree, that inconceivable blindness which made them see their principal objective in the mission they had to accomplish; in the case of the Russian admiral, this preoccupation betrayed itself by an immense error whose consequences had a large part in the disaster of Tsushima. Fearing to lack coal with which to reach Vladivostok, he had so encumbered his ships with fuel that they were overloaded to the amount of fifteen hundred tons. Their narrow armor belts were therefore partially submerged, and this explains the capsizing as soon as breaches were made in the side above the armored deck. Finally, the presence of this fuel favored the development of the many fires which occurred on the Russian ships. Is it to be believed that if Rozhestvensky's mind had been fixed for a single instant upon the possibility of a battle, he would have put his ships in such a condition?
There is another resemblance between the unfortunate beaten one of 1805 and the one of 1905; both commanded hastily organized crews, without cohesion and without moral force, having received no preliminary instruction nor military training, and which had to fight against disciplined adversaries, accustomed to all exercises, above all excellent gunners.
And when we make a general survey of this war, perhaps too hastily analyzed, it is by that very thing that we can explain the causes of the Russian defeat. Surprised by a war unexpected only by itself, the government of that country carried it on, without having prepared for it, in a state of constant and disordered improvisation. That is why their ships in the Far East burned the detestable Japanese coal, while the Japanese burned Cardiff. This example by itself is as good as long arguments.
The Russian ships, before the war, never had any gunnery practice, never any concerted exercises or maneuvers; the Cesarevitch's heavy guns were fired for the first time in the battle of August 10.
Never at any moment of the war did the Russian sailors reflect that instruments of war like their ships are made to fight with and have no other raison d’être. On August 10, just as at Tsushima, they had so little wish to fight that they maintained there also a formation in three columns, the cruisers to the left of the battleships, a formation bad from every point of view, since the cruisers received the projectiles which missed the battleships. Finally they returned to port with a large reserve of projectiles; more than three-fourths of their regular supply.
If these proofs seem insufficient, I will add that, in his instructions before the sortie of August 10, Admiral Vithoft declared his intention to return to Port Arthur, if he could not reach Vladivostok without fighting.
Such blindness, so persisting from beginning to end of the war, must bear fruit, and the best conclusion that I can reach in closing is that the study of this war, like that of many others which preceded it, will be above all useful to us by teaching us to profit by errors which we must not imitate.
The victorious force of Admiral Togo was made of the ineradicable weakness of the Russian sailors infinitely more than of its own worth.
Never be weak!
CHAPTER VI.
RESUME OF THE LESSONS OF HISTORY; THE OBJECTIVES OF WAR; THE ROLE OF FLEETS; THE VALUE OF THE OFFENSIVE; BLOCKADE; COMMAND OF THE SEA.
We have passed in review, in the preceding chapters, important historical facts to derive from them a philosophic lesson, from the special point of view of naval warfare. I should have liked to be able to give a great deal more time to these studies, for there is no more fruitful method of apprehending, and above all understanding, the military art. I will even say that there is no other method.
Only those who have never examined military questions can regard it as superfluous to connect existing problems with the experience of the past. Under the pretext that "means" have been radically transformed, they deny to ancient wars the very great influence which they really exercise upon those of to-day.
But as soon as the attempt is made, as we are bound to make it here, to throw a little light upon the numerous and complex subjects involved in preparation for war, it is quickly perceived that, under penalty of enunciating sentimental propositions which other exactly opposite sentimental propositions of equal validity can destroy, it is necessary to build upon a solid foundation, and this foundation experience alone can supply.
And it is for this reason also that, although I have been obliged to cut short the space given to the general teachings of history in order to follow my program, I do not thereby renounce the benefit which its lessons confer, and we shall take no step in advance, so to speak, without asking from them the support of their experimental confirmation.
The time has come to conclude, or rather to sum up, and in this connection it seems opportune to declare that I have no pretention whatever to innovate in these matters. I do not think I am wrong in expressing my conviction that no one of the distinguished officers who have before me discussed military questions has been able to differ in opinion from me on this subject. Our role, much more modest, is limited to seeking and recapitulating truths old as the world, which all the great captains have made their own, which all the military writers of note have developed, perhaps under different forms, but identical in essential ideas. And it is precisely for that reason that it has appeared to me as impossible to take up the very subject of this work without a preliminary examination of military history as it would be to understand the actual state of contemporary Europe, for example, without knowing the acts by which it was constituted.
And, finally, till now my task has been a simple and easy one: to bring together the military teachings of the most famous specialists in the art of war, to set forth their methods, above all to let them speak, as it were, so that, though with my pen, it is really these practitioners themselves, of greater authority, who lay down the general principles of the art of war and make a vision of the future emerge from the past.
The exact end which I have proposed to myself is to diffuse in the body of naval officers those eternal principles the forgetfulness of which, too frequent by the French navy in the course of its long history, has always coincided with the worst disasters that have overwhelmed it. So limited, this task is already quite fine and useful, if it allows me to contribute even slightly towards making it understood that it is necessary to avoid such errors forever and always.
If the work thus far done has been well assimilated, many memories throng upon us when we think of it; certain terms, certain ideas above all present themselves to our minds with a special persistence: the principal objective, battle, destruction of the hostile naval force, etc., all these expressions, become familiar by dint of repetition, sound in our ears like the leitmotif, as it were, of this study of the wars of the past.
It certainly cannot be a mere coincidence that we always find identical principles underlying the ways of acting of all the great captains; for that reason alone we already have the right to believe that their successes have been due precisely to their agreement in the application of these principles.
Perhaps it might be objected that, having chosen only a limited number of historical facts, the choice may have unconsciously been made of those which correspond with a preconceived opinion and satisfy a personal theory. If the necessary and very useful study of history has been cut short, it is, I repeat, because the necessarily small compass of the book imposed that obligation, however powerful the interest of the subject would have been; but it is the duty of all who may read my work to fill out its deficiencies by a personal study which I cannot too earnestly recommend. They will derive from it a very great benefit, and will find new reasons, I am entirely certain, to strengthen their judgment regarding the general principles which, from Alexander, Caesar and Hannibal to the Japanese generals, not omitting Frederick the Great and Napoleon, have always led to victory. I scarcely need to state, moreover, that so far as I am concerned, I took up the study of the military questions which at this moment absorb our attention with the most complete sincerity and an entire independence of thought.
And, moreover, we feel that chance alone cannot be the explanation of the great warriors, of such various times, countries and temperaments, having obeyed like rules. When we add, on the other hand, that the forgetfulness or neglect of those same rules always coincides, in the course of our naval history, with our most painful trials, it seems difficult not to be convinced that there must really exist a general method of war, which all the great captains have used, whether in conscious imitation of their predecessors in the career or at the simple suggestion of their own genius.
When we observe, on the other hand, the persistence with which certain nations in the course of history have accumulated reverses by the use of the same confusing methods, we can but think, with Commander Daveluy, that "though many people have made war, very few have understood it," and since the occasion offers to speak of our comrade, I cannot too strongly advise the interesting and beneficial reading of his fine Study of Naval Strategy.
THE OBJECTIVES OF WARS.
We have seen, in the course of the preceding chapters, what idea Duquesne, Tourville, Suffren and Nelson, to speak only of the most famous, had of war. Their conceptions in this regard can be condensed in the classic formula, "To seek the enemy, to come up with him and to beat him with superior forces," and this sums up very well, in fact, the true conception of war.
Two nations go to war as a general rule about questions of self interest, disputed territory, rivalries of political influence or of economic supremacy. In the most frequent case, the belligerents quarrel over a new possession which serves as a pretext for the armed strife; or still again, in the course of the events of war, they seek mutually to secure territorial advantages in order to bring the adversary to an agreement. Note well that this is only a means and not at all the object of the war. The latter is essentially limited to the intention, or the hope, of obtaining on one side or the other, by force, the result which persuasion or diplomatic negotiations have been unable to bring about.
To sustain their claims, nations have at their disposal various forces, military, financial, economic, moral, etc., which they oppose one to another, and it is thus that the idea of force arises as soon as the study of war is taken up; we shall concern ourselves only with military forces in this chapter. To be strong, still stronger, above all much stronger than the adversary, such briefly is the most efficacious means of conducting war to one's own best advantage.
And here it is important to have a clear understanding; the question cannot be one of force in absolute value. To lay down the principle that there is no possible success unless the totality of the military power of a country is superior to the totality of the military power of the enemy, would be to ascribe to war a much too simple character and to advance a proposition the falsity of which numerous historical facts have in advance demonstrated. It would also be to proclaim the deceptive axiom of the constant and sure triumph of brute force, as well as the immoral renunciation by weak nations of all hope of respect or even of independence.
When we speak of force, we mean relative force, that is to say the superiority of military power at a fixed point or under certain favorable conditions. The example of the Russo-Japanese war furnishes means of giving this thought the maximum of precision. If, in comparing at the beginning of this conflict and in their totality the war forces of all sorts possessed respectively by Russia and Japan, only their absolute values had been taken account of, there is no doubt that the prognostications would have been unanimously in favor of Russia, whose resources were incomparably the greater from every point of view. Thus the Japanese had in all and for all only the effective forces which they were able to bring to the front almost to a man during the war, about six hundred thousand men, while a general Russian mobilization, according to the most probable estimates, would have called to arms an eight times greater number. And yet it is the Muscovite colossus, to use the well worn expression, who was vanquished in every encounter by his enemy, skilful in maintaining his relative military superiority at a point too far removed from the center of the Russian power for the latter to be able efficiently to bring into play the weight of his immense armament. It did not suffice that the theater of operations was connected by a way of communication to the reservoir of the total energy of the nation, if that way was too narrow. This is a too superficial view of that steel conductor, the Manchurian railroad, which exercised upon minds, in Russia and also in France, a dominating control, and imposed for so long a time, against all reason, the belief in final success. I would not for anything wish a straining after a scientific analogy to be seen in the comparison I am about to make; it must be taken simply as an image to help out language.
For a source of energy to be utilized at a certain distance, it is not enough that it have a high potential, it is further necessary that it be connected with the center of use by a conductor of sufficient section to give the required flow. The military energy of Russia had a very high potential; the conductor which was to transmit this energy to Manchuria had an insufficient section. The power delivered was always below the needs.
Thus then, in the case we are considering, it is the weaker people in absolute value which has seen victory crown its arms; but it obtained this result because it knew how to be the stronger in relative value, that is to say the stronger in every combat.
And such is truly, in effect, the objective of war; it can only be with a view to securing this advantage that war demands special combinations, a preliminary preparation, all things which would become superfluous if the numerical superiority of armies sufficed to give it.
It is with this order of ideas that the study of strategy and tactics, or better the study of the ensemble of procedures suitable to bring about this result, deals. The aim of strategy is to obtain this superiority at a point of the theater of war, that of tactics to have it at a point of the field of battle.
And why is this superiority of forces so much sought after? Solely because at all epochs it has furnished the most certain, as well as the most rapid, solution of all wars by the destruction of the weaker military power.
So long as the forces of the belligerents are intact, they represent antagonistic efforts which are in equilibrium; a single cause can produce the dissolution of this balance, that is to say the end of the war, namely, the destruction of one of those actions, the opposing one thereby becoming preponderant.
It goes without saying, in fact, that a nation which has no armed force left at its disposal is a nation at the mercy of the conqueror, since it no longer has any means of holding him in check.
And thus clearly appear the high value and the philosophy of the principles which, to speak only of naval matters, always guided Suffren and Nelson. These considerations explain their obstinacy in the pursuit of the hostile fleets, which they rightly regarded as the principal force to destroy. And this appears so reasonable, so evidently correct, that we may well ask how, in the course of our long naval history, those who directed naval operations have been able so frequently and so obstinately to remain blind to this truth.
Examples abound. There is Pontchartrain who directs Tourville to avoid the enemy's squadron in order to capture a rich convoy; there is d'Estaing who tries to take Saint Lucia instead of to destroy Barrington's squadron; there is also de Grasse committing the same error at Saint Christopher, finally there is the French government prescribing to Admiral Courbet the useless and difficult blockade of Formosa instead of consenting to that of Petchili, in the very heart of the Chinese power.
In all these cases, the same error is manifest; the secondary and material objective conceals from the eyes of those who know not how to make war the principal objective which must be followed in order to be successful.
Yet a very little reflection will make it clear that no territorial conquest is durable, that no result can be considered definitely achieved, so long as the forces of the adversary are intact, or even still active. The collision of the antagonistic forces is therefore fated to occur at one period or another of the war, and it alone, under almost all possible circumstances, permits the conflict to be ended. Logic itself indicates, consequently, that every effort should be made to bring it on as soon as possible, under chosen conditions, because it is the surest means of fulfilling the objects of the war. Whatever may be the motives of this war, political supremacy, extension of the zone of influence, territorial or economic conquest, etc., is it not fully proved that those motives will be so much the better and quicker satisfied as the adversary shall dispose of no further reserve strength to oppose them?
All this seems the truth itself, and yet ignorance of it seems so deep rooted in France that in our time, and almost every day, there may be read in the newspapers, there may be heard echoed in Parliament, the affirmation, wholly based on sentiment, that squadron warfare would be for France a foolish thing, and that at any cost it must be renounced. It certainly might be renounced if, after we had really tried it, it had given us only mortifications. But it is sufficient to read history to remain unalterably convinced that we have experienced disaster because of having almost always avoided it, and that by means of it, on the contrary, Suffren shed the brightest luster on our naval arms.
Admiral Rozhestvensky's magnificent naval foray has given rise to many controversies; though there has been a unanimous admiration of the remarkable seamanlike qualities of this flag officer, which enabled him to lead his fleet from Russia to the Far Eastern seas, under exceptional difficulties of all sorts, on the other hand there was much discussion, prior to Tsushima, as to his military objective. Should the Russian admiral have sought battle with the Japanese squadron, or should he rather have attempted to avoid it in order to reach Vladivostok?
In a published article, a French general officer of high authority has maintained the thesis that Rozhestvensky's objective ought to have been Vladivostok. This same opinion is clearly expressed in a document emanating from the General Staff, having the Russo-Japanese war for its subject.
There is no doubt that the chief of the Russian squadron thought the same; the cruising formation of his fleet when it entered the Korean Strait proves this superabundantly. The recollection of Nelson's memorandum then comes forcibly to mind, and a comparison is forced upon us. In the case of the illustrious English admiral, the formation adopted for cruising was the order of battle; the Russian admiral kept in cruising order, as he would have done in time of peace, in closely grouped columns, with his impedimenta of transports and colliers. The reason is that the latter did not seek to fight. If he had even had an idea of doing so, he would have sent away his convoy, which could not be of any use and which on the contrary was a danger.
Of these two plans, which is the good one? To judge only by results, one would already be able to conclude that the one from which came the triumph of Trafalgar is infinitely superior to the other which brought forth the disaster of Tsushima.
As far as I am concerned, I pronounce energetically for the first. And since we are discussing an example essentially of the present, I will say: The principal objective of Admiral Rozhestvensky ought to be battle; in the first place as a matter of principle, the destruction, even partial, of the Japanese naval forces being the most profitable result to attain and the most influential upon the destinies of the war; then as a necessity, the chances of escaping it being as small as possible, on account of the proximity of the Japanese naval bases and the narrowness of the passages leading to the only Russian base; finally as reasonable, this battle being the justification and the logical consummation of the immense effort undertaken by the Russian Empire to regain supremacy in the China seas.
D'Estaing, de Grasse, Brueys, and Villeneuve were beaten because they fought only when forced to; Rozhestvensky tasted defeat because he had to be dragged to battle. The sortie of August 10 from Port Arthur was a pitiable failure likewise because, even before they set out, the staff officers of the Russian ships were resolved not to fight. Suffren, Nelson and Togo were victorious because, on the contrary, they wished, sought for and prepared for battle. The same causes have produced the same effects.
And how can it be, after this, that in France certain cultivated minds still maintain the same error?
I shall not weary of repeating that it is the duty of all naval officers sustained by the study of war to uproot these ideas which periodically spring up in France with the vigor of vegetable parasites, and positively to implant the true doctrine of war by educating public opinion; such a result would by itself alone justify the foundation of the War College and make plain the immense service rendered to the country by the Minister of 1895-96.
In this connection, I must confess that in beginning this chapter I had some doubts as to its utility. For a moment I asked myself if I should not be accused of breaking through doors already open or of speaking platitudes, so evident do the propositions here set forth appear and so much the mere expressions of common sense. I was reassured by the recollection of the persistence of certain errors and by the perception of the necessity of extirpating them.
So then, for us, the principal objective remains always the pursuit and destruction of the enemy afloat. This will be the solid and enduring foundation of our military edifice.
THE OFFENSIVE.
In writing the word pursuit, I thereby indicate the choice between two opposing methods of war, the comparison between which has given rise to long and warm discussions. I refer to the offensive and the defensive. With very few exceptions, which serve but to confirm the rule, the former is infinitely superior to the latter.
In his Esprit des Lois, Montesquieu says: "The nature of defensive warfare is discouraging, it gives to the enemy the advantage of the courage and energy of the attack; it would be better to risk something by an offensive war than to depress minds by keeping them in suspense."
"Fortunate the soldier," says Von der Goltz, "to whom destiny assigns the role of assailant." And he adds: "To make war is to attack."
And it is truly a fact that all the great warriors have adopted the offensive and by it secured their most brilliant victories; this may be understood, for the offensive gives to the leader who employs it, even before any action, precious advantages. Such a one knows what he intends to attempt, while his adversary is ignorant of it. He is master of his movements, of the time and of the place where he will carry on the action, and the action takes from these eminently favorable conditions a character of precision from which the adversary is unable to derive any benefit. To the latter everything is unknown; among all the plans that he can ascribe to his enemy, among all allowable hypotheses, which must he select? Taking into account the nervousness of public opinion, quick to be alarmed and to magnify beyond measure the dangers to which the country is exposed, it may be imagined how disagreeable must be the role of the military chief upon whom the defensive is imposed. One need not be much of a prophet to predict that at least in France, of all countries perhaps the most impressionable, this opinion, to-day a sovereign and exacting mistress, would not long endure the anxiety, the anguish even, of the prolonged waiting which is the consequence of the defensive method. To understand why I am firmly convinced that at the end of scarcely a few days of enervating inaction the fleet would be driven out of harbor under the most unfavorable conditions, it is enough to recall the emotion roused in the United States, by the departure of Admiral Cervera's squadron for the West Indies, in the course of the Spanish-American war.
The fright of all the people of the American sea coast towns, who each day. and in each group of inoffensive steamships, saw the phantom squadron, throughout the period of its passage, proves to us that they thoroughly misunderstand our country who advocate, as is done daily, the policy, as fruitless as passive, of squadrons shutting themselves up in port.
Without giving an exaggerated importance to examples taken from the annual grand maneuvers, it is nevertheless allowable to observe that most frequently, I might say always, it is upon the side charged with attacking that the most brilliant role has devolved, as well as the easiest task.
And the superiority of the offensive is worth insisting upon, because it is particularly suited to the French character, to the temperament of this ardent and combative people; it is for that reason that we will agree with Admiral Bouet-Villaumez: "The role of assailant, more suited to the nature of the French sailor as well as soldier, is then the one which an admiral ought to seek, and much more ought he seize upon it, if chance places him in the attacking position."
Observe, in this connection, that the word offensive is here taken in its broadest sense; it applies equally to tactics and to strategy, to the attack of a fleet on the field of battle and to its pursuit from the opening of the war, or to any other similar military action against the hostile forces.
The offensive method demands before all else one primary quality activity; that which Alexander, Caesar, Hannibal, Napoleon, Suffren and Nelson possessed to the highest degree. It demands great force of character on the part of the chief, with a tenacious will controlled by a great intelligence.
But that is not enough, this chief must have, to-day as of old, the instrument suited to this offensive war made up of energy and resolution. The idea of activity translates itself for us seamen by the expression speed.
Whether the matter at issue be to pursue the enemy, or to prevent, by a sudden attack which disconcerts him and defeats his plans, his own assumption of the offensive, it may be conceived what must be the primary importance of time.
The more rapidly the execution of the offensive is carried out, and the less the loss of time, so much the greater the chance of its being crowned with success. In war, to strike quickly is the first step towards striking hard.
In the field of naval strategy this signifies, once again, that naval forces ought above all to possess speed. When Nelson was pursuing with his well known vehemence, first Bruey's squadron bearing Bonaparte and his fortunes, then later on that of Villeneuve across the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, one single anxiety absorbed him to such an extent as to make him sometimes doubtful of his star: the delays which persistent contrary winds imposed upon him and the loss of time which resulted from them.
Is it not absolutely sure that in the eyes of the great seaman, in those moments, all which was not related to the factor speed must have seemed of quite secondary importance? On the other hand, is it not to the lack of speed of his fleet, due to the presence of several slow-sailing ships, that Villeneuve attributed the length of his passage from France to the West Indies, and the delays in the execution of the Emperor's strategic plan?
From whatever side the question is looked at, therefore, the idea of the strategic value of speed is forcibly impressed upon us. And, in fact, speed is above all a strategic quality. This statement is the more necessary to make because the initial preponderance of its role has been denied by some of our most eminent engineers, the authority of whose opinions does not permit leaving them unanswered. All taking the rather too narrow point of view of the constructor, they have brought forward the great cost of speed in the equation of the fighting ship.
The thorough discussion of this very important question cannot be introduced here. I will only observe that with a view to simplify it, to dispel certain of its difficulties and reduce their complexity, the learned naval architects lay down a principle to which they seem to wish to give the force of an axiom, namely, that from the moment that two nations go to war, one ought to conclude that they wish to fight, and that there is therefore no need of having speed greater than that of one's adversary since, the latter equally desiring to fight, the encounter will necessarily take place.
It is not necessary to look very far in history to find facts which give the lie to this principle. Without going back to Villeneuve's campaign in the West Indies, and to so many others of the same kind, which prove how often an adversary can slip away and avoid fighting, the very recent example of the Russo-Japanese war is relevant to show us that a nation can very well submit to a war without any preparation and never seek combat.
The axiom crumbles away before the facts, and there is no occasion to be surprised at it. The question is not, in fact, to know if speed is costly and if, for the constructor, it would be worth while to reduce it. The problem is too restricted when so put; speed, strategically speaking, is indispensable, that is the only exact principle in the matter.
And outside of arguments based upon historical facts, it is difficult to see how, in the absence of the precious advantage of speed, an admiral could attain his principal objective, which ought to be to paralyze the hostile naval forces; in a word, to suppress the enemy afloat.
Two cases can present themselves in practice. First, the fleet whose destruction above all is sought may accept battle or be forced to submit to it, which comes to the same thing. This result is implicitly contained in the previous discussion of principle; it is of the highest importance to bring about the battle with the least possible delay, not only because it is desirable to secure as soon as possible the benefits of victory, or on the other hand to reduce to a minimum the evils of war, but also because such conditions of operating necessitate prompt conclusions. A single example will suffice; if interior lines are occupied, speed alone can give the ability to overwhelm one of the enemy's forces before he has brought about their complete concentration. Such would have been the case for the Russian fleet on August 10, if it had taken advantage of the division of the Japanese forces.
Second, the adversary may conceal himself and refuse battle; in this case, it is not clear how, if he has the greater speed, he can be forced, immediately, to submit to the encounter which he persists in fleeing from. Doubtless the hazards of fortune, especially on the sea, are very great, and can spoil the best prepared plans by forcing to battle a chief who would have none of it, but chance ought not to be counted upon.
I do not at all forget that I have already many times shown, by historic examples, the impossibility of always refusing to fight. There always comes a time when the fleeing forces will be forced to battle (Huascar, Vladivostok cruisers, etc.); but this term, if other things are equal, will be so much the further removed as the assailant's speed is less. This condition, then, is not in accord with the exigencies of war, which demands, for many reasons of all kinds, as prompt solutions as possible.
If, on the contrary, one possesses superiority of speed, the adversary finds himself placed between the two alternatives only of accepting battle or of shutting himself up in port.
This is the proper time to define this question of speed, in order to leave no room for misunderstanding. We have taken pains to dwell upon the reasons which made us regard this strategical feature as an essential one. Those reasons are wholly derived from the necessity of seeking battle, and we cannot agree with those who on the contrary advocate speed for the purpose of flight. I read recently in a publication of no particular standing an article maintaining this strange principle, to which I would not refer had it not quoted, as a favorable argument, a speech made in Parliament by an important personage.
In a fine flight of eloquence in advocacy of speed, this orator reminded his hearers very justly that the French nation owed its most beautiful memories of military glory to speed; but he forgot to limit his argument to the fact that when, in the immortal campaign of Italy for example, Napoleon made such a wonderful use of it, it was to surprise the enemy and attack him, and that wherever speed has assured success it is only by conducting to battle.
Personally I value the teachings of history too highly to take exception to them, but it is necessary not to interpret them wrongly. And the quotation which follows is in exact contradiction to all the experimental facts of war: "Suppose that instead of our clumsy squadrons imprisoned in their heavy Harveyed armor as were in their iron shells, during the decadence of the middle ages, those knights upon whom the leather clothed foot soldiers, the ancestors of our modern infantry, inflicted the disasters that we know of; suppose that instead of these clumsy squadrons we had fast ships, capable of avoiding their attacks, what would become of that empire of the seas so much talked about for these battleships?
"What is so pompously called the empire of the seas will be reduced to the narrow circle which that assemblage of fortresses called battleships traces on the immense surface of the seas with the range of its guns.
"And this assemblage may carry to and fro over the waters the mighty shadow of its armored walls and giant guns; but to what purpose, if the fast ships of the enemy, always capable of escaping from it, can carry everywhere where it is not, perhaps even within a few kilometers of it, menace and destruction."
I have given this extract, so foreign to the doctrines of war, to demonstrate once more how important it is to destroy, at least in the minds of officers, the ideas which are there expressed, and which are by no means new.
They are, moreover, it will be noticed, the exact opposite of those which are defended by the engineers of whom I have heretofore spoken.
Let us at once note that the second solution, which consists in staying in port, indicated by so many well intentioned advisers as the only possible course for the French fleet to follow, practically settles at one blow the principal problem of the war in favor of the assailant, and with 'the maximum benefit to him, since he obtains the desired result, which is putting the adverse forces out of condition to do harm, without any loss of material or personnel on his own side.
COMMAND OF THE SEA.
These considerations awaken in us the idea of the blockade and of command of the sea, two conceptions of exceptional value.
To have command of the sea, such is the expression familiar to all seamen which, in a concise formula, contains a world of ideas and thoughts, and epitomizes as it were the whole of naval strategy.
It does not signify only, for the victorious side, the definite conquest of the field of operations of war; it comprises also freedom of navigation, security of commercial transactions, circulation of the flag, all that represents the active life of a great nation, and which constitutes very often the object itself of the conflict. It is precisely so that it fully satisfies the necessities of war.
In the celebrated struggle between Rome and Carthage, have we not seen fortune waver from one to the other, following the fluctuations of their naval strength, to settle definitely upon the one which finally succeeded in conquering command of the sea?
This conflict originated in a rivalry for economic supremacy upon the sea; such supremacy was assured to the victor by the conquest of the supremacy of war fleets.
When we see around us all nations preparing formidable fleets, we cannot help establishing a relationship with the occurrences of the Punic Wars.
After centuries, this time again, the same causes produce the same effects. When the German Emperor pronounced that celebrated phrase: "The future is upon the sea," he showed that he had a clear conception of the principles of war, and that a nation could not pretend to secure a world wide economic empire if it was not prepared, with the industrial and peaceful mastery of commercial fleets, to impose by force the mastery of military fleets.
There is the secret of the great effort made by Germany during recent years, to increase her naval forces.
It is also well to recall that, in the course of the unfortunate war of 1870, if the sea was always free for us, and by permitting us to prolong our resistance through the resources of all sorts which came by that way, helped to save the honor of France, it was to the uncontested superiority of our navy that the result was due.
The moment is favorable to decide a prejudicial question which has inflamed naval debaters for twenty years past. Although the discussion seems to have now lost much of its asperity, it is indispensable to settle it, because in spite of the luminous demonstrations of experience it still continues. For us, who have sought at their very sources the reasons for our convictions, the expression "command of the sea" immediately awakens in the mind the very clear perception that to exist this command must be absolute, that is to say be exercised through material forces, real and capable of triumphing over all obstacles, and among the latter must be counted those which sea-going opposes to the free use of fleets. The condition necessary for the conquest and conservation of a free maritime highway is therefore to possess seaworthy ships, fit to keep the sea in any weather. This requirement spells the incapacity of flotillas to fill this capital role.
For us seamen, who know how great the influence of the mass of a ship is in the constant struggle with the elements, who have learned by personal experience that the bigger a ship the longer she can stand up against heavy weather, this affirmation is an article of faith.
That it has, nevertheless, constantly been contested by those who had neither the competence nor the right to discuss it, is because the controversy has always been limited to the question of weapons. But the question is not to oppose torpedo against gun, as was attempted at each phase of the recent war; that is not it. Putting aside the question of weapons, what we must know is whether command of the sea can be won by flotillas.
And to this the Russo-Japanese war, besides so many others of the last and previous centuries, has replied with a precision which leaves no room for any possible controversy: the discussion is closed.
If at Tsushima the Japanese had had only torpedo-boats, nothing could have stopped the Second Pacific Squadron in the Korean Strait and in its passage to Vladivostok. And it is not because the Japanese naval forces would have been able to oppose only torpedoes to the Russian guns that this defeat would have been inflicted upon the Japanese, but because their torpedo boats could not face a sea which Rozhestvensky's ships easily confronted. This is what the disputants of eighteen or twenty years ago, and among them the most eloquent, Gabriel Charmes, did not comprehend when they dreamed of chasing great squadrons from the seas with mosquito fleets.
These theories are already very far removed from us, and I have only thought that they should be recalled because they seem to have taken on new life with the appearance of a more modern instrument of warfare, the sub-marine.
At each stage of the war in the Far East, a whole school, taking its wishes for realities, has proclaimed the superiority of submarines over squadrons. Unhappily for it, they were never at any time used. But certain illusions are so tenacious that, contrary to every experience of war and of sea-going, people have assumed to compel the French navy to have only sub-marines.
If such a decision could some day be taken, and upon this point I do not think that my personal opinion can be at all doubtful, on that same day our definite downfall would be consummated.
The sea can no better be kept with sub-marines than with torpedo-boats, no more than it was formerly kept with fire ships; they are all flotillas.
To command the sea, fleets are necessary.
In a more restricted portion of the sphere of operations of war, this command is no less indispensable.
If the principal, or even secondary, object of the war is conquest of territory, this carries with it an armed expedition, and consequently the transportation by sea of military forces to form the army of occupation of the coveted land.
This is what is commonly called, in military language, a combined operation. In an operation of this sort, the navy has the disagreeable part to play. Upon it devolves the protection of the convoy of troops during the entire passage; and that is a small thing in comparison with the protection of their disembarkation. It is not necessary to dwell upon the subject to make all the difficulties of such an undertaking apparent to seamen by profession. To prearrange the anchorage in a roadstead, most often an open one, of a fleet of transports, and to assure the absolute safety of the operations of disembarking numerous troops with all their campaign material, is an extremely arduous task. I mention only its main features, but they are enough to make evident the absolute impossibility of success without the no less absolute certainty of not being exposed to any danger of attack by the enemy.
The wide spread disorder and panic which the appearance of a hostile fleet in the midst of such an enterprise would produce may be imagined. The security which is indispensable is only assured by complete command of the sea.
And I have made no mention of the rigid obligation of assuring the communications of the expeditionary corps with their base of operations, a condition only attainable with the sea free.
As long as Admiral Cervera's squadron, keeping the sea, was a possible menace, the United States fleet attempted no decisive operation; as soon as the Spanish squadron was on the contrary shut up in Santiago, the expedition was decided upon and could set out from Key West.
If the Japanese had not won, from the beginning of the last war, entire liberty of movement, never would they have been able to carry out successfully the disembarkation in Korea of armies so numerous, amounting to six hundred thousand men.
It is interesting to note that the only serious cessation observed in this delicate operation, which scarcely ceased during the whole time of the war, coincided exactly with the awakening of activity which the unfortunate Admiral Makaroff was able to inspire in the Russian fleet of Port Arthur.
Finally, is it not because Napoleon was at no instant able to secure a free path, in spite of the wisest combinations of his genius, that he had to give up his project of invading England, and to confess himself later on vanquished by her?
The notion of "command of the sea" ought to be very definite; by this term supremacy over all oceans is not to be understood. England alone was able, strictly speaking, to cherish that megalomaniac dream some years ago; she herself is no longer able to pretend to it to-day. The expression applies solely to the maritime theater of possible operations.
This command of the sea, which plays thus in the development of every naval war so preponderant a part, can only be secured, I remind you, by two means: the blockade of the adverse forces in their ports, or the destruction of those forces in battle.
BLOCKADES.
The former of these means has been often used in the past; the history of our struggles with England furnishes many examples of it.
Among those best known, the blockade of Brest by the fleets of Cornwallis and those of Toulon by Nelson are justly famous. In our times, that of Santiago de Cuba by Admiral Sampson's squadron, and that of Port Arthur by Admiral Togo, give proof that the method is not obsolete.
And it never can become so, for if what we have said of the importance of a free sea is true, it is of the highest importance to invest the place in which a hostile fleet has taken refuge, not only thereby to deprive it of the power to act, but also to keep a close watch upon it and to be upon its track in case it should attempt a sortie.
Thus the plan of blockading serves two purposes; it enables one to realize the benefit of command of the sea without fighting and so without loss, and also, above all, to establish as close as possible a contact with the fleet which it is necessary to endeavor to destroy. The principal objective is therefore satisfied.
The case of Nelson, blockading Villenetive's fleet, is remembered by all, and on this subject it is well to define with some precision the expression blockade. We do not mean by it only the operation which consists in surrounding the entrances of a port or roadstead with a cordon of ships so close together that no blockaded vessel can pass without being seen and fired upon. Such a conception would truly be too narrow and furthermore inefficacious, even if not too dangerous, nowadays.
By a blockade must be understood any stationing of a naval force at a distance near enough to the refuge of the hostile squadron to permit watching all its movements and to prevent its escaping from this watch by flight.
There is therefore a blockade whenever the circle of surveillance about the blockaded point is restricted enough to make the meeting of the two fleets, and consequently their engagement, certain. Such was the case formerly, in the days of sailing ships, as when Nelson, from his famous Agincourt bay, blockaded Toulon and the French squadrons as rigorously as if he had been on the coast of Provence. How much more so is it now, when improvements of every kind, the result of steam navigation, permit the removal of the base of operations of a blockade to a considerable distance! The introduction of wireless telegraphy on warships has overturned the practical conditions in this respect; thanks to this system of rapid communications over great distances, a blockade will be as effective to-day at a hundred miles distance as it could formerly have been at a very few miles from the blockaded coast.
We find the proof of this in the preliminaries of the naval battle of Tsushima, where it was a wireless message that warned the Japanese fleet of the approach of the Russian squadron and put it in motion at the right time to enable it to find the latter at the desired point.
This step in naval progress is so much the more important because the profound modifications in material and modern armament have made it absolutely necessary to increase blockading distance. The appearance of the torpedo-boat, followed by that of the sub-marine, have made it much too dangerous, in fact, to remain day and night in close proximity to a coast.
It may be said, in this connection, that the blockade of Santiago is not a representative case and ought never to have taken place as it did. The complete disorganization of the defence, the complete military and naval anarchy of unhappy Spain, and the absence of torpedo-boats, or, more exactly, of such boats having good torpedoes, straight shooting and properly exploding, were necessary to afford the spectacle of an American admiral daring to station each night one of his battleships before the harbor mouth, and to do so with impunity.
The withdrawing of the enveloping line to a great distance, then, offers only advantages, since the means of surveillance and of communication are correspondingly modified.
It must also be said that it would be vain to seek to blockade so closely as to indulge the hope of preventing any escape of single vessels. At no period in history has there been a guard strict enough to stop a fast ship, commanded by an energetic and resolute seaman, knowing how to take advantage of all circumstances favorable to passing between the links of the blockading chain.
The "blockade runners" of the Southern fleet, during the war of the American secession, have left imperishable memories on this subject.
The blockade of Port Arthur was never strict enough to prevent some steamers or junks from taking supplies into that place.
There are still, in our time, fine chances for bold and brilliant maneuvering on the part of the commanders of modern high-speed cruisers, and there are enough moonless nights to permit discounting opportunities equally numerous.
Moreover the importance of the escape of a single ship must not be exaggerated; command of the sea will not thus be compromised for the blockading force. It is, in fact, the totality of the hostile fleet which, by the assemblage of its units, constitutes the only real force which it is important to watch and to blockade, always with a view to attain the principal objective, which is to force it to fight.
Thus is the question plainly set forth: immediate battle and blockade, in the broad sense in which it has just been defined, but unchangeable in its principles, are the two efficient means which assure command of the sea.
THE PRINCIPAL OBJECTIVE.
On examining the question, it is at once seen that in reality only the first of these two means is definite and decisive; the second can furnish but a provisional solution. And it is so true that battle is the real end and objective of every war that even those who advocate for the French navy a passive waiting in port consider this inactivity a measure wholly for the moment and occasion; they point it out as the means of awaiting a "favorable opportunity." They usually neglect to define what constitutes such a favorable opportunity.
The neglect is not accidental, for these exceptional circumstances, by the firm but delusive hope of which they are deceived, are not easily imagined.
I understand very well that, in this solution, there is seen the tempting image of a relaxation in the watch of the blockading forces, of a conjunction of weather and the elements accidentally scattering those forces, in a manner to reverse the roles and give to the besieged superiority of numbers.
It is very necessary, in reasoning thus, to count upon the favorable chances, for the very definition of the blockade leaves no room to doubt that the fleet employing it is composed of very superior forces. To judge of the practical value of such hopes, the history, so constantly fruitful in teachings, of the naval war of 1805, and particularly the correspondences of Nelson and Villeneuve, must be attentively read.
They also, in the French fleet, counted upon the benefit of bad weather breaking the rigid circle with which the English fleet hemmed them in; it is well known what the result was of that first sortie of January 18, from which the French ships had to return to port half wrecked by a violent storm from the southwest, so much the worse for them because the long-continued idleness in which they had lived for months in the Toulon roadstead had unfitted them to encounter it.
The English fleet, for their part, wonderfully trained by enduring the trials of a long blockade, went through this tempest without damage or -injury. "Instead of putting to sea in spite of the English squadrons, forcing a way if necessary," wrote Admiral Jurien de la Graviere, "they preferred to wait until a gale of wind compelled the latter to raise the blockade. They went out then favored by a storm, and more than once that storm gave them no opportunity of doing anything against the enemy."
This method has verily been too unsuccessful for us in the past not to be given up in future.
Villeneuve certainly succeeded, in his second attempt on March 29, in escaping Nelson's watchfulness and breaking the blockade. But this was only an absolutely secondary episode of the great military drama whose conclusion, logical and unimpeachable as far as the principles of war are concerned, was to be Trafalgar, that is to say battle.
At Santiago de Cuba, the sortie of unfortunate Cervera's squadron, had it been successfully accomplished, would only have delayed by a few days the final result. So too the naval battle of August 10, which marked the first Russian naval disaster of importance, was but the material and logical consecration of a defeat virtually accomplished from the day that the superior naval forces of the Japanese blockaded the Russian squadron in Port Arthur.
In a document on the subject of the Russo-Japanese war, drawn up by the General Staff, I find this expression: "If Rozhestvensky had been able to reach Vladivostok with his fleet intact, this accomplishment could have, been regarded as equivalent to a victory. In the shelter of a safe harbor, having at his disposal docks and coal, he forced the Japanese to wear themselves out by hard cruising, and kept himself, as a perpetual threat to their communications by sea, master of the choice of the hour when it would suit him to engage in battle."
Is it not curious to again find, after the lapse of a century, the same proposition which attributed to the French fleets snug in harbor better preparation than that of the enemy's forces at strife with the sea. We know only too well what to think of it.
Villeneuve said to his sailors: "Nothing ought to astonish us in the sight of an English squadron, their ships are worn by a two years' cruise." That which he also believed to be a "hard cruise" was in reality the wonderful school of experience, where by enduring the bitter trials of sea life, characters were formed and with them the incomparable instrument which Nelson was to use so well.
If Rozhestvensky had been able to reach Vladivostok, he would have been immediately and closely blockaded by the Japanese naval forces, and the final result would merely have been postponed.
Command of the sea was assured just the same to the Japanese by this blockade, and on the fatal day when, under the impulsion of events or of public opinion, the Russian naval forces, depressed by their long enforced inaction, resigned themselves to going out, they would have found opposed to them warlike fleets, inured to all the hardships of cruising, impregnated with that profound seaman's sense which constant sea experience alone can give. They would have been beaten in the same manner as they were at Tsushima and for the same reasons.
It is thus that indispensable history, ancient or contemporary, teaches us, with unescapable logic, that war can have no other effective sanction than battle.
Whether it be a little sooner or a little later, at the beginning or at the end of the war, battle is unescapable and the moment will inevitably come when the two antagonistic forces find themselves face to face.
To speak truly, from the moment that these forces are in sight of one another the role of initial preparation for war effaces itself before that of the commander-in-chief.
The hour is about to sound when the heaviest responsibilities accumulate upon the head of a single man, and when the wisest plans, the most minute precautions, the most legitimate hopes, since they are based upon foresight, may be annihilated, if that man does not measure up to the occasion. Strategical conceptions give way to those of tactics.
At the point which we have reached, must we then be forced to this somewhat discouraging conclusion that at the instant of engaging the presence of the man of genius is indispensable, and that in his absence all hope must be abandoned?
Whatever may be the help that the presence of such a chief could bring to his fleet, it is wiser to count without him. The attentive study of the way of great seamen in the past is particularly reassuring in this respect, for it enables us to perceive that there exist a certain number of principles, if not a method, inseparable from success.
In carefully examining them, we shall not be long in recognizing them, for they are identical upon all points with those which the necessities of a strategical order have lead us to lay down.
Here in fact are represented the first two terms of the classic formula laid down at the beginning of the chapter.
"To seek the enemy, to come up with him…" There remains "to beat him with superior forces."
Must we understand this to be a mere numerical statement, signifying that to a fixed number of hostile ships it is needful always to oppose a greater number of ships of the same kind?
If an affair so complicated and so difficult as battle is could be reduced to a simple question of arithmetic, the most magnificent feats of arms which have illustrated history would have to be stricken from its records.
Disregarding the many examples in military wars where Alexander, Hannibal and Napoleon beat hostile armies most frequently more numerous than their own troops, it is particularly interesting to observe that at Trafalgar, as well as at Aboukir, Nelson was inferior in numbers and yet carried off the victory each time and what victories!
Just as, when we examined the general principles of war, we were led to conclude that the important thing is to be stronger than the adversary at one definite point of the strategic game board, we will now say that the superiority of forces which it is essential to seek and to obtain, on the field of battle, should be at one definite point of that field, over a fraction of the adverse forces; once more we come upon the notion of relative superiority.
But before going more deeply into this subject, there is another principle which more pressingly invites our attention. The question is once more of the choice to make between two methods of fighting; the offensive and the defensive, and the question is hardly proposed before our choice is easily devined. It is useless to renew all the arguments that I have already developed in support of the first method when the question was of seeking the enemy and forcing him to battle; the whole weight of those arguments can but be increased when the question becomes that of fighting him. The role of assailant possesses inherently too many moral advantages of all sorts for its renouncement to be thought of. Yet, whatever the strength of the argument, it would not be sufficient to enforce conviction, if the relentless teachings of the past did not remind us that our most grievous reverses upon the sea have been the fruit of our passive method of making war. Far from seeking combat, we have most frequently only yielded to it.
In this connection, the words of Admiral Jurien de la Graviere cannot be too much pondered: "If the names of some of our admirals are to-day so sadly associated with the memory of our disasters, the fault, let us be sure, is not at all wholly theirs. Rather must the character of the operations in which they were engaged be accused, and that system of DEFENSIVE warfare which Pitt declared, in Parliament, to be the precursor of inevitable ruin. This system, when we wished to renounce it, had already become habitual to us; it had weakened our arms and paralyzed our confidence. Too often our squadrons left our ports with a special mission to fulfill and the intention of avoiding the enemy; to meet him was already an adverse stroke. It was thus that our ships presented themselves to battle; they underwent it instead of imposing it."
"…For a long time this restricted and timid warfare, THIS DEFENSIVE WARFARE, could be kept up, thanks to the circumspection of the English admirals and the traditions of the old tactics. It was with these traditions that Aboukir broke; the time of decisive battles had come."
Among all the examples that could be selected, that of Aboukir certainly affords the most striking contrast between the two methods of fighting. On the French side, there is the defensive in its most indolent and depressing inactivity; the squadron is at anchor, already by that single fact in a notable state of inferiority since it is unable to maneuver. Moreover, it is without proper lookout service, so that the news of the approach of the English fleet surprises it in full disorder; and virile resolution is to such an extent wanting to its leaders that but a single voice, that of Blanquet du Chayla, is raised, without success, to demand that they fight under way.
This picture of a fleet at anchor, letting another fleet full of life and ardor come upon it, does it not appear as the very symbol of passive resignation, of the defensive method in fine?
If this were an isolated example, perhaps the value of the argument based upon it could be contested; but did not the naval battle of Sluys, several centuries before Aboukir, itself also have as a characteristic the complete defeat of the fleet which accepted battle at anchor?
This result cannot be surprising, for the idea we form of fighting is inseparable from that of action; and, to repeat it once more, a naval force which is incapable of maneuvering, and which awaits, moored to its anchors, the adversary's attack, is not an acting force.
Quite otherwise is the appearance on the side of the English squadron; here everywhere is combative ardor, from the commander-in-chief to the last sailor. Each one knows where he is going and what he has to do, so that all efforts tend to a single object and work with an irresistible force. This is the offensive spirit in the full acceptation of the term and of the idea.
Signals are useless, and only the strictly indispensable minimum of these are made, for Nelson's captains have long known his plan; they know that he will seek to crush one wing of the French squadron "with superior forces." It will be, in the case of the battle of Aboukir, the head of the French squadron which will thus be crushed by superior effort, the turn of the rear of the line being to follow.
Furthermore, if Nelson knew how to apply this principle with incomparable mastery, it is not his invention. Ever since the legendary tactics of the Horatii, to repeat, a great number of their imitators, at all stages in the world's history, have striven, by skill or cunning, to beat in detail adversaries whom they could not overcome all together.
Without going outside of purely naval actions, we have seen Suffren adopt this same tactics, seek to attack a fraction of the opposing fleet with the whole of his own forces, and endeavor to obtain thus, at one point of the battle field, numerical superiority. In the English navy likewise, Rodney, at the battle of Dominica, had already cut the enemy's line in such a manner as to throw it into disorder, dislocating it as it were, and to bring between two fires a portion of that line.
An English writer, Clerk, a great admirer of Suffren, has laid down, in an epoch-making work, a whole body of doctrines based on these tactics which Nelson was later himself to adopt. Recently, Admiral Togo, at the battle of Tsushima, attacked the Russian squadron in a manner which strikingly resembles that of the English fleet at Trafalgar. The two Japanese squadrons, or more exactly their fleet divided into two squadrons, crushed one part of the Russian line, as the two squadrons of Nelson and Collingwood did in the case of the allied fleet, not choosing the same part, nor attacking in the same way, but under the inspiration of the same principles, which alone are important.
In truth, this method does not belong exclusively to any great chief; it is as old as the world, and I am tempted to say that it derives solely from good sense. If it was lost sight of, at least in the naval wars which immediately preceded the campaigns of Suffren and Nelson, if, for a very long time, a naval battle was looked upon only as an engagement, in a way academic, between two columns correctly opposed one symmetrically to the other, this momentary neglect of the true principles of war takes away nothing from their force.
In the work of which mention has already been made, Clerk points out the special importance of bringing a squadron into action in such formation that the units can mutually support each other. This point of view is certainly correct; it is wholly contained, moreover, in the offensive program which exacts, for success, a perfect union of efforts, directed towards a single object.
It is this program that the French navy has so rarely made its own; for proof of it I would wish nothing but that interesting remark made by Mahan that the French fleets have almost always engaged from to leeward; it is this same program which it is indispensable for us to adopt definitely in order to break away from the old ways which have led us only to mortifications.
Though tactics changes as to its procedures, it does not follow that its principles change. Doubtless in the time of sailing ships the weather gauge had an inestimable value which no longer exists; but that is only one detail which another detail will replace.
In our time, for example, it is the sun gauge which it is necessary to struggle to obtain. If the sun is reflected back from the adversary, all the details of the targets are brought out clearly, and the aim has a precision which becomes, on the other hand, impossible when it is directly in the eyes of the gun pointers. It is thus that at Tsushima Admiral Togo secured for himself this one advantage more over his enemy.
It is not enough, finally, to have overcome the adversary, to have compelled him to cease fighting and to retreat, it is necessary to annihilate him, to destroy completely the power that he represents, and there is but one method of doing this; pursuit, a furious, implacable pursuit, giving neither respite nor repose to the remnants of the beaten fleet. To a fleet thus harassed, no hope of renewing its strength is any longer left, and that alone responds to the aim of the war.
Any other method leads but to half victories, which are not rigorous solutions and remain too often sterile.
I would not wish any possible misunderstanding as to the scope of the chapter I have just written; and, in this respect, it is not superfluous to return to a certain statement made in the introduction itself of the present work.
There must not be seen, in the exposition which has just been made, the least pretention to a doctrinal teaching of victory; that, I repeat, cannot be taught. The sole legitimate ambition in this matter ought to be and is, in reality, to co-ordinate, as we have, the lessons of history; to make a classification of the methods of war used in the past and to show which of them have been crowned with success.
Such a work is legitimate, for it permits of bringing out clearly a quite small number of fundamental laws of which it is exact to say that their neglect means certain failure.
Doubtless, once more, nothing can take the place of a good general; but, other things being equal, the latter will be so much the more certain of victory as he follows, in a general way, the method of the most illustrious warriors among his predecessors.
Upon the field of action, the more convinced he is of the necessity of striking at his enemy's weak point, the more easily will he discover that point.
But let us not be deceived here; this method, which we have broadly outlined, exacts a long and methodical preparation, leaving to chance and circumstances only the minimum part.
To maintain formidable forces, to discern the vulnerable point of the adversary, to carry there rapidly the maximum possible effort to obtain at that point superiority, such is the role of strategy and, consequently, of the General Staff.
To watch closely the opposing forces of the adversary, to compel him to battle, to discover the weak point in his formation, and to bring the whole of one's own forces to bear upon that point, that is the role of the tactician, that is to say of the commander-in-chief.
Both are grandiose in their conception; the first, the more abstract, admits, as we shall see later on, of as many different methods of execution as there may be nations at war; the second is of more general application. But the second exacts also a perfect understanding between the commander-in-chief and his subordinates. There ought to be no secrets between them, and the thought of the general ought to become that of all his captains.
A single object ought to guide them battle; and it is for that reason also that during the period of search for the enemy everything ought to be planned as if that battle might take place at any instant. This implies that "the order of cruising is to be the order of battle."
Finally, as a consequence of the requirements above set forth, once battle is engaged, signals become useless: "honor to whomsoever does the best."
"The admiral-in-chief ought as much as possible," says Admiral Bouet-Villaumez, "foresee before the battle the maneuvers to be made; and once fire is opened, the captains ought to be so much under the influence of their admiral's methods of attack and his intentions that signals cease then to be necessary for their guidance."
I have only, in finishing, to emphasize how chimerical it would be to wish to make war without taking risks. War is a game in which there is no more certainty of winning than there is in any other less serious. "Who risks not, gains not," says an old proverb.
If one does not wish to take the chance of losing, there is but one way, and that is not to play; yet when the question is war one often is obliged to play despite himself.
Therefore is it not infinitely more reasonable and more wise to learn to play well that game? Thus will the chances of loss be reduced to a minimum.
On September 14, 1804, Napoleon wrote: "All the over sea expeditions which have been undertaken since I am at the head of the government have failed, because the admirals saw double and found, I know not where, that war can be made without running any risks."
Suffren and Nelson, in their correspondence, have also made known to us their ideas on this subject; they are worth meditating upon. That is why I do not think I can better conclude all that precedes than by recalling one of Nelson's professions of faith which I have already quoted: "I should very soon either do much, or be ruined. My disposition cannot bear tame and slow measures," wrote the most illustrious of English admirals, after the battle of March 14, 1795, against Admiral Martin's fleet. These words contain a whole program.
CHAPTER VII.
PROOF OF THE EXISTENCE OF A BODY OF FUNDAMENTAL DOCTRINES; OPINIONS OF MILITARY AND NAVAL WRITERS.
The conclusions of the preceding chapter, wholly drawn from the impartial study of military history, derive their value from the experimental method which furnished them; they are therefore self-sufficient. But the question is too important and far-reaching for me to hesitate to increase their persuasive force by arguments borrowed from the most clearly competent military writers. In thus depending upon authors to justify my own opinions as to the general teachings of great wars, I anticipate the objection which could be made to me of having chosen among the facts and of having examined them from a somewhat too personal point of view.
And just as it seemed to me beneficial to study some great examples of land wars before taking up naval wars, so I shall first pass in review the ideas formulated by some military specialists and then finish with naval authors.
This general method is once again legitimate, for there is really but a single and unique doctrine of war. If we will only reflect upon the subject of war, we will recognize, in fact, with Clausewitz, that it is nothing but the violent procedure by which one seeks to compel the adversary to yield to one's wishes. To obtain this result, it is necessary to call upon all the forces at one's disposal in order to make the greatest possible effort. Thenceforth, those various forces, military, naval, moral, etc., appear but as different means of attaining a single object; there can therefore be but one single strategy, and every conception which tends to establish a distinction between the utilization of military forces and that of naval forces, in a word to differentiate naval strategy from military strategy, is purely arbitrary. This principle of unity extends from strategy even to tactics; infinitely more varied in details (for it necessarily feels the effects of the incessant developments in weapons, as we have had to state on many occasions), nevertheless tactics also obeys unchangeable laws.
JOMINI.
In Jomini's eyes, the art of war is wholly contained in the principle of the quest of superiority of forces at a decisive point. The objective of strategy is the concentration of the bulk of one's forces upon a point of the theater of the war, just as in the theater of active operations tactics endeavors to bring the bulk of one's troops to bear upon a weak point of the field of battle.
For him likewise, the offensive is in its general principle advantageous. It exercises a preponderant influence on the morale of armies; it is beneficial furthermore from the advantage which the pursuit of a well determined object gives. If this writer, nevertheless, seems to attribute to the defensive method a partial superiority because it gives the choice of the place of operations, it is on the express condition that it be active, for he explicitly condemns every passive form of the defensive. But what then is the active defensive; that is to say the defensive which contemplates attacking at a favorable moment, if not a particular form of the offensive?
"A state attacked by its neighbor," says he, "which claims ancient rights over a province, rarely decides to cede the latter without fighting; and from pure conviction of the reality of its rights it prefers to defend' the territory that is demanded of it, which is always more honorable and more natural. But instead of remaining passively on the frontier awaiting its aggressor, it may suit it to take the initiative or offensive."
He says likewise: "Let us recognize that a State does better to invade its neighbors thaw, to let itself be attacked."
And in this connection, it may not be useless to explain that in forcibly advocating the principle of the offensive, I have never meant to advise blind attack, head down, under all circumstances and in all places, but rather the aggregate of well-planned active operations, directed against the enemy's weak point; and this requires of necessity preliminary profound study of the latter's military constitution. Finally I have wished above all to contrast the fruitful method of action with that of resigned waiting, which leads surely to defeat. This is Jomini's idea, which he expresses in the following manner in the chapter on tactics entitled "Of the defensive offensive": "We have already pointed out, in speaking of strategic operations, all the advantages which the initiative gives; but we have recognized at the same time that in tactics the one who waited could turn all these advantages to his own account, by a timely change from the defensive to the offensive. A general who awaits the enemy like an automaton, without any other plan than to fight bravely, will always succumb when properly attacked. It is not so with a general who waits with the firm resolution at the proper moment to fall upon his adversary in order to regain the moral advantage which comes from an offensive movement and from the certainty of putting one's forces in action at the most important point, which is impossible when keeping strictly on the defensive."
He equally proclaims the necessity of an army's possessing a base of operations, from which will come to it the re-enforcements and supplies of every nature indispensable to the maintenance of its vigor, and which is the support of its offensive action. This base is not always single; it can and ought to be completed by the organization of secondary bases, in proportion as the offensive operations of the army separate it from its principal base.
We have already seen, in studying the events of the Russo-Japanese war, the application which the Japanese fleet made of this excellent principle laid down by Jomini. Certainly the arsenals of Japan might have been thought near enough to the center of naval operations, and yet Togo did not hesitate to adopt on the Korean coast a base in more immediate contact with what was going on. And since we are alluding to a naval example, it is of interest to note the formal condition put by the general whose military ideas we are now discussing upon the adoption of the sea as an army's base of operations. He states, in effect, that the concomitant necessity of command of the sea is a somewhat disadvantageous condition.
It seems difficult to reproach this doctrine, from the pen of such a man, with having been inspired by the necessities of a cause or a theory; it adds remarkable force to all that I have already insisted upon in the exposition of the situation of the opposing sides at the beginning of the war which has just taken place in the Far East. It also puts in relief how much the Japanese, in contradistinction to their adversaries, were permeated with the fundamental principles of the military art.
General Jomini, moreover, did not pretend to compress the theory of war into a sort of abstract formula applicable to all cases; very much to the contrary he regarded war not at all as a science based upon more or less ingenious mathematical speculations but as a drama with all the passions, all the sublimities and all the weaknesses which attend that crisis of humanity. It would be difficult to indicate more clearly the considerable part played by moral forces, interpreted broadly, in the progress of the destinies of a war. At each stage of the Russo-Japanese war we could in fact see the scenes and acts of this poignant drama in the course of which the moral weakness of the Russians furnished us with living examples much more convincing than those taken from fiction.
This moral conception of war is worth remembering, for it implies the indispensable knowledge of the enemy's state of mind, of his degree of preparation for the struggle, and thus shows the close bond which, at the outset of any strategy, ought to exist between the general policy of a country and its purely material preparation for war.
Analyzing Napoleon's system of war, the definition of which can be summed up in three words speed, battle, rest Jomini thinks that this system will never be abandoned. I may add, for my part, that it owes its wonderful vitality to the excellence of the principles upon which it is based; though Napoleon knew how to make a marvelous use of them, they really were not exclusively his own. We have seen, although a little too briefly, that all the great captains have conformed to them while adapting them to the resources at their disposal. The practical means of action have undergone radical changes, as a result of incessant progress in all branches of human activity, but the same essential laws belong to all ages.
In his fine book "Precis sur l'art de la guerre," Jomini establishes minutely all the divisions of the arduous task which falls upon the General Staff; preparation of material, orders of concentration and of route, elaboration of the plan of campaign, determination of the enemy's position, drawing up instructions for the march and rendezvous, direction of reconnaissances, centralization of information of all sorts relative to the enemy's movements, etc., all this together is one of the most overwhelming duties which men can be called upon to do.
And who then, in presence of this program, still so vaguely sketched, could still maintain that its consideration can be postponed till the moment of execution? The part played by chance is, in the very nature of things, already too great in the course of war for the attempt to restrict it not to be made. And they would truly be criminal in their blind ignorance who would persist in seeing the only remedy for all these difficulties in the convenient formula, "trust to luck."
It was quite thus that Jomini thought when he wrote, as the conclusion of his book, the following lines: "If some prejudiced military men, after having read this book and studied attentively the detailed recital of some of the campaigns of great masters, still persist in maintaining that there exists no principle, no practical rule of war, we must be satisfied to pity them and to reply with Frederick the Great's well known saying, 'A MULE WHICH HAD MADE TWENTY CAMPAIGNS UNDER PRINCE EUGENE WOULD BE NO BETTER TACTICIAN FOR THAT.' Correct theories, founded upon true principles and justified by facts, are, in our opinion, when taken in conjunction with the lessons of history, the veritable school of generals. If these means do not make a great man, since great men are always self-made when circumstances favor them, they will at least form generals skilful enough to be perfectly fitted for the second rank under the orders of great generals."
CLAUSEWITZ.
General Clausewitz in his turn shows us the immense part played in war by moral forces under all their aspects, passions, hates, fear. The most recent war has already given us most convincing proofs of the legitimacy of this conception.
For him, the immediate object of war is to strike down the adversary, and this object exacts the use of the maximum forces with a view to the greatest effort. The sole efficient means of war is battle; that is the essential thing, what I have already several times called the principal objective. "Battle," says he, "constitutes the whole action of war. In battle the destruction of the opposing forces is the means of attaining the object, even though the battle does not actually take place and the threat of it suffices to bring about a settlement; for in that case the enemy manifestly retires only on the supposition that, if he accepted the struggle, he would inevitably be destroyed. In war, then, the destruction of the armed force of the adversary is the corner stone of all combinations…In speaking of the armed force of the adversary, we ought expressly to observe that nothing obliges us to limit this idea to physical force; but rather that everything makes it obligatory upon us to include moral force also, for the reason that these two forces are constantly mingled even in the smallest details of the act of war, and consequently are inseparable."
To form a fair judgment of Clausewitz's work, it should be read through, and it would certainly be a profitable task, but such a complete study would greatly exceed our limits; yet it alone enables his true military thought to be extracted from the mass of his literary labors. It is thus that, to every superficial reader, he seems to accord all his preferences to the defensive, which he regards as a superior method in so far as it is applied to the conservation of one's possessions, territories, forces, etc. A more complete understanding of his ideas leaves no room for doubt, on the other hand, as to the exceptional value that he accords to the offensive. Let this be judged from the following extracts:
"Outside of the destruction itself of the armed forces of the adversary, the different objects that it can be proposed to attain in war are positive objects, and, consequently, the offensive alone is capable of pursuing them." It is not less necessary to understand what Clausewitz means by the defensive. "Passivity being absolutely contrary to the nature of war, this definition (resistance) can only be applied to the defence when the latter is regarded from a quite general point of view…Resistance then can only be relative, and the defence, frequently changing its general form, ought to pass, in the course of the action, first from parry to parry and thrust, and then, as the latter gives opportunity, to ATTACK. One is on the defensive in a fight when one awaits firmly planted the shock of the enemy upon the point where one has taken his stand; in a battle, when one waits for the hostile army to come to face the positions that one occupies and the fire of the troops that one commands; finally, in a campaign, when one awaits the invasion of the theater of war of which one has made choice. Thus far the defence is in nowise in contradiction with the nature of war, for one can find his advantage in awaiting the enemy on a field, in positions or in a theater of operations the resources of which one knows and which one has studied and prepared in advance. But when resistance properly so-called has done its work, and because, to retain his part in directing the conduct of the war, the defender must necessarily return to the attacker the blows received from him, there immediately results an offensive action on the part of the defence itself."
"The defensive action therefore comports with offensive acts in each of its degrees, whether it is a question of fights, of battles or of campaigns. In a defensive battle, for example, one's isolated divisions can be employed offensively. This form of warfare, therefore, need not be looked upon as a shield, but rather as a weapon suitable for thrust as well as for parry."
And to still better define the expressions, already so clear, which precede, I will add this further quotation: "A war in which one would be satisfied to use victory to repel the enemy, without ever attacking him in turn, would be as foolish as a battle the arrangements of which were made with the sole idea of an absolutely passive defence."
Thus we find in these lines, on the one hand, the formal condemnation of that form of resigned waiting in which the defensive is most frequently conceived and which, in the history of all epochs, has never brought forth anything but defeats; and, on the other hand, the clear meaning, without any possible equivocation, which must be given to the expression defensive from the pen of this learned military writer. Thus understood, there is no contradiction with the conclusions which I have already myself developed; for the defensive, defined in this manner, is only a variety of the well conceived offensive. Better still, we can make an immediate application of it to the example of Tsushima. The "offensive," in the broadest sense of the word, permitted to the Japanese, under the threat of the speedy arrival of the Second Pacific Squadron, a great variety of solutions; it is this which explains why, from the day that fleet set out, the most fantastic projects were attributed to the Japanese Admiralty. The squadrons of Togo and Kamimura were made out by the imagination of news writers, on several occasions, within sight of Madagascar, then successively in the Strait of Malacca and that of Formosa; I omit the incident which happened in the Channel on the Dogger Bank. All these fleeting visions came from the very clear perception, forced upon the world by their previous operations, that the Japanese sailors had adopted the offensive as their line of conduct. To attack Rozhestvensky's battleships on the shoals of Hull during the night, with torpedo-boats, in another fashion than in the hallucinations of the Russian sailors; to surprise them off Nossi-be, at the entrance to the China Seas, or in the bay of Camraigne, or finally in the Formosan Straits, would have been just so many offensive acts. But to wait for them at the passage of the Korean Strait, in proximity to the Japanese bases of operations, in that very way having available the maximum of means of action, fighting ships, torpedo-boats, rapid communications, etc., was also the offensive in the sense given to it by Clausewitz, and the latter course, in the case considered, was incontestably superior to all the others. By going to meet his adversary, whether at Singapore or even only on the coasts of Annam, Togo would only have weakened himself.
This example, corresponding to the definition contained in the preceding quotations, throws a special light upon the value which should be exactly assigned to the idea of the offensive. Clausewitz adds further: "The essential characteristics of offensive warfare are rapidity, decision and continuity of action," and also "The greatest promptitude should be used in operations. Every loss of time, every useless detour brings about a waste of forces and is consequently a strategic error."
Thus once more is the high strategic value of speed proclaimed.
"In tactics as in strategy, superiority of numbers is, of all principles, the one which most generally gives victory" Thus does the Prussian general express himself upon an important point in the study of war, and he adds: "The greatest possible number of troops should be brought into action at the decisive point. Such is the first principle in strategy."
And such is really the first act of war; but here it is indispensable to bring to notice that the greatness of this first effort depends entirely upon governmental action. This emphasizes the close tie which binds the initial strategy to politics. If, through the errors or the weakness of the latter, this so important opening effort is insufficient, if, in a word, absolute superiority of forces cannot be realized, it becomes necessary to endeavor to obtain, by surprise or by skill, relative superiority at the decisive point.
We have already seen the prime importance which Clausewitz attributed to battle; he defined it: "Strategy's instrument for attaining the object of the war." An opinion as weighty as his adds new force to the conclusions I have already drawn from the summary study of the great wars of the past.
We borrow from him one last extract, which equally confirms what we already know: "The battle at last gained and the victory won, it is necessary at once, without halt, without change, without reflection, without even taking breath, to hurl oneself in pursuit of the enemy, to attack him wherever he resists, to seize upon his capital, to destroy his armies of relief and to overturn all the supports of his power."
Here we find again the idea that victory cannot be complete if it is not followed by the -irremediable destruction of the enemy; without which it is but a half measure and does not satisfy the ends of the war.
It is not without a lively regret that I find myself compelled to leave the very captivating study of Clausewitz's works; but our space and time are so short that it is indispensable to limit myself. Yet I am unwilling to finish without making a brief allusion to the interesting chapter which treats of the theory of war, and more particularly of the knowledge demanded of the commander-in-chief: "The general-in-chief," says he, "does not acquire this varied knowledge from formula and from scientific processes; it requires on his part special aptitude, supported by the judicious observation of things and a judgment trained by the events of life." He says again: "Study and meditation can produce an Euler and a Newton, but experience of life and its great teachings are necessary to form calculators such as Conde and Frederick"
These words, struck with the die of good judgment, are wholly worth remembering, above all in our times when there are revealed sad tendencies to misconceive the simplicity of the object and means of war, as well as its purely artistic and personal quality; to see in it I know not what false science of a dry and arbitrary character. For my part, I chose, without the shadow of a hesitation, Clausewitz's concept.
RUSTOW.
Another and more modern foreign military writer, Rustow, is not less affirmative.
Under the title "Fundamental Laws of Strategy," he has collected a certain number of maxims which it is well to ponder.
"The fundamental laws of the art of commanding armies stand clearly forth from all the historical facts of war, and it will always be so as long as the nature of our means of war has not wholly changed." After this statement of a principle already too well known to us not to be accepted without reserve, he expresses his maxims as follows:
In the first place, "armies are the principal instrument and the principal objective of strategy, the true representatives of force in war. To develop as much as possible the activity of his own army and to restrain the activity of that of the enemy, to maintain his army and to destroy the enemy's, such are the dominating ideas that should direct the general-in-chief. Battle is the culminating act of war. It commands and determines all other operations of war."
Thus there is set forth anew, with perfect clearness, the idea of forces and the principal function devolved upon opposition to those forces, that is to say upon battle. Here now is how the elements of equilibrium of this antagonism of forces are to be established.
"Victory is assured by superior forces; by the choice of the favorable moment, that is to say of the moment when one is strongest and the enemy weakest; by the choice of the suitable place, that is to say of the place where one is strongest and the enemy weakest. Success is further assured by a clear and precise conception of the result to be attained; by the intelligence which directs towards a single object all one's material forces and which advances straight towards it without deviating; finally by an energetic will which never loses sight of this object and never abandons it without necessity."
The very recent examples of the Russo-Japanese war demonstrate the excellence of these last principles; they are in some sort the illustration of them. Superiority of forces at the point where the Russians were weaker, choice of the most convenient place, clear and simple conception of the result to be attained, tenacity in the execution of the plan of action, all these conditions united assured success to the Japanese without requiring the presence of a man of genius.
This would suffice to prove, lacking other proofs, that there truly are, as Rustow, as well as Clausewitz, Jomini and so many others, has declared, a certain number of fundamental laws which cannot with impunity be ignored.
Superiority of force must first be sought in superiority of numbers. If the enemy is not outnumbered absolutely, nevertheless he may be relatively, and it is necessary to seek to outnumber him at the point where the campaign is to be decided, that is in the theater of war, in the battle and on the field of battle, at the point where success is most easily or most certainly to be won. The possibility of securing a relative superiority results from the concentration of our own army and the division of that of the enemy. The union of our army is therefore the first rule of war; it may undergo modifications, but it never ceases to exist. If great armies cannot be kept united on a point or on a line, it is nevertheless desirable that the bulk of the army or the greatest possible part of it be united on the decisive point at the decisive moment."
These ideas confirm those which we have already derived from historical examples; they give special value to some of them as well as to the deductions which can properly be made from them.
Among these there is one of which the recollection is particularly vivid, and I recall it the more willingly because it is of such recent date. I allude to the fundamental error committed by the Russian government at the beginning of the last war, and which I have already had occasion to explain.
It now appears to us as in direct opposition to the principle laid down by Rustow. The theater of this war was certainly a vast one, one of the vastest in military history, for it embraced at the same time the seas of China and Japan, Korea and wide spreading Manchuria, without counting the Siberian steppes, Russia and Japan. But the theoretical numerical superiority of the Russians could have no value unless it was realized at the point of the immense theater where battle was to be delivered. As we know, neither on land nor at sea, could this result ever be achieved by the Russian General Staff, and that beyond anything else explains the persistent defeat of the Russian armies.
On the sea the lesson is the same. To satisfy the principle laid down by Rustow and his predecessors, it would have been necessary to concentrate in Far Eastern waters and at Vladivostok, that is to say on the probable battle ground, naval forces superior to those of the Japanese, and it was useless and could only be useless to send there successively fleets which, by their union, would have been of sufficient numbers to assure this superiority. There is no doubt that the junction before the war of the Port Arthur, Vladivostok and Rozhestvensky squadrons, in Japanese waters, would have given an incontestable superiority to the Russian naval forces. Their separation, on the contrary, was to bring about their defeat in detail. This practical lesson throws a vivid light upon the strategical principle enunciated by Rustow, a principle already set forth in our previous conclusions, and which the Japanese navy applied from the beginning to the end of the late war with a remarkable understanding of its requirements.
Bearing on the second proposition, which relates to tactics, and which prescribes seeking superiority at the decisive point in battle, there are many experimental facts. Nelson satisfied this principle when at Trafalgar he smashed the center of the French-Spanish fleet by throwing upon it the whole weight of his own and Collingwood's squadrons. Tegethoff also was inspired by it at Lissa when he threw the mass of his forces upon the leading division of the Italian squadron. We have seen Ito also, in the battle of the Yalu, make the weaker right wing of the Chinese give way; and finally Togo, at Tsushima, turn the head of the Russian squadron.
In each of these cases, the victorious chief knew how to find the weak point, the Haw, in the hostile forces, and by concentrating the whole effort of his own forces on that decisive point to assure victory.
"With equal forces, an army will be so much the more formidable as there is harmony between unity of command and independence of parts, in such a way that these fractions hare as much independent life as is possible without weakening the power of the commander-in-chief. The best method of arriving at this result is a proper subdivision of the army so that these fractions are neither too numerous, nor too strong, nor too weak…"
Here again we have only the embarrassment of choice in finding famous applications of this maxim. Nelson, dividing his squadron and entrusting half of it to Collingwood, certainly had in view giving to the constituent elements of his fleet the greatest possible life. The example of Tsushima is still more striking, for on the one hand freed from the absorbing influence of a great genius like Nelson, who forcibly seizes upon and monopolizes our attention, on the other hand it applies to occurrences contemporary with ourselves, and employs instruments such as we use ourselves. The fighting force of the Japanese was composed, I remind you, of four battleships and eight armored cruisers, in reality twelve units which from the beginning to the end of the battle played identically the same role and which, consequently, we have every right to comprise in the general category of fighting ships.
But it is easy to imagine the great variety of combinations by which this line of battle of twelve ships could be grouped in different ways. Between the two extremes, that is the long column of twelve ships and a series of independent divisions each of one or two units, there was evidently room for others giving to the totality more flexibility, activity and life than the former and less scattering of command than the latter. And finally, among them, one could be found uniting the two requirements with the maximum harmony. This was the one adopted by Togo, who, in dividing his fleet into two squadrons of six ships, each under the command of a chief, obtained under his sole direction all the advantages of a well maneuvering single column with more precision and vigor in the execution of the movements. He realized "harmony between unity of command and independence of parts."
Rozhestvensky, on the contrary, with his crowding and unmanageable squadron, did not possess this harmony. And this contrast very well brings to view the interest which the idea of a "naval army" offers.
Thus we come anew upon the intimate bond which, in the field of principles, closely connects all the manifestations of the military art; there is really only one military art, since we have been able to make such a direct application to naval questions of maxims suggested to an author by matters exclusively concerning armies.
"He who has a positive object in view can with the greater facility bring superior forces to bear upon the decisive point. He who waits, on the contrary, for the enemy to take the initiative, makes this problem the more difficult for himself. In fact, beside the principal and positive object that we chose, all others are secondary, and the forces which are devoted to them will be in the same proportion. But if we allow the adversary to chose, then several contingencies will seem to us to have the same value, and we will divide our forces equally to oppose these equally important contingencies. This it is which above all makes the offensive superior to the defensive."
These lines apply perfectly, although they were not so intended, to the case of Cornwallis, who, distracted between the necessity of blockading Ganteaume in Brest and the desire to re-enforce Calder to allow him to paralyze Villeneuve in Ferrol, committed the grave fault, the noteworthy folly as Napoleon called it, of dividing his squadron. This fault might have cost him dear, with more resolute adversaries than the French admirals of that period were. The English admiral lost sight of the fact that by pursuing several objects at the same time he weakened himself everywhere; and that the primary object ought to be to prevent the escape of Ganteaume, the only contingency which would give to the French fleet superiority, even momentarily. Again, and perhaps with greater amplitude, we can make clear the application of this principle to the carrying on of the late war by the Russians. As a whole, as well as in detail, the Russian government made a passionate effort to accomplish the impossible task of repulsing all attacks at once; in the initial conception, not understanding the preponderant importance of naval operations, it wished to repel on the one hand the Japanese attack on land and to resist on the other hand their attack on the sea. Reason itself, on the contrary, as I have explained at length, would have imposed the exertion of the greatest effort on the sea. In details, the scattering of the naval forces at Port Arthur and at Vladivostok, and the isolated action of Rozhestvensky's squadron, all at the choice of the adversary, could only produce deplorable results.
As far as the principle of the superiority of the offensive is concerned, we see that this is affirmed no less clearly by Rustow than by the preceding writers; and he still better expresses his idea when he says: "For the defensive to be as strong as possible, all the preparations must be directed by an offensive idea." Is not this the very thought already expressed by Clausewitz; and in view of the remarkable agreement between the propositions advanced by the most noted military writers, is it possible to believe this accord to be the result of chance? For my part I do not believe it, and I gain here a new conviction of the sure existence of certain fundamental laws of war, which we have already derived from the facts of experience, and to which the concordant testimony of authors adds a great value.
"Victory is completed by pursuit. After his defeat the enemy needs rest to reassemble and repair his forces. This rest is forbidden him if he is forced to fight or to march rapidly in order to avoid fighting, perhaps under the most disadvantageous conditions. Thence follows the rule that the conqueror should pursue the conquered without delay, with the greatest possible speed and energy."
The naval battle of August 10 will not be noteworthy in history, because the Japanese did not amplify their success by an implacable pursuit of the retreating Russian ships; that of Tsushima will be remembered as one of the greatest disasters, if not the very greatest, which has ever occurred on the sea, because pursuit, this time persevering, finished what the battle strictly so-called began so well on the field of action.
"In any operation it should never be forgotten that the shortest road to reach the enemy has a marked advantage over the longest." This is the affirmation of the value of speed.
"The plan and preparation of an enterprise, whatever it may be, are never the act itself; and it is to the act alone that are due success and the diminution of the enemy's success. The plan of every enterprise ought to be made in advance. This is an indispensable condition of arriving at a predetermined end; but, beyond this end to be attained, a plan ought to take account of the nature of the means and of the existing circumstances. The first requisite of a plan of war is the greatest simplicity; for a simple plan is easier to conceive and to execute than a complicated plan. The second requisite of a good plan of operations is to limit the number and scope of those operations, to lay them down according to the known data, with room for the action of unknown quantities, and allowing sufficient freedom to the direction of the operations to enable the plan to be modified in the course of its execution, if circumstances require it."
In spite of their great interest, I must here cease to quote, since I am bound to limit myself. It would, however, be difficult to assemble, in a style more simple and at the same time more precise, as great a number of essential truths as are contained in the preceding lines. Formal condemnation of the method of chance and improvidence; affirmation of the necessity of knowing in advance what it is desired to do, by having a fixed plan of action limited by the means at one's disposal; the elasticity indispensable for taking account of fortuitous occurrences; prohibition of paralyzing the initiative of the commander-in-chief, etc.; all is to be found there. And what above all else ought to be remembered is the very formal declaration of the simplicity which should govern in the preparation of operations. Everything is simple in war plan, conduct and means.
This merit of simplicity appears to Rustow to be of the first order, for he says further:
"Simplicity and independence of plan (independence relative to the plans attributed to the enemy) are principles of the military art."
And it is always in this same order of ideas that, speaking in a general way of the qualities of generals, and in particular of Mack, the Austrian general, "well informed, but who only knew how to draw clear and neat figures upon which he spent much labor, and who made of the general a draftsman," he concludes: "This love of geometric figures is the surest sign of lack of aptitude for chief command. The general ought to reckon with forces; the forces are represented by lines and directions, but they are not those lines themselves."
I shall refrain from weakening by any comment the scope of this very sane comprehension of the affairs of war. I limit myself to expressing the wish: May we make this doctrine our own!
VON DER GOLTZ.
Another contemporary expert, Von der Goltz, justly esteemed, estimates in these terms Napoleon's role: "Our actual point of view depends in great part upon his principles. He recalled to military men a thing which Frederick had already taught them, but which they had forgotten, namely that it is above all important to destroy the hostile forces; that battle is what decides war."
In a remarkable chapter on "Conditions of success in war," this same writer states a certain number of principles, among the most important, which it is well to pause to consider.
"The first of the conditions of success in war is POLICY." This proposition is certainly not one unknown to us. We have so many times repeated, under the most various forms, that military action is inseparable from politics, that it is almost speaking a truism to say it again, so, in place of a formal argument, I prefer to call attention to some striking and quite recent examples of this close dependency.
Spain lost Cuba through the blindest and most improvident of policies; blind, because, beneath the rebellious outburst of the islanders, the Spanish government failed to devine the hidden action of the United States; improvident, because, disdainful of the storm which each day grew blacker, Spain was unwilling to make any effort to prepare for war and to sell dearly to that nation the most beautiful pearl of her colonial crown.
How much more foolish still perhaps was the Russian policy in the Far East. To undertake economic expansion, to stretch like a long arm an iron way towards countries already coveted by neighbors as powerful as ambitious, to begin as at Dalny a great commercial enterprise without developing along with it the organism of forces alone capable of imposing respect and guaranteeing the free flowering of that work, was to labor for the foreigner and to follow a detestable policy. Clausewitz had already very well explained, moreover, the intimate relationship between war and politics.
This latter alone designates the end which is to be sought and the general means of attaining it, and presides, especially in time of peace, at their preparation. This justifies Von der Goltz's phrase: "Without a good policy, it is not probable that a war will turn out fortunate."
Moral force has no less importance in his eyes, and he even accentuates the opinions of his predecessors in this excellent maxim which I have already mentioned: "It is essential that the commander-in-chief, as well as the troops, have the FIRM WILL TO CONQUER." The memories of recent wars are too present to our minds for us not to understand the deep truth expressed by the preceding lines. The lamentations of unhappy Cervera, an echo of those further off ones of unfortunate Villeneuve, the cowardice of Ouktomsky, the moral weaknesses of Enquist and Nebogatoff, without mentioning the deplorable state of mind of their men, point out all these leaders for defeat. How could they hope for victory when in advance they despaired of it.
We are now going to find, from the pen of the German author, the affirmation of certain fundamental principles already known: "The first object, and the principal one, towards which the movements of armies are, directed is the hostile army." He thus assigns the great first role to battle, of all the operations of war. "He who has on his side superiority of numbers has a great chance to triumph over the adversary." But after formulating this maxim, he is careful, being a man who has cultivated his knowledge by the constant study of great wars, not to forget to specify what is to be understood by the expression "superiority of numbers."
He explains first that it cannot be a question of comparing a numerous but poor army with a small but good one; numerical superiority as between two armies of equal quality is what is meant. This moreover is in accord with common sense, and with arithmetical reasoning, which only admits into its calculations units of the same kind; and it would even seem idle to repeat these commonplace truths if in our time still they were not contested a propos of naval problems.
The time has but lately gone by when a Minister of Marine, to justify the construction of armored cruisers of reduced size, relied upon this more than doubtful aphorism, that two weak men are worth as much as one strong man. Beyond its lack of precision, for wanting a measure it is difficult to understand what is exactly meant by weakness or by strength, both essentially relative, this statement contains another capital error; it is wholly sentimental, and we ought to reject everything which is not based upon the experience of war. It is to this aphorism, moreover, that we owe a type of ship very happily limited to three examples, and against which there was very properly an almost unanimous opinion. So true is it still that the principles of the military art apply admirably to our apparently more special field. We are therefore in agreement with Von der Goltz when he limits the application of the idea of superiority of forces to forces of equal unit value.
After having conveyed this needful precision in the definition, the German military writer adds: "The first and main principle of modern tactics is THE GREATEST POSSIBLE NUMBER OF MEN MUST BE BROUGHT TO THE PLACE WHERE THE DECISIVE BLOW IS TO BE STRUCK." And we find once again as always the true meaning of superiority of forces in war.
We are going to see again likewise, from Von der Goltz's pen, many other ideas which are familiar to us; those which follow are specially interesting for us.
"To make the fullest use of all the means at one's disposal is the principle of war at the present time." These words bring out clearly the plurality of means of action in war which we have already had many occasions to remark. Accordingly the same author lays stress upon the importance of wealth and of the factor money among the conditions of success, and he adds: "Whoever can sustain a war for a long time possesses an important guarantee of final success." The undoubted value of this principle can be brought out by historical examples. In the first place, it may be recalled that though England, in her implacable struggle against Napoleon, finally succeeded in conquering him, the colossal military forces of the Emperor, directed by the greatest genius in war that humanity has known, were definitely broken in 1815 at least as much by the financial power as by the material forces of Great Britain.
Again, in the late war, at the time of the signing of the treaty of Portsmouth, a cloud was beginning to be seen forming on the political horizon, disquieting to the Japanese, whose financial embarrassments, known to every one, threatened to compromise their magnificent military exploits. Nothing could show better than this very recent example the power of money. "The possession of money, it is true, is not alone to be taken into account, but also the greater or less facility for making use of it. States which, in case of war, keep open their sea communications have ways of using their credit quite other than have those whose ports will be immediately blockaded. The former will moreover be able to have recourse to foreign industries for the armament and equipment of new armies. Without this last resource, the government of the National Defence would never have been able, in the late war, to constitute the formidable armies which astonished the whole world. If, in 1814, Napoleon had had this resource, affairs would have turned out differently. The Southerners, in the American War of Secession, succumbed in spite of their military superiority, because their communications with the sea had been cut. The control of the sea therefore contributes indirectly to strengthen a State, even if its fleets are not able to give direct aid to its army."
It is singularly suggestive to see a writer deeply imbued with military doctrines, the undoubted exponent of the controlling idea of the German General Staff, affirm so clearly the very important role assigned to the navy, when this is so often misunderstood, not to say denied, in France, even by seamen; it should be remembered that Port Arthur would never have been taken if the sea had been free.
"Though wealth greatly augments strength, it only becomes fruitful if, AT THE PROPER TIME, every sacrifice is made." At the proper time! A world is contained in those three words; all possible sacrifices tardily consented to could not make up for initial negligences. What would the few millions necessary to prepare a navy strong materially and morally weigh in the balance of Spain's accounts, in comparison with the economic breakdown which came to that nation from the loss of Cuba? Is it possible to compare the eight or nine hundred millions which would have been the cost to Russia of the eighteen battleships necessary to insure the success of her policy in the Far East with the thousands of millions that an unfortunate war has made her lose, without counting the loss of her commercial influence in Chinese waters?
In a more familiar field, an insurance premium costs very little in comparison with the accidents, fire, death or injury against which it is intended to protect private interests. What then is preparation for war if not the premium of insurance against the risks of war, the only efficient one, I must say, that has thus far been found, the only one also, I firmly believe, that ever can be found. It is truly so that the sense of the expression "at the proper time" must be understood, and it cannot be too often repeated that sacrifices agreed to in order to have a powerful army and navy, military forces in a word capable of imposing respect upon all, are a sure economy. The painful memory of the loss of two provinces and the ransom of five milliards is enough to convince us who are Frenchmen of the great importance of preparation for war. May that hard lesson serve us and teach us also to be prepared as regards naval war!
I have already had occasion, in the preceding chapter, to cite an opinion of the author we are now considering on the subject of the offensive.
After having considered the comparative advantages of the defensive and offensive, as well as their disadvantages, with arguments that we already know of, he finally pronounces very categorically for the latter, of which he says: "The offensive requires a greater activity than the defensive; that alone is a great gain, for of two adversaries otherwise equal, the one who is the most active will conquer."
The question here is definitely as to the influence of the factor "speed."
That which gives exceptional value to the military writers whom we have just reviewed, and which has led to this very extensive consideration of their opinions, is that those opinions are the result of profound studies of the experiences of great wars, and, as far as the two last are concerned, particularly of that of 1870, which will long remain in history as the model of the triumph of methodical preparation for war.
Among authors who have more especially devoted themselves to the study of naval warfare, the choice is more restricted; not that there is not an abundance of naval writings, but quality is rather rare; at least that which we ought to seek for, that is sincerity of convictions based solely upon the experimental lessons of war. Before Tsushima, for a century there had been few or no examples of naval battles truly worthy of the name; perhaps this poverty of facts exclusively naval is the necessary explanation of the result that so many writers have ridden their hobbies instead of endeavoring to free themselves from prejudices and generalize great principles.
MAHAN.
Mahan won his very great and deserved fame by breaking away from the sentimental method, which opens the door to every sterile discussion and never puts an end to one of them.
It is to be understood that I cannot pretend to present in a few pages the complete work of the eminent American writer; all of it should be read and re-read, and here I must limit myself to an explanation of his theory. This appears in his first pages, when, after having recalled the respective advantages formerly attributed in battle to the windward and leeward positions, he remarks that henceforth it is speed which will permit taking the most favorable position. It is worth while in this connection to recall the precise terms by which he indicates what should be understood by superiority of speed: "This does not mean only a squadron whose individual ships have superior speed, but also one which has the greatest uniformity of action through the homogeneousness of its units."
In this sentence two fundamental principles of tactics are laid down: the importance of speed, and the absolute necessity, so many times recognized, so often unaccomplished, of homogeneous forces.
These two principles call for some comments. In the quest of speed a chimerical object has only too often been pursued, one in all cases unprofitable, and which quite a large number of writers even of our time define thus: the possibility of accepting or refusing battle. We already know what is to be thought of this wholly erroneous conception of war, which tends to reduce battle to the part of one solution, among many other very different ones, of the problem of war, while it really is the only solution. It is therefore indispensable to dissipate any possible misunderstanding upon this important point and to explain how the following sentence of Mahan must be interpreted: "The power to assume the offensive or to refuse battle…"
Whoever is penetrated with the author's thought can have no doubt on this subject; what he wished to point out is that superior speed allows engaging in battle under the most favorable, chosen conditions, and remaining master of one's conduct. It is truly thus that it must be understood. The power of the guns, the characteristics of the individual ships, carry with them limiting firing distances within which the conditions of the contest are more favorable; the relative position of the sun is also nowadays of great importance. All these advantages which it is necessary to strive to secure in entering upon an engagement, speed alone can give. It was speed that enabled Togo to turn the head of the Russian column at Tsushima; it was speed also to which Ito owed his ability to outflank the Chinese right, wing. Napoleon won his most splendid victories by his constant use of speed on the battle field. But this superiority is only real if all the units of the naval force can participate in it; it is therefore essential that all those units have the same speed. That is the proved truth, and a great number of leaders had already announced it in all countries before Mahan. The speed of a naval force is always equal to that of the slowest ship which forms a part of it. If then I insist upon this observation, it is because this eternal truth seems to have been so little understood in France that, even quite recently, the characteristics of a great ship, the Ernest-Renan, were modified, in the course of her construction, to give her an increase of speed. Such measures cannot be too energetically condemned, being a veritable squandering of money, seeing that this ship, necessarily forming part of a naval force of slower ships, will presumably not have the opportunity to make use of this excess of speed. The question is too serious for me not to insist upon it. It is too often forgotten that a war ship is of little worth by itself, but is above all an individual in a fleet which, by its assemblage, alone constitutes material force.
I have too often already affirmed the value of speed, especially from the strategical point of view, for my opinion on this subject to be misinterpreted; but it must be well understood that in advocating one or another factor of naval strength, I have in view giving it to the fleet and not merely to an isolated ship, an absolutely fruitless result.
It is particularly interesting to seek Mahan's lesson in the critical study of the naval war of 1778. He first explains, with remarkable clearness, the respective situations and aspirations of England on one hand and of the allied powers, France and Spain, on the other, at the opening of that war. The legitimate desire of England to preserve her American possessions logically placed her in a defensive position. The allies, on the contrary, under the sentimental pretence of aiding an oppressed people to secure its independence, pursued well fixed aims of conquest or annexation. Both, besides cherishing the hope of weakening the English naval power and thus taking revenge for past defeats, aimed at territorial acquisitions; Spain wished to reconquer Gibraltar and Mahon, France had in view the West Indies. These various motives gave to the policy of the Bourbons an offensive character.
This interesting observation of the American author is extremely valuable for us, for it will enable us to define, with a precision leaving no room for confusion, what up to the present moment we have meant by the expression "offensive."
I have not wished to speak, in fact, of a political offensive, and to advocate for our country an aggressive attitude of adventures and conquests; when we speak of naval strategy and tactics, there can be no question of assuming the air of a mousquetaire, fist on hip and rolling eyes. For us the offensive is merely a method of making war, which has given its proofs, and which, on that account, appears to me wholly worthy of recommendation when it becomes necessary to make war, whatever the character of the causes which have brought on war, even should it be purely defensive. A people has the duty not to attack its neighbors, but it has no right not to know how to make war, if it is attacked.
And the observation is the more essential to make because, by a truly disconcerting contradiction, while the political objective of the allies in 1778 was so frankly offensive, the means employed by them in the conduct of operations preserved to the end the defensive character. The English, on the contrary, adopted most frequently offensive action. As may be seen, it was not useless to elucidate this important point.
As Mahan very justly observes, it would have been necessary, in order to satisfy the objects of the war as conceived by the allies, to seek above all naval supremacy, particularly in the West Indies, in general over the whole theater of the war. Every conquest made without this primary condition could have evidently only a provisional and precarious character; it could only be considered definitive when the English war flag had disappeared from the seas. The American writer is very right then to say that "the key of the situation in the West Indies was the fleet." The struggle against the English naval forces was truly therefore the principal objective; not only in the West Indies, but also in the Indian Ocean, the only point of the theater of war, as it happened, where the chief of the French naval forces perceived this fact and acted accordingly. The taking of Trincomalee was not in derogation of this principle; it was made necessary by the urgent need, with a view to facilitating the offensive against the English squadrons, of giving to the French fleet a base of operations which it lacked, and of allowing it to shelter itself during the stormy season of the northeast monsoon. Suffren, with his inspired understanding of the affairs of war, well knew this and chose his point still better, to windward of his field of operations. He knew how, moreover, lacking complete command of the sea, skillfully to profit by the absence of his adversary; this exception is a wonderful confirmation of the rule.
The errors committed by England in the course of this war nevertheless gave the allies fine opportunities. The total naval forces being nearly equal on the two sides as far as material was concerned, that is in number of ships, and that to England's disadvantage, on account of the number of points where her interests were threatened, that power committed the error of dividing her forces to make head at too many points, and also the error of attempting, by continual convoys of troops, to retain her American colony under her dominion.
With skilful leadership, the allies had therefore the best chance; but for that it would have been necessary to break with established traditions and routines; I ought to say, more exactly, to do what the government as well as the leaders of the two countries were incapable of.
On Spain's side, her obstinate determination to retain her ships near Gibraltar, in the chimerical hope of making that rock fall into her hands, and also the independent pursuit of her personal aims in the Floridas, for example, had an evil influence on the necessary military work. In the councils of that nation, no authoritative voice was raised to make it understood that the rock of Gibraltar would much more surely become again national territory if the English naval forces which were its sole bond of union with Great Britain were destroyed, and that, by this same preliminary result, the world-wide ambitions of the nation would be satisfied with more certainty.
On the side of France, though there was greater loyalty in the execution of the alliance, there was no greater sense of the true plan of the war. To speak truly, the directing authorities were wholly under the influence of that ill-omened and ancient tradition which placed first among the objectives of war the pursuit of enterprises of annexation or of conquest, or the execution of a mission, and relegated battle to a secondary place.
Thus were found united more conditions of weakness than needful to explain how, possessing in reality superiority of numbers at several points of the theater of war, the allies never had the idea of profiting thereby to beat the English naval forces; thus to conquer command of the sea and to assure in that way the success of all their claims.
Offensive in its proper character, their war was defensive in its execution, and for that very reason fruitless.
THE ENGLISH TRADITION.
Instructed by her own errors in the course of this war of American Independence, England was resolutely to take the offensive twenty years later and to compose thus, from 1798 to 1805, the most glorious pages of her naval history. The examples of Nelson's method, cited many times in Mahan's fine work, although the campaigns of the great English admiral were subsequent to the period which is there specially considered, show with sufficient eloquence, without more direct quotations, the doctrine of the American publicist. It is wholly contained in one simple formula: battle with the enemy afloat.
It cannot be doubted that the actual successors of the English admirals of 1805, and in a more general way the English Admiralty, have piously conserved the tradition to which their country incontestably owes its extraordinary power in the world. I wish no better proof than the following words, taken from an essay of 1898 by Commander Ballard, crowned by the Royal United Service Institution, on the protection of English commerce in time of war: "Those who have thought on the matter at all will
probably agree that the necessary basis of any protection whatever must be a sufficient superiority in battleships on our part to destroy, capture or blockade in their own ports the main squadrons of the enemy as in former wars, which in itself would constitute the chief source of safety to our shipping, and without which it would be idle to talk of commerce existing at all,…unless (the destruction or blockade of the enemy's squadrons be) successfully effected, it would be useless to attempt anything else."
"It obviously follows, however, that the more thoroughly their duty of watching the enemy is performed, the greater this protection will be; indeed, the opinion is apparently held in some quarters that this is all that is required."
There is the doctrine faithfully transmitted for a century, and it is the true one. No example could show better than this the striking truth. When interests of any sort are threatened, one can choose, to protect them, between two systems, and only two; either to defend them directly by covering them with a force sufficient to impose respect, or better still to destroy the menace itself. At the risk of appearing to make a comparison a little homely, I will say that if the conditions of our private life obliged us to return home late at night, exposed to the attacks of prowlers, two procedures of self defence would likewise be available for us. We might wear constantly a coat of mail; but it would be equally permissible to supply ourselves with a good revolver, a stout cudgel, or even, in this time of admiration for everything Japanese, to take lessons in Jiu-jitsu, to put the said robbers promptly out of condition to harm us. The second procedure, which is no other than the defensive offensive, is assuredly the better; who could say, moreover, that the coat of mail would not have a flaw? In the case of the protection of the English commerce, the immense network of which covers the whole surface of the seas, what protecting bands of ships of war could be great enough not to have flaws?
In Commander Ballard's view, initial protection by the previous conquest of command of the sea is a settled question. So his essay considers only the protection of commerce against the isolated and momentary action of a few cruisers that have accidentally succeeded in escaping the watchfulness of the blockading forces.
This is the same fundamental principle that Lord Balfour adopted, with strong conviction, scarcely a few months ago, when, in the English Parliament, replying to a question concerning the defence of the British coast, he affirmed that so long as the English squadrons held the uncontested supremacy of the seas there was no need at all to seek a better arm of defence. Oh! I know very well that those who judge superficially, or those who do not wish to see, will not fail to challenge this so English a doctrine on the pretext that the English navy, having strength and numbers, has an evident interest in its adoption. This doctrine is in no way the monopoly of one nation; it is impersonal, and for that reason it compels acceptance. We have seen it thoroughly expounded by military writers, outside of any naval consideration, and finally if the English have adopted it, that is because by it they have always remained victors.
Furthermore, the German generals or writers of the present day, Von der Goltz, Janson, Verdy du Vernois, etc., have adopted this same doctrine and demand, with the Emperor, the construction of a powerful offensive navy.
This conviction imposes itself on our minds with such force that if I revert to the conclusions of these two last chapters I am almost afraid again to have heaped up commonplaces, so evident do these truths appear. In the preceding chapter I allowed the facts of history themselves to speak; in this one I have gathered together the words of the most justly authoritative writers; it cannot then be a chance result that the conclusions are so concordant.
Another thought is worthy of our consideration; if so many illustrious warriors, if so many famous military writers, for a century past and still in our time, have felt obliged to continue to express certain ideas under forms scarcely different one from the other, it cannot be for the vain satisfaction of reproducing them. If they have not feared to keep on repeating them, it is because they had the profound conviction that these truths demand more than a passing and as it were complaisant acceptance, and that they ought definitely to establish themselves in minds with the irresistible force of dogmas.
This result attained permits, and this alone permits, in examining any military situation, perceiving the errors committed at the same time as the appropriate remedies.
THE FRENCH SYSTEM.
I have believed it a duty to insist so much upon principles apparently so simple, because at this very moment there appears to be a persistent tendency to return to the ill-omened ideas of Ramatuelle, to which it is attempted to give a new birth.
The almost forgotten personality of this naval writer is of little importance; it is his ideas which I regard as deplorable and which I combat with the fiercest energy; for they would lead us straight to defeat as they led our fathers there.
In expressing them, moreover, he has only reflected the state of mind of the French sailors of the i8th century, I might almost say of every period, which makes it all the more necessary to destroy forever those ancient fallacies.
Mahan has himself called attention to this strange doctrine, and quoted the following words of Ramatuelle: "The French navy has always preferred the glory of assuring or preserving a conquest to that more brilliant perhaps, but actually less real, of capturing some ships, and therein has 'approached more nearly what should be regarded as the true end of war. What, in fact, could the loss of a few ships matter to the English? The essential point is to attack them in their possessions, the immediate source of their commercial wealth and their naval power."
It is well known what results we got, a hundred years ago, from such a conception of war. By conquering Egypt Bonaparte attacked England directly in her possessions, for he thereby threatened the route to India; he thought that he could do so without regard to the active naval forces of England. This initial error, in conjunction with Bruey's lethargy, brought about Aboukir. The same forgetfulness of this fundamental truth, that before all else the fleet constitutes the effective force, led Villeneuve to Cadiz and Trafalgar.
These ideas of Ramatuelle are moreover directly contradictory of the sentence with which he begins the chapter of his work which is entitled: On Battle. "The battles by which the great quarrels of nations and sovereigns ARE ENDED are the direct and final object of all military tactics."
There is nothing to be objected to in this definition, which emphasizes the preponderant role of battle in the problem of war. It indicates, in fact, that by it, and by it alone, are conflicts settled. And it is quite surprising to find again, from this pen, the very logical idea that the breaking of the equilibrium of the opposing forces alone is capable of putting an end to the struggle; for after all, as long as that equilibrium lasts, that is to say until the meeting of the forces has occurred, how could it be hoped "to assure or preserve a conquest," as is counseled in the preceding quotation? It is therefore by a curious irony of fate that we borrow from Ramatuelle himself the logical conclusion of this chapter.
The aim as well as the principal objective of war, the surest way of fulfilling its objects, is and always will be battle, and by its means the destruction of the enemy afloat.
NECESSITY OF AN INITIAL DOCTRINE.
Before ending this chapter, it seems to me quite indispensable to go back to the motives which led me to choose the method of exposition of naval strategy and tactics which I am following, in order to point out its precise scope and to dissipate all causes of misunderstanding which might arise on that subject. I made my choice deliberately and after careful thought. I have already pointed out, I recall, that I could have decided upon another and quite different method, which consists of taking a particular war or battle, of investigating it to the smallest details, of bringing out the errors made as well as the operations which were correct, and finally showing the acts which would have modified the results, in order to derive from all this an important military lesson. This method is the one followed in most military works in which a campaign is thoroughly studied. It is also that of the Military Academy of Berlin. These two facts can hardly fail to raise some doubts, and that is why I think that I ought to explain my position as clearly as possible.
Such a method, assuredly the most perfect for teaching the military art, requires, to be fruitful, one absolutely necessary preliminary condition; that is that all to whom it is applied possess a certain minimum store of ideas in common regarding the most essential truths. It is this that General Bonnal wishes to express when he says: "Initiative, that quality of character which nothing can replace, can act usefully only to the extent that it is directed by community of thought; in other words by a doctrine common to all the members of the army." In his The Nation Armed, Von der Goltz also writes: "The principles of Napoleon form even to this day the basis of our doctrine"
And at once the question arises whether we have attained in the navy to this community of thought, to this general orientation of minds towards a single doctrine, without which military studies lack a base.
To reply to this question, it is sufficient to propose for general consideration a concrete problem, as for example that of the most efficient means to be used to sustain a war with England, with the naval resources, truly very inferior to hers, now at our disposal. The most widely different solutions, and often even the most unexpected, will be found proposed. I have myself brought together numerous examples of them, and yet, if we truly possessed a doctrine, there ought not to be any divergence of views as to the principles themselves of this war. I showed in the preceding chapter that regarding another general principle, that of the objective which Rozhestvensky ought to have fixed upon, there was also no agreement. If then, upon propositions so fundamental, there is no community of thought, what conclusion can be drawn except that naval minds are not yet ripe for a wholly rational instruction in the military art? We need not be surprised at this; the Naval War College is of too recent creation to have been able in so few years to impose upon all in our corps, I will even say upon all the officers who have had the advantage of its instruction, that unity of views and conceptions which, in all the problems of war, dictates to all, by its irresistible obsession, the same solutions.
It is not just then to compare the methods of teaching adopted at this time in the two war colleges of the army and of the navy. To make a few comparisons, it would be necessary to go back to what the Army War College was only a few years after 1870.
General Bonnal informs us regarding this in the following words which date from 1892, twenty-two years after the "terrible year": "The ignorance which reigned in our army of 1870, in the matter of practical knowledge of the affairs of war, is known to every one."
"The lesson which events have given to us has not been lost; for never, at any epoch of our history, has an activity been seen comparable to that which manifested itself after the late war.
"Confused in the beginning, ideas have little by little formed themselves into groups about a few great principles of experience that have formed the basis of a doctrine aiming at discipline of the mind, to-day in full period of development, in which the War College has taken a large part.
"A doctrine of war does not impose itself; it is born of the unanimous concurrence of understandings under the empire of convictions PROGRESSIVELY acquired."
The idea could not be better expressed, especially to show the needfulness of time for accomplishing a lasting work in any military institution.
That of the Military Academy of Berlin, which has conducted the German army to the wonderful results we know of, did not escape from this natural rule. In 1806, Scharnhorst, who was the real promoter of the new methods, adopted the study of Napoleon's campaigns as the course of instruction of the academy. But the true masters of the German General Staff were beyond contradiction Clausewitz and Willisen: it is they who brought forth, from the constant study of the philosophy of the facts of the Napoleonic wars, the whole body of doctrines with which the German army is so thoroughly indoctrinated, and by which Marshall v. Moltke profited so wonderfully.
It is important to note that the patient labor of adaptation has required no less than half a century; and this observation enables us to estimate the part necessarily played by time in the long drawn-out work of preparation for war, especially if it is needful to discipline ideas, as is urgently the case in our navy.
If Von Moltke was able to perfect the method which he had inherited from his predecessors, first by twofold exercises on the map and in the field, and then by still more profound critical examinations of the campaigns of the "great master," it is because, more favored than his predecessors, he knew the orders and intentions as well as the principal instructions of Napoleon. In the comparison of the great captain's directing thought and its execution, he found the elements of a marvelous teaching.
The mode of procedure is not otherwise to-day in the French army, and there will surely come a time, not far off, when we shall be inspired by a similar method in the navy. But for the moment a more pressing need, let it not be forgotten, claims our whole attention; let us learn to think in the same way about fundamental truths, and when this result is attained, the French navy also will be in possession of a doctrine.
Yet it must be observed in closing that even to this day no harvest nearly so abundant as those of the wars of the Consulate and the Empire is offered to us in the field of naval warfare. I can see, in modern times, only the Russo-Japanese war and the battle of Tsushima which are of sufficient scope to furnish a reasonable instruction. To utilize them fully it will be necessary to wait for a knowledge of a great number of details which remain very obscure and especially of what the motives of the commanders-in-chief were.