2. A Defense of Military History (5)
The Perils of Amateur Strategy
Let us grant, then, that it is right that history should teach on the military side. The directing classes in any nation should have a certain general knowledge of the history of the Art of War, just as they ought also to be instructed in economic or constitutional history. “What touches all is the business of all”, and it is no more right to hand over the study of military history to professional soldiers alone than it would be to permit no one but lawyers to touch constitutional history. Till some such general knowledge exists it is open to any person, military man or citizen, to “pontificate” upon one of the necessary functions of the state without being recognized at once as a crank or a sciolist by the audience that he is addressing. It is not the soldier alone who should know the outlines of the past history of his art. As long as we live under the present form of Constitutional Government our Ministers will be influenced not only by the precepts of their military advisers, but by the public opinion of their party and of the whole nation. It is absolutely necessary that they should have some knowledge of their own, and not be bound to accept blindfold the orders of their military mentor.
I know that I am here treading on debatable ground. The perils of “amateur strategy” have been sufficiently insisted upon of late by a good many professional pens. And it has been laid down that on the declaration of war a prime minister should simply state to the recognized military authority—the Chief of the General Staff or whoever it may be in different countries—what are the political ends which he wishes to obtain, and then wash his hands of the whole matter and make no comment, criticism, or interference on what that military authority may do. His duty, it is alleged, is merely to supply as many men and as much money and munitions as the soldier may ask for. Now, this I hold to be dangerous doctrine; I am fully aware of the dangers of amateur strategy, when a Government interferes with or overrules the decisions of the military authority to whom it has given over responsibility. One need only think of the bad times which McClellan and other Federal generals endured at the hands of the Washington Government during the Civil War of 1861–5, or of certain incidents in our own history between 1914 and 1918.
But military supreme authorities like other human beings are fallible. Take obvious instances: The Austrian Government in 1805 handed over the control of operations against Napoleon to General Mack, a man whose plausible personality and power of self-assertion had gained him an undeserved reputation among soldiers as well as among civilians. He happened to be an incompetent windbag, and in six weeks after the outbreak of war had surrendered the main body of the Austrian army, and let the French into Vienna. To come nearer to our own day—the French Government in 1914 trusted its professional advisers at the outbreak of the Great War, and these advisers (who had been pondering over the strategy of a Franco-German war for long years) adopted their famous “Plan No. 17”. This was a deplorable document, which argued from erroneous premises to false conclusions, and based itself on a theory of the old Napoleonic offensive à Voutrance. Within a month the French invasion scheme had mis-carried hopelessly and the German armies were within thirty miles of Paris—only to be foiled by their own misguidance, both of the army commanders and of the General Headquarters. Hence the so-called “Miracle of the Marne”. The man who foresaw what the aspect of war was going to be was no soldier but the civilian banker Bloch!
It is obvious that no minister can say to his country: “I handed over the charge of our war to the proper professional authority, and am therefore in no wise responsible for its results—which happen to be disastrous.” It is clear that the civil heads of the state must retain some power to comment, to criticize, even to quash—though they must use it with all discretion and under terrible consciousness of responsibility. Light-hearted interference with details is, of course, criminal: the countermanding of part of the arrangements of a commander-in-chief while the rest is allowed to stand is quite as bad. He may find himself, like McClellan before Richmond in 1862, committed to a scheme, and then deprived of part of the resources with which he was intending to carry it out; or he may have a new objective pointed out to him which is not identical with the one on which he started.
Nevertheless, I think that the danger of laying down a rule of strict and rigid non-interference by the civil power is quite as great a risk as the opposite danger of frivolous interference. The responsible minister must retain not only the right to supersede a commander whose work has obviously failed, but the right to submit criticisms and suggestions, even when his achievements are on the whole satisfactory. The better acquainted with the rules of war that the minister may be the less will he be tempted to interfere without necessity, and the less unreasonable should his suggestions prove. I see no fundamental objection to a Supreme War Council kept in touch with the commander in the field, provided that it is composed of the best instructed and most capable persons. But interference amounting to absolute negation of the commander’s schemes, conducted by individuals not thoroughly versed in the practical affairs of war, is obviously deleterious. So found the Austrian generals opposed to Bonaparte in 1796–7 when the Aulic Council, not a military committee but a ministerial caucus, kept continually varying the objective prescribed to their commanders, and even interfering with details of the movements of troops in the field. In the old American War, Howe, Clinton, and Cornwallis found dreadful maltreatment at the hands of the truly detestable Lord George Germaine. So found also certain British and French generals, if we are not mistaken, during the Great War.
But the remedy is not military authoritarianism, since generals are no more infallible than ministers. And looking down the record of the ages we may conclude that each class has only too much occasion to rail at the other, and that neither should claim omniscience, infallibility, or omnipotence.
To obtain a deluxe leatherbound edition of STUDIES ON THE NAPOLEONIC WARS, subscribe to Castalia History.