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SOME PRINCIPLES OF MARITIME STRATEGY

JULIAN S. CORBETT

London

1911

[Illustration: _Sir Julian Corbett (courtesy D.M. Schurman)_]

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

  THE THEORETICAL STUDY OF WAR--ITS USE AND LIMITATIONS

PART I. THEORY OF WAR

    I. THE THEORY OF WAR
   II. NATURES OF WARS--OFFENSIVE AND DEFENSIVE
  III. NATURES OF WARS--LIMITED AND UNLIMITED
   IV. LIMITED WAR AND MARITIME EMPIRES
    V. WARS OF INTERVENTION--LIMITED INTERFERENCE IN UNLIMITED WAR
   VI. CONDITIONS OF STRENGTH IN LIMITED WAR

PART II. THEORY OF NAVAL WAR

    I. THEORY OF THE OBJECT--COMMAND OF THE SEA
   II. THEORY OF THE MEANS--THE CONSTITUTION OF FLEETS
  III. THEORY OF THE METHOD--CONCENTRATION AND DISPERSAL OF FORCE

PART III. CONDUCT OF NAVAL WAR

    I. INTRODUCTORY--
       1. INHERENT DIFFERENCES IN THE CONDITIONS OF WAR ON LAND AND ON SEA
       2. TYPICAL FORMS OF NAVAL OPERATIONS
   II. METHODS OF SECURING COMMAND--
       1. ON OBTAINING A DECISION
       2. BLOCKADE
  III. METHODS OF DISPUTING COMMAND--
       1. DEFENSIVE FLEET OPERATIONS--"A FLEET IN BEING"
       2. MINOR COUNTER-ATTACKS
   IV. METHODS OF EXERCISING COMMAND--
       1. DEFENCE AGAINST INVASION
       2. ATTACK AND DEFENCE OF TRADE
       3. ATTACK, DEFENCE, AND SUPPORT OF MILITARY EXPEDITIONS

  Appendix: The "Green Pamphlet"

  INDEX

                  INTRODUCTION

  The Theoretical Study of War--Its Use and
                  Limitations

At first sight nothing can appear more unpractical, less promising of
useful result, than to approach the study of war with a theory. There seems
indeed to be something essentially antagonistic between the habit of mind
that seeks theoretical guidance and that which makes for the successful
conduct of war. The conduct of war is so much a question of personality, of
character, of common-sense, of rapid decision upon complex and
ever-shifting factors, and those factors themselves are so varied, so
intangible, so dependent upon unstable moral and physical conditions, that
it seems incapable of being reduced to anything like true scientific
analysis. At the bare idea of a theory or "science" of war the mind recurs
uneasily to well-known cases where highly "scientific" officers failed as
leaders. Yet, on the other hand, no one will deny that since the great
theorists of the early nineteenth century attempted to produce a reasoned
theory of war, its planning and conduct have acquired a method, a
precision, and a certainty of grasp which were unknown before. Still less
will any one deny the value which the shrewdest and most successful leaders
in war have placed upon the work of the classical strategical writers.

The truth is that the mistrust of theory arises from a misconception of
what it is that theory claims to do. It does not pretend to give the power
of conduct in the field; it claims no more than to increase the effective
power of conduct. Its main practical value is that it can assist a capable
man to acquire a broad outlook whereby he may be the surer his plan shall
cover all the ground, and whereby he may with greater rapidity and
certainty seize all the factors of a sudden situation. The greatest of the
theorists himself puts the matter quite frankly. Of theoretical study he
says, "It should educate the mind of the man who is to lead in war, or
rather guide him to self-education, but it should not accompany him on the
field of battle."

Its practical utility, however, is not by any means confined to its effects
upon the powers of a leader. It is not enough that a leader should have the
ability to decide rightly; his subordinates must seize at once the full
meaning of his decision and be able to express it with certainty in
well-adjusted action. For this every man concerned must have been trained
to think in the same plane; the chief's order must awake in every brain the
same process of thought; his words must have the same meaning for all. If a
theory of tactics had existed in 1780, and if Captain Carkett had had a
sound training in such a theory, he could not possibly have misunderstood
Rodney's signal. As it was, the real intention of the signal was obscure,
and Rodney's neglect to explain the tactical device it indicated robbed his
country of a victory at an hour of the direst need. There had been no
previous theoretical training to supply the omission, and Rodney's fine
conception was unintelligible to anybody but himself.

Nor is it only for the sake of mental solidarity between a chief and his
subordinates that theory is indispensable. It is of still higher value for
producing a similar solidarity between him and his superiors at the Council
table at home. How often have officers dumbly acquiesced in ill-advised
operations simply for lack of the mental power and verbal apparatus to
convince an impatient Minister where the errors of his plan lay? How often,
moreover, have statesmen and officers, even in the most harmonious
conference, been unable to decide on a coherent plan of war from inability
to analyse scientifically the situation they had to face, and to recognise
the general character of the struggle in which they were about to engage.
That the true nature of a war should be realised by contemporaries as
clearly as it comes to be seen afterwards in the fuller light of history is
seldom to be expected. At close range accidental factors will force
themselves into undue prominence and tend to obscure the true horizon. Such
error can scarcely ever be eliminated, but by theoretical study we can
reduce it, nor by any other means can we hope to approach the clearness of
vision with which posterity will read our mistakes. Theory is, in fact, a
question of education and deliberation, and not of execution at all. That
depends on the combination of intangible human qualities which we call
executive ability.

This, then, is all the great authorities ever claimed for theory, but to
this claim the chief of them at least, after years of active service on the
Staff, attached the highest importance. "In actual operations," he wrote in
one of his latest memoranda, "men are guided solely by their judgment, and
it will hit the mark more or less accurately according as they possess more
or less genius. This is the way all great generals have acted.... Thus it
will always be in action, and so far judgment will suffice. But when it is
a question not of taking action yourself, but of convincing others at the
Council table, then everything depends on clear conceptions and the
exposition of the inherent relations of things. So little progress has been
made in this respect that most deliberations are merely verbal contentions
which rest on no firm foundation, and end either in every one retaining his
own opinion, or in a compromise from considerations of mutual respect--a
middle course of no actual value."[1]

  [1] Clausewitz, _On War_, p. ix. The references are to Colonel Graham's
  translation of the third German edition, but his wording is not always
  followed exactly.

The writer's experience of such discussions was rich and at first hand.
Clear conceptions of the ideas and factors involved in a war problem, and a
definite exposition of the relations between them, were in his eyes the
remedy for loose and purposeless discussion; and such conceptions and
expositions are all we mean by the theory or the science of war. It is a
process by which we co-ordinate our ideas, define the meaning of the words
we use, grasp the difference between essential and unessential factors, and
fix and expose the fundamental data on which every one is agreed. In this
way we prepare the apparatus of practical discussion; we secure the means
of arranging the factors in manageable shape, and of deducing from them
with precision and rapidity a practical course of action. Without such an
apparatus no two men can even think on the same line; much less can they
ever hope to detach the real point of difference that divides them and
isolate it for quiet solution.

In our own case this view of the value of strategical theory has a special
significance, and one far wider than its continental enunciators
contemplated. For a world-wide maritime Empire the successful conduct of
war will often turn not only on the decisions of the Council chamber at
home, but on the outcome of conferences in all parts of the world between
squadronal commanders and the local authorities, both civil and military,
and even between commanders-in-chief of adjacent stations. In time of war
or of preparation for war, in which the Empire is concerned, arrangements
must always be based to an exceptional degree on the mutual relation of
naval, military, and political considerations. The line of mean efficiency,
though indicated from home, must be worked out locally, and worked out on
factors of which no one service is master. Conference is always necessary,
and for conference to succeed there must be a common vehicle of expression
and a common plane of thought. It is for this essential preparation that
theoretical study alone can provide; and herein lies its practical value
for all who aspire to the higher responsibilities of the Imperial service.

So great indeed is the value of abstract strategical study from this point
of view, that it is necessary to guard ourselves against over-valuation. So
far from claiming for their so-called science more than the possibilities
we have indicated, the classical strategists insist again and again on the
danger of seeking from it what it cannot give. They even repudiate the very
name of "Science." They prefer the older term "Art." They will permit no
laws or rules. Such laws, they say, can only mislead in practice, for the
friction to which they are subject from the incalculable human factors
alone is such that the friction is stronger than the law. It is an old
adage of lawyers that nothing is so misleading as a legal maxim, but a
strategical maxim is undoubtedly and in every way less to be trusted in
action.

What then, it will be asked, are the tangible results which we can hope to
attain from theory? If all on which we have to build is so indeterminate,
how are any practical conclusions to be reached? That the factors are
infinitely varied and difficult to determine is true, but that, it must be
remembered, is just what emphasises the necessity of reaching such firm
standpoints as are attainable. The vaguer the problem to be solved, the
more resolute must we be in seeking points of departure from which we can
begin to lay a course, keeping always an eye open for the accidents that
will beset us, and being always alive to their deflecting influences. And
this is just what the theoretical study of strategy can do. It can at least
determine the normal. By careful collation of past events it becomes clear
that certain lines of conduct tend normally to produce certain effects;
that wars tend to take certain forms each with a marked idiosyncrasy; that
these forms are normally related to the object of the war and to its value
to one or both belligerents; that a system of operations which suits one
form may not be that best suited to another. We can even go further. By
pursuing an historical and comparative method we can detect that even the
human factor is not quite indeterminable. We can assert that certain
situations will normally produce, whether in ourselves or in our
adversaries, certain moral states on which we may calculate.

Having determined the normal, we are at once in a stronger position. Any
proposal can be compared with it, and we can proceed to discuss clearly the
weight of the factors which prompt us to depart from the normal. Every case
must be judged on its merits, but without a normal to work from we cannot
form any real judgment at all; we can only guess. Every case will assuredly
depart from the normal to a greater or less extent, and it is equally
certain that the greatest successes in war have been the boldest departures
from the normal. But for the most part they have been departures made with
open eyes by geniuses who could perceive in the accidents of the case a
just reason for the departure.

Take an analogous example, and the province of strategical theory becomes
clear at once. Navigation and the parts of seamanship that belong to it
have to deal with phenomena as varied and unreliable as those of the
conduct of war. Together they form an art which depends quite as much as
generalship on the judgment of individuals. The law of storms and tides, of
winds and currents, and the whole of meteorology are subject to infinite
and incalculable deflections, and yet who will deny nowadays that by the
theoretical study of such things the seaman's art has gained in coherence
and strength? Such study will not by itself make a seaman or a navigator,
but without it no seaman or navigator can nowadays pretend to the name.
Because storms do not always behave in the same way, because currents are
erratic, will the most practical seaman deny that the study of the normal
conditions are useless to him in his practical decisions?

If, then, the theoretical study of strategy be approached in this way--if,
that is, it be regarded not as a substitute for judgment and experience,
but as a means of fertilising both, it can do no man harm. Individual
thought and common-sense will remain the masters and remain the guides to
point the general direction when the mass of facts begins to grow
bewildering. Theory will warn us the moment we begin to leave the beaten
track, and enable us to decide with open eyes whether the divergence is
necessary or justifiable. Above all, when men assemble in Council it will
hold discussion to the essential lines, and help to keep side issues in
their place.

But beyond all this there lies in the theory of war yet another element of
peculiar value to a maritime Empire. We are accustomed, partly for
convenience and partly from lack of a scientific habit of thought, to speak
of naval strategy and military strategy as though they were distinct
branches of knowledge which had no common ground. It is the theory of war
which brings out their intimate relation. It reveals that embracing them
both is a larger strategy which regards the fleet and army as one weapon,
which co-ordinates their action, and indicates the lines on which each must
move to realise the full power of both. It will direct us to assign to each
its proper function in a plan of war; it will enable each service to
realise the better the limitations and the possibilities of the function
with which it is charged, and how and when its own necessities must give
way to a higher or more pressing need of the other. It discloses, in short,
that naval strategy is not a thing by itself, that its problems can seldom
or never be solved on naval considerations alone, but that it is only a
part of maritime strategy--the higher learning which teaches us that for a
maritime State to make successful war and to realise her special strength,
army and navy must be used and thought of as instruments no less intimately
connected than are the three arms ashore.

It is for these reasons that it is of little use to approach naval strategy
except through the theory of war. Without such theory we can never really
understand its scope or meaning, nor can we hope to grasp the forces which
most profoundly affect its conclusions.

                    PART ONE

                  THEORY OF WAR

                   CHAPTER ONE

                THE THEORY OF WAR

The last thing that an explorer arrives at is a complete map that will
cover the whole ground he has travelled, but for those who come after him
and would profit by and extend his knowledge his map is the first thing
with which they will begin. So it is with strategy. Before we start upon
its study we seek a chart which will show us at a glance what exactly is
the ground we have to cover and what are the leading features which
determine its form and general characteristics. Such a chart a "theory of
war" alone can provide. It is for this reason that in the study of war we
must get our theory clear before we can venture in search of practical
conclusions. So great is the complexity of war that without such a guide we
are sure to go astray amidst the bewildering multiplicity of tracks and
obstacles that meet us at every step. If for continental strategy its value
has been proved abundantly, then for maritime strategy, where the
conditions are far more complex, the need of it is even greater.

By maritime strategy we mean the principles which govern a war in which the
sea is a substantial factor. Naval strategy is but that part of it which
determines the movements of the fleet when maritime strategy has determined
what part the fleet must play in relation to the action of the land forces;
for it scarcely needs saying that it is almost impossible that a war can be
decided by naval action alone. Unaided, naval pressure can only work by a
process of exhaustion. Its effects must always be slow, and so galling both
to our own commercial community and to neutrals, that the tendency is
always to accept terms of peace that are far from conclusive. For a firm
decision a quicker and more drastic form of pressure is required. Since men
live upon the land and not upon the sea, great issues between nations at
war have always been decided--except in the rarest cases--either by what
your army can do against your enemy's territory and national life or else
by the fear of what the fleet makes it possible for your army to do.

The paramount concern, then, of maritime strategy is to determine the
mutual relations of your army and navy in a plan of war. When this is done,
and not till then, naval strategy can begin to work out the manner in which
the fleet can best discharge the function assigned to it.

The problem of such co-ordination is one that is susceptible of widely
varying solutions. It may be that the command of the sea is of so urgent an
importance that the army will have to devote itself to assisting the fleet
in its special task before it can act directly against the enemy's
territory and land forces; on the other hand, it may be that the immediate
duty of the fleet will be to forward military action ashore before it is
free to devote itself whole-heartedly to the destruction of the enemy's
fleets. The crude maxims as to primary objects which seem to have served
well enough in continental warfare have never worked so clearly where the
sea enters seriously into a war. In such cases it will not suffice to say
the primary object of the army is to destroy the enemy's army, or that of
the fleet to destroy the enemy's fleet. The delicate interactions of the
land and sea factors produce conditions too intricate for such blunt
solutions. Even the initial equations they present are too complex to be
reduced by the simple application of rough-and-ready maxims. Their right
handling depends upon the broadest and most fundamental principles of war,
and it is as a standpoint from which to get a clear and unobstructed view
of the factors in their true relations that a theory of war has perhaps its
highest value.

The theory which now holds the field is that war in a fundamental sense is
a continuation of policy by other means. The process by which the
continental strategists arrived at it involved some hard philosophical
reasoning. Practical and experienced veterans as they were, their method is
not one that works easily with our own habit of thought. It will be well,
therefore, to endeavour first to present their conclusions in a concrete
form, which will make the pith of the matter intelligible at once. Take,
now, the ordinary case of a naval or military Staff being asked to prepare
a war plan against a certain State and to advise what means it will
require. To any one who has considered such matters it is obvious the reply
must be another question--What will the war be about? Without a definite
answer or alternative answers to that question a Staff can scarcely do more
than engage in making such forces as the country can afford as efficient as
possible. Before they take any sure step further they must know many
things. They must know whether they are expected to take something from the
enemy, or to prevent his taking something either from us or from some other
State. If from some other State, the measures to be taken will depend on
its geographical situation and on its relative strength by land and sea.
Even when the object is clear it will be necessary to know how much value
the enemy attaches to it. Is it one for which he will be likely to fight to
the death, or one which he will abandon in the face of comparatively slight
resistance? If the former, we cannot hope to succeed without entirely
overthrowing his powers of resistance. If the latter, it will suffice, as
it often has sufficed, to aim at something less costly and hazardous and
better within our means. All these are questions which lie in the lap of
Ministers charged with the foreign policy of the country, and before the
Staff can proceed with a war plan they must be answered by Ministers.

In short, the Staff must ask of them what is the policy which your
diplomacy is pursuing, and where, and why, do you expect it to break down
and force you to take up arms? The Staff has to carry on in fact when
diplomacy has failed to achieve the object in view, and the method they
will use will depend on the nature of that object. So we arrive crudely at
our theory that war is a continuation of policy, a form of political
intercourse in which we fight battles instead of writing notes.

It was this theory, simple and even meaningless as it appears at first
sight, that gave the key to the practical work of framing a modern war plan
and revolutionised the study of strategy. It was not till the beginning of
the nineteenth century that such a theory was arrived at. For centuries men
had written on the "Art of War," but for want of a working theory their
labours as a whole had been unscientific, concerned for the most part with
the discussion of passing fashions and the elaboration of platitudes. Much
good work it is true was done on details, but no broad outlook had been
obtained to enable us to determine their relation to the fundamental
constants of the subject. No standpoint had been found from which we could
readily detach such constants from what was merely accidental. The result
was a tendency to argue too exclusively from the latest examples and to
become entangled in erroneous thought by trying to apply the methods which
had attained the last success to war as a whole. There was no means of
determining how far the particular success was due to special conditions
and how far it was due to factors common to all wars.

It was the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, coinciding as they did with a
period of philosophic activity, that revealed the shallowness and empirical
nature of all that had been done up to that time. Napoleon's methods
appeared to his contemporaries to have produced so strenuous a revolution
in the conduct of land warfare that it assumed a wholly new aspect, and it
was obvious that those conceptions which had sufficed previously had become
inadequate as a basis of sound study. War on land seemed to have changed
from a calculated affair of thrust and parry between standing armies to a
headlong rush of one nation in arms upon another, each thirsting for the
other's life, and resolved to have it or perish in the attempt. Men felt
themselves faced with a manifestation of human energy which had had no
counterpart, at least in civilised times.

The assumption was not entirely true. For although the Continent had never
before adopted the methods in question, our own country was no stranger to
them either on sea or land. As we shall see, our own Revolution in the
seventeenth century had produced strenuous methods of making war which were
closely related to those which Napoleon took over from the French
Revolutionary leaders. A more philosophic outlook might have suggested that
the phenomenon was not really exceptional, but rather the natural outcome
of popular energy inspired by a stirring political ideal. But the British
precedent was forgotten, and so profound was the disturbance caused by the
new French methods that its effects are with us still. We are in fact still
dominated by the idea that since the Napoleonic era war has been
essentially a different thing. Our teachers incline to insist that there is
now only one way of making war, and that is Napoleon's way. Ignoring the
fact that he failed in the end, they brand as heresy the bare suggestion
that there may be other ways, and not content with assuming that his system
will fit all land wars, however much their natures and objects may differ,
they would force naval warfare into the same uniform under the impression
apparently that they are thereby making it presentable and giving it some
new force.

Seeing how cramping the Napoleonic idea has become, it will be convenient
before going further to determine its special characteristics exactly, but
that is no easy matter. The moment we approach it in a critical spirit, it
begins to grow nebulous and very difficult to define. We can dimly make out
four distinct ideas mingled in the current notion. First, there is the idea
of making war not merely with a professional standing army, but with the
whole armed nation--a conception which of course was not really Napoleon's.
It was inherited by him from the Revolution, but was in fact far older. It
was but a revival of the universal practice which obtained in the barbaric
stages of social development, and which every civilisation in turn had
abandoned as economically unsound and subversive of specialisation in
citizenship. The results of the abandonment were sometimes good and
sometimes bad, but the determining conditions have been studied as yet too
imperfectly to justify any broad generalisation. Secondly, there is the
idea of strenuous and persistent effort--not resting to secure each minor
advantage, but pressing the enemy without pause or rest till he is utterly
overthrown--an idea in which Cromwell had anticipated Napoleon by a century
and a half. Scarcely distinguishable from this is a third idea--that of
taking the offensive, in which there was really nothing new at all, since
its advantages had always been understood, and Frederick the Great had
pressed it to extremity with little less daring than Napoleon himself--nay
even to culpable rashness, as the highest exponents of the Napoleonic idea
admit. Finally, there is the notion of making the armed forces of the enemy
and not his territory or any part of it your main objective. This perhaps
is regarded as the strongest characteristic of Napoleon's methods, and yet
even here we are confused by the fact that undoubtedly on some very
important occasions--the Austerlitz campaign, for example--Napoleon made
the hostile capital his objective as though he believed its occupation was
the most effective step towards the overthrow of the enemy's power and will
to resist. He certainly did not make the enemy's main army his primary
objective--for their main army was not Mack's but that of the Archduke
Charles.

On the whole then, when men speak of the Napoleonic system they seem to
include two groups of ideas--one which comprises the conception of war made
with the whole force of the nation; the other, a group which includes the
Cromwellian idea of persistent effort, Frederick's preference for the
offensive at almost any risk, and finally the idea of the enemy's armed
forces as the main objective, which was also Cromwell's.

It is the combination of these by no means original or very distinct ideas
that we are told has brought about so entire a change in the conduct of war
that it has become altogether a different thing. It is unnecessary for our
purpose to consider how far the facts seem to support such a conclusion,
for in the inherent nature of things it must be radically unsound. Neither
war nor anything else can change in its essentials. If it appears to do so,
it is because we are still mistaking accidents for essentials, and this is
exactly how it struck the acutest thinkers of Napoleonic times.

For a while it is true they were bewildered, but so soon as they had had
time to clear their heads from the din of the struggle in which they had
taken part, they began to see that the new phenomena were but accidents
after all. They perceived that Napoleon's methods, which had taken the
world by storm, had met with success in wars of a certain nature only, and
that when he tried to extend those methods to other natures of war he had
met with failure and even disaster. How was this to be explained? What
theory, for instance, would cover Napoleon's successes in Germany and
Italy, as well as his failures in Spain and Russia? If the whole conception
of war had changed, how could you account for the success of England, who
had not changed her methods? To us the answer to these questions is of
living and infinite importance. Our standpoint remains still unchanged. Is
there anything inherent in the conception of war that justifies that
attitude in our case? Are we entitled to expect from it again the same
success it met with in the past?

The first man to enunciate a theory which would explain the phenomena of
the Napoleonic era and co-ordinate them with previous history was General
Carl von Clausewitz, a man whose arduous service on the Staff and the
actual work of higher instruction had taught the necessity of systematising
the study of his profession. He was no mere professor, but a soldier bred
in the severest school of war. The pupil and friend of Sharnhorst and
Gneisenau, he had served on the Staff of Blücher in 1813, he had been Chief
of the Staff to Wallmoden in his campaign against Davoust on the Lower
Elbe, and also to the Third Prussian Army Corps in the campaign of 1815.
Thereafter for more than ten years he was Director of the General Academy
of War at Berlin, and died in 1831 as Chief of the Staff to Marshal
Gneisenau. For the fifty years that followed his death his theories and
system were, as he expected they would be, attacked from all sides. Yet
to-day his work is more firmly established than ever as the necessary basis
of all strategical thought, and above all in the "blood and iron" school of
Germany.

The process by which he reached his famous theory can be followed in his
classical work _On War_ and the _Notes_ regarding it which he left behind
him. In accordance with the philosophic fashion of his time he began by
trying to formulate an abstract idea of war. The definition he started with
was that "War is an act of violence to compel our opponent to do our will."
But that act of violence was not merely "the shock of armies," as
Montecuccoli had defined it a century and a half before. If the abstract
idea of war be followed to its logical conclusion, the act of violence must
be performed with the whole of the means at our disposal and with the
utmost exertion of our will. Consequently we get the conception of two
armed nations flinging themselves one upon the other, and continuing the
struggle with the utmost strength and energy they can command till one or
other is no longer capable of resistance. This Clausewitz called "Absolute
War." But his practical experience and ripe study of history told him at
once that "Real War" was something radically different. It was true, as he
said, that Napoleon's methods had approximated to the absolute and had
given some colour to the use of the absolute idea as a working theory. "But
shall we," he acutely asks, "rest satisfied with this idea and judge all
wars by it however much they may differ from it--shall we deduce from it
all the requirements of theory? We must decide the point, for we can say
nothing trustworthy about a war plan until we have made up our minds
whether war should only be of this kind or whether it may be of another
kind." He saw at once that a theory formed upon the abstract or absolute
idea of war would not cover the ground, and therefore failed to give what
was required for practical purposes. It would exclude almost the whole of
war from Alexander's time to Napoleon's. And what guarantee was there that
the next war would confirm to the Napoleonic type and accommodate itself to
the abstract theory? "This theory," he says, "is still quite powerless
against the force of circumstances." And so it proved, for the wars of the
middle nineteenth century did in fact revert to the pre-Napoleonic type.

In short, Clausewitz's difficulty in adopting his abstract theory as a
working rule was that his practical mind could not forget that war had not
begun with the Revolutionary era, nor was it likely to end with it. If that
era had changed the conduct of war, it must be presumed that war would
change again with other times and other conditions. A theory of war which
did not allow for this and did not cover all that had gone before was no
theory at all. If a theory of war was to be of any use as a practical guide
it must cover and explain not only the extreme manifestation of hostility
which he himself had witnessed, but every manifestation that had occurred
in the past or was likely to recur in the future.

It was in casting about for the underlying causes of the oscillations
manifested in the energy and intensity of hostile relations that he found
his solution. His experience on the Staff, and his study of the inner
springs of war, told him it was never in fact a question of purely military
endeavour aiming always at the extreme of what was possible or expedient
from a purely military point of view. The energy exhibited would always be
modified by political considerations and by the depth of the national
interest in the object of the war. He saw that real war was in fact an
international relation which differed from other international relations
only in the method we adopted to achieve the object of our policy. So it
was he arrived at his famous theory--"that war is a mere continuation of
policy by other means."

At first sight there seems little enough in it. It may seem perhaps that we
have been watching a mountain in labour and nothing but a mouse has been
produced. But it is only upon some such simple, even obvious, formula that
any scientific system can be constructed with safety. We have only to
develop the meaning of this one to see how important and practical are the
guiding lines which flow from it.

With the conception of war as a continuation of political intercourse
before us, it is clear that everything which lies outside the political
conception, everything, that is, which is strictly peculiar to military and
naval operations, relates merely to the means which we use to achieve our
policy. Consequently, the first desideratum of a war plan is that the means
adopted must conflict as little as possible with the political conditions
from which the war springs. In practice, of course, as in all human
relations, there will be a compromise between the means and the end,
between the political and the military exigencies. But Clausewitz held that
policy must always be the master. The officer charged with the conduct of
the war may of course demand that the tendencies and views of policy shall
not be incompatible with the military means which are placed at his
disposal; but however strongly this demand may react on policy in
particular cases, military action must still be regarded only as a
manifestation of policy. It must never supersede policy. The policy is
always the object; war is only the means by which we obtain the object, and
the means must always keep the end in view.

The practical importance of this conception will now become clear. It will
be seen to afford the logical or theoretical exposition of what we began by
stating in its purely concrete form. When a Chief of Staff is asked for a
war plan he must not say we will make war in such and such a way because it
was Napoleon's or Moltke's way. He will ask what is the political object of
the war, what are the political conditions, and how much does the question
at issue mean respectively to us and to our adversary. It is these
considerations which determine the nature of the war. This primordial
question settled, he will be in a position to say whether the war is of the
same nature as those in which Napoleon's and Moltke's methods were
successful, or whether it is of another nature in which those methods
failed. He will then design and offer a war plan, not because it has the
hall-mark of this or that great master of war, but because it is one that
has been proved to fit the kind of war in hand. To assume that one method
of conducting war will suit all kinds of war is to fall a victim to
abstract theory, and not to be a prophet of reality, as the narrowest
disciples of the Napoleonic school are inclined to see themselves.

Hence, says Clausewitz, the first, the greatest and most critical decision
upon which the Statesman and the General have to exercise their judgment is
to determine the nature of the war, to be sure they do not mistake it for
something nor seek to make of it something which from its inherent
conditions it can never be. "This," he declares, "is the first and the most
far-reaching of all strategical questions."

The first value, then, of his theory of war is that it gives a clear line
on which we may proceed to determine the nature of a war in which we are
about to engage, and to ensure that we do not try to apply to one nature of
war any particular course of operations simply because they have proved
successful in another nature of war. It is only, he insists, by regarding
war not as an independent thing but as a political instrument that we can
read aright the lessons of history and understand for our practical
guidance how wars must differ in character according to the nature of the
motives and circumstances from which they proceed. This conception, he
claims, is the first ray of light to guide us to a true theory of war and
thereby enable us to classify wars and distinguish them one from another.

Jomini, his great contemporary and rival, though proceeding by a less
philosophical but no less lucid method, entirely endorses this view. A
Swiss soldier of fortune, his experience was much the same as that of
Clausewitz. It was obtained mainly on the Staff of Marshal Ney and
subsequently on the Russian headquarter Staff. He reached no definite
theory of war, but his fundamental conclusions were the same. The first
chapter of his final work, _Précis de l'art de la Guerre_, is devoted to
"La Politique de la Guerre." In it he classifies wars into nine categories
according to their political object, and he lays it down as a base
proposition "That these different kinds of war will have more or less
influence on the nature of the operations which will be demanded to attain
the end in view, on the amount of energy that must be put forth, and on the
extent of the undertakings in which we must engage." "There will," he adds,
"be a great difference in the operations according to the risks we have to
run."

Both men, therefore, though on details of means they were often widely
opposed, are agreed that the fundamental conception of war is political.
Both of course agree that if we isolate in our mind the forces engaged in
any theatre of war the abstract conception reappears. So far as those
forces are concerned, war is a question of fighting in which each
belligerent should endeavour by all means at his command and with all his
energy to destroy the other. But even so they may find that certain means
are barred to them for political reasons, and at any moment the fortune of
war or a development of the political conditions with which it is entangled
may throw them back upon the fundamental political theory.

That theory it will be unprofitable to labour further at this point. Let it
suffice for the present to mark that it gives us a conception of war as an
exertion of violence to secure a political end which we desire to attain,
and that from this broad and simple formula we are able to deduce at once
that wars will vary according to the nature of the end and the intensity of
our desire to attain it. Here we may leave it to gather force and coherence
as we examine the practical considerations which are its immediate outcome.

                   CHAPTER TWO

                 NATURES OF WARS--
             OFFENSIVE AND DEFENSIVE

Having determined that wars must vary in character according to the nature
and importance of their object, we are faced with the difficulty that the
variations will be of infinite number and of all degrees of distinction. So
complex indeed is the graduation presented that at first sight it appears
scarcely possible to make it the basis of practical study. But on further
examination it will be seen that by applying the usual analytical method
the whole subject is susceptible of much simplification. We must in short
attempt to reach some system of classification; that is, we must see if it
is not possible to group the variations into some well-founded categories.
With a subject so complex and intangible the grouping must of course be to
some extent arbitrary, and in some places the lines of demarcation will be
shadowy; but if classification has been found possible and helpful in
Zoology or Botany, with the infinite and minute individual variations with
which they have to deal, it should be no less possible and helpful in the
study of war.

The political theory of war will at any rate give us two broad and
well-marked classifications. The first is simple and well known, depending
on whether the political object of the war is positive or negative. If it
be positive--that is, if our aim is to wrest something from the enemy--then
our war in its main lines will be offensive. If, on the other hand, our aim
be negative, and we simply seek to prevent the enemy wresting some
advantage to our detriment, then the war in its general direction will be
defensive.

It is only as a broad conception that this classification has value. Though
it fixes the general trend of our operations, it will not in itself affect
their character. For a maritime Power at least it is obvious that this must
be so. For in any circumstances it is impossible for such a Power either to
establish its defence or develop fully its offence without securing a
working control of the sea by aggressive action against the enemy's fleets.
Furthermore, we have always found that however strictly our aim may be
defensive, the most effective means of securing it has been by
counter-attack over-sea, either to support an ally directly or to deprive
our enemy of his colonial possessions. Neither category, then, excludes the
use of offensive operations nor the idea of overthrowing our enemy so far
as is necessary to gain our end. In neither case does the conception lead
us eventually to any other objective than the enemy's armed forces, and
particularly his naval forces. The only real difference is this--that if
our object be positive our general plan must be offensive, and we should at
least open with a true offensive movement; whereas if our object be
negative our general plan will be preventive, and we may bide our time for
our counter-attack. To this extent our action must always tend to the
offensive. For counter-attack is the soul of defence. Defence is not a
passive attitude, for that is the negation of war. Rightly conceived, it is
an attitude of alert expectation. We wait for the moment when the enemy
shall expose himself to a counter-stroke, the success of which will so far
cripple him as to render us relatively strong enough to pass to the
offensive ourselves.

From these considerations it will appear that, real and logical as the
classification is, to give it the designation "offensive and defensive" is
objectionable from every point of view. To begin with, it does not
emphasise what the real and logical distinction is. It suggests that the
basis of the classification is not so much a difference of object as a
difference in the means employed to achieve the object. Consequently we
find ourselves continually struggling with the false assumption that
positive war means using attack, and negative war being content with
defence.

That is confusing enough, but a second objection to the designation is far
more serious and more fertile of error. For the classification "offensive
and defensive" implies that offensive and defensive are mutually exclusive
ideas, whereas the truth is, and it is a fundamental truth of war, that
they are mutually complementary. All war and every form of it must be both
offensive and defensive. No matter how clear our positive aim nor how high
our offensive spirit, we cannot develop an aggressive line of strategy to
the full without the support of the defensive on all but the main lines of
operation. In tactics it is the same. The most convinced devotee of attack
admits the spade as well as the rifle. And even when it comes to men and
material, we know that without a certain amount of protection neither
ships, guns, nor men can develop their utmost energy and endurance in
striking power. There is never, in fact, a clean choice between attack and
defence. In aggressive operations the question always is, how far must
defence enter into the methods we employ in order to enable us to do the
utmost within our resources to break or paralyse the strength of the enemy.
So also with defence. Even in its most legitimate use, it must always be
supplemented by attack. Even behind the walls of a fortress men know that
sooner or later the place must fall unless by counter-attack on the enemy's
siege works or communications they can cripple his power of attack.

It would seem, therefore, that it were better to lay aside the designation
"offensive and defensive" altogether and substitute the terms "positive and
negative." But here again we are confronted with a difficulty. There have
been many wars in which positive methods have been used all through to
secure a negative end, and such wars will not sit easily in either class.
For instance, in the War of Spanish Succession our object was mainly to
prevent the Mediterranean becoming a French lake by the union of the French
and Spanish crowns, but the method by which we succeeded in achieving our
end was to seize the naval positions of Gibraltar and Minorca, and so in
practice our method was positive. Again, in the late Russo-Japanese War the
main object of Japan was to prevent Korea being absorbed by Russia. That
aim was preventive and negative. But the only effective way of securing her
aim was to take Korea herself, and so for her the war was in practice
positive.

On the other hand, we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that in the majority
of wars the side with the positive object has acted generally on the
offensive and the other generally on the defensive. Unpractical therefore
as the distinction seems to be, it is impossible to dismiss it without
inquiring why this was so, and it is in this inquiry that the practical
results of the classification will be found to lie--that is, it forces us
to analyse the comparative advantages of offence and defence. A clear
apprehension of their relative possibilities is the corner stone of
strategical study.

Now the advantages of the offensive are patent and admitted. It is only the
offensive that can produce positive results, while the strength and energy
which are born of the moral stimulation of attack are of a practical value
that outweighs almost every other consideration. Every man of spirit would
desire to use the offensive whether his object were positive or negative,
and yet there are a number of cases in which some of the most energetic
masters of war have chosen the defensive, and chosen with success. They
have chosen it when they have found themselves inferior in physical force
to their enemy, and when they believed that no amount of aggressive spirit
could redress that inferiority.

Obviously, then, for all the inferiority of the defensive as a drastic form
of war it must have some inherent advantage which the offensive does not
enjoy. In war we adopt every method for which we have sufficient strength.
If, then, we adopt the less desirable method of defence, it must be either
that we have not sufficient strength for offence, or that the defence gives
us some special strength for the attainment of our object.

What, then, are these elements of strength? It is very necessary to
inquire, not only that we may know that if for a time we are forced back
upon the defensive all is not lost, but also that we may judge with how
much daring we should push our offensive to prevent the enemy securing the
advantages of defence.

As a general principle we all know that possession is nine points of the
law. It is easier to keep money in our pocket than to take it from another
man's. If one man would rob another he must be the stronger or better armed
unless he can do it by dexterity or stealth, and there lies one of the
advantages of offence. The side which takes the initiative has usually the
better chance of securing advantage by dexterity or stealth. But it is not
always so. If either by land or sea we can take a defensive position so
good that it cannot be turned and must be broken down before our enemy can
reach his objective, then the advantage of dexterity and stealth passes to
us. We choose our own ground for the trial of strength. We are hidden on
familiar ground; he is exposed on ground that is less familiar. We can lay
traps and prepare surprises by counter-attack, when he is most dangerously
exposed. Hence the paradoxical doctrine that where defence is sound and
well designed the advantage of surprise is against the attack.

It will be seen therefore that whatever advantages lie in defence they
depend on the preservation of the offensive spirit. Its essence is the
counter-attack--waiting deliberately for a chance to strike--not cowering
in inactivity. Defence is a condition of restrained activity--not a mere
condition of rest. Its real weakness is that if unduly prolonged it tends
to deaden the spirit of offence. This is a truth so vital that some
authorities in their eagerness to enforce it have travestied it into the
misleading maxim, "That attack is the best defence." Hence again an
amateurish notion that defence is always stupid or pusillanimous, leading
always to defeat, and that what is called "the military spirit" means
nothing but taking the offensive. Nothing is further from the teaching or
the practice of the best masters. Like Wellington at Torres Vedras, they
all at times used the defensive till the elements of strength inherent in
that form of war, as opposed to the exhausting strain inherent in the form
that they had fixed upon their opponents, lifted them to a position where
they in their turn were relatively strong enough to use the more exhausting
form.

The confusion of thought which has led to the misconceptions about defence
as a method of war is due to several obvious causes. Counter-attacks from a
general defensive attitude have been regarded as a true offensive, as, for
instance, in Frederick the Great's best-known operations, or in Admiral
Tegetthoff's brilliant counterstroke at Lissa, or our own operations
against the Spanish Armada. Again, the defensive has acquired an ill name
by its being confused with a wrongly arrested offensive, where the superior
Power with the positive object lacked the spirit to use his material
superiority with sufficient activity and perseverance. Against such a Power
an inferior enemy can always redress his inferiority by passing to a bold
and quick offensive, thus acquiring a momentum both moral and physical
which more than compensates his lack of weight. The defensive has also
failed by the choice of a bad position which the enemy was able to turn or
avoid. A defensive attitude is nothing at all, its elements of strength
entirely disappear, unless it is such that the enemy must break it down by
force before he can reach his ultimate objective. Even more often has it
failed when the belligerent adopting it, finding he has no available
defensive position which will bar the enemy's progress, attempts to guard
every possible line of attack. The result is of course that by attenuating
his force he only accentuates his inferiority.

Clear and well proven as these considerations are for land warfare, their
application to the sea is not so obvious. It will be objected that at sea
there is no defensive. This is generally true for tactics, but even so not
universally true. Defensive tactical positions are possible at sea, as in
defended anchorages. These were always a reality, and the mine has
increased their possibilities. In the latest developments of naval warfare
we have seen the Japanese at the Elliot Islands preparing a real defensive
position to cover the landing of their Second Army in the Liaotung
Peninsula. Strategically the proposition is not true at all. A strategical
defensive has been quite as common at sea as on land, and our own gravest
problems have often been how to break down such an attitude when our enemy
assumed it. It usually meant that the enemy remained in his own waters and
near his own bases, where it was almost impossible for us to attack him
with decisive result, and whence he always threatened us with counterattack
at moments of exhaustion, as the Dutch did at Sole Bay and in the Medway.
The difficulty of dealing decisively with an enemy who adopted this course
was realised by our service very early, and from first to last one of our
chief preoccupations was to prevent the enemy availing himself of this
device and to force him to fight in the open, or at least to get between
him and his base and force an action there.

Probably the most remarkable manifestation of the advantages that may be
derived in suitable conditions from a strategical defensive is also to be
found in the late Russo-Japanese War. In the final crisis of the naval
struggle the Japanese fleet was able to take advantage of a defensive
attitude in its own waters which the Russian Baltic fleet would have to
break down to attain its end, and the result was the most decisive naval
victory ever recorded.

The deterrent power of active and dexterous operations from such a position
was well known to our old tradition. The device was used several times,
particularly in our home waters, to prevent a fleet, which for the time we
were locally too weak to destroy, from carrying out the work assigned to
it. A typical position of the kind was off Scilly, and it was proved again
and again that even a superior fleet could not hope to effect anything in
the Channel till the fleet off Scilly had been brought to decisive action.
But the essence of the device was the preservation of the aggressive spirit
in its most daring form. For success it depended on at least the will to
seize every occasion for bold and harassing counter-attacks such as Drake
and his colleagues struck at the Armada.

To submit to blockade in order to engage the attention of a superior
enemy's fleet is another form of defensive, but one that is almost wholly
evil. For a short time it may do good by permitting offensive operations
elsewhere which otherwise would be impossible. But if prolonged, it will
sooner or later destroy the spirit of your force and render it incapable of
effective aggression.

The conclusion then is that although for the practical purpose of framing
or appreciating plans of war the classification of wars into offensive and
defensive is of little use, a clear apprehension of the inherent relative
advantages of offence and defence is essential. We must realise that in
certain cases, provided always we preserve the aggressive spirit, the
defensive will enable an inferior force to achieve points when the
offensive would probably lead to its destruction. But the elements of
strength depend entirely on the will and insight to deal rapid blows in the
enemy's unguarded moments. So soon as the defensive ceases to be regarded
as a means of fostering power to strike and of reducing the enemy's power
of attack it loses all its strength. It ceases to be even a suspended
activity, and anything that is not activity is not war.

With these general indications of the relative advantages of offence and
defence we may leave the subject for the present. It is possible of course
to catalogue the advantages and disadvantages of each form, but any such
bald statement--without concrete examples to explain the meaning--must
always appear controversial and is apt to mislead. It is better to reserve
their fuller consideration till we come to deal with strategical operations
and are able to note their actual effect upon the conduct of war in its
various forms. Leaving therefore our first classification of wars into
offensive and defensive we will pass on to the second, which is the only
one of real practical importance.

                   CHAPTER THREE

                  NATURES OF WARS--
               LIMITED AND UNLIMITED

The second classification to which we are led by the political theory of
war, is one which Clausewitz was the first to formulate and one to which he
came to attach the highest importance. It becomes necessary therefore to
examine his views in some detail--not because there is any need to regard a
continental soldier, however distinguished, as an indispensable authority
for a maritime nation. The reason is quite the reverse. It is because a
careful examination of his doctrine on this point will lay open what are
the radical and essential differences between the German or Continental
School of Strategy and the British or Maritime School--that is, our own
traditional School, which too many writers both at home and abroad quietly
assume to have no existence. The evil tendency of that assumption cannot be
too strongly emphasised, and the main purpose of this and the following
chapters will be to show how and why even the greatest of the continental
strategists fell short of realising fully the characteristic conception of
the British tradition.

By the classification in question Clausewitz distinguished wars into those
with a "Limited" object and those whose object was "Unlimited." Such a
classification was entirely characteristic of him, for it rested not alone
upon the material nature of the object, but on certain moral considerations
to which he was the first to attach their real value in war. Other writers
such as Jomini had attempted to classify wars by the special purpose for
which they were fought, but Clausewitz's long course of study convinced him
that such a distinction was unphilosophical and bore no just relation to
any tenable theory of war. Whether, that is, a war was positive or negative
mattered much, but its special purpose, whether, for instance, according to
Jomini's system, it was a war "to assert rights" or "to assist an ally" or
"to acquire territory," mattered not at all.

Whatever the object, the vital and paramount question was the intensity
with which the spirit of the nation was absorbed in its attainment. The
real point to determine in approaching any war plan was what did the object
mean to the two belligerents, what sacrifices would they make for it, what
risks were they prepared to run? It was thus he stated his view. "The
smaller the sacrifice we demand from our opponent, the smaller presumably
will be the means of resistance he will employ, and the smaller his means,
the smaller will ours be required to be. Similarly the smaller our
political object, the less value shall we set upon it and the more easily
we shall be induced to abandon it." Thus the political object of the war,
its original motive, will not only determine for both belligerents
reciprocally the aim of the force they use, but it will also be the
standard of the intensity of the efforts they will make. So he concludes
there may be wars of all degrees of importance and energy from a war of
extermination down to the use of an army of observation. So also in the
naval sphere there may be a life and death struggle for maritime supremacy
or hostilities which never rise beyond a blockade.

Such a view of the subject was of course a wide departure from the theory
of "Absolute War" on which Clausewitz had started working. Under that
theory "Absolute War" was the ideal form to which all war ought to attain,
and those which fell short of it were imperfect wars cramped by a lack of
true military spirit. But so soon as he had seized the fact that in actual
life the moral factor always must override the purely military factor, he
saw that he had been working on too narrow a basis--a basis that was purely
theoretical in that it ignored the human factor. He began to perceive that
it was logically unsound to assume as the foundation of a strategical
system that there was one pattern to which all wars ought to conform. In
the light of his full and final apprehension of the value of the human
factor he saw wars falling into two well-marked categories, each of which
would legitimately be approached in a radically different manner, and not
necessarily on the lines of "Absolute War."

He saw that there was one class of war where the political object was of so
vital an importance to both belligerents that they would tend to fight to
the utmost limit of their endurance to secure it. But there was another
class where the object was of less importance, that is to say, where its
value to one or both the belligerents was not so great as to be worth
unlimited sacrifices of blood and treasure. It was these two kinds of war
he designated provisionally "Unlimited" and "Limited," by which he meant
not that you were not to exert the force employed with all the vigour you
could develop, but that there might be a limit beyond which it would be bad
policy to spend that vigour, a point at which, long before your force was
exhausted or even fully developed, it would be wiser to abandon your object
rather than to spend more upon it.

This distinction it is very necessary to grasp quite clearly, for it is
often superficially confused with the distinction already referred to,
which Clausewitz drew in the earlier part of his work--that is, the
distinction between what he called the character of modern war and the
character of the wars which preceded the Napoleonic era. It will be
remembered he insisted that the wars of his own time had been wars between
armed nations with a tendency to throw the whole weight of the nation into
the fighting line, whereas in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries wars
were waged by standing armies and not by the whole nation in arms. The
distinction of course is real and of far-reaching consequences, but it has
no relation to the distinction between "Limited" and "Unlimited" war. War
may be waged on the Napoleonic system either for a limited or an unlimited
object.

A modern instance will serve to clear the field. The recent Russo-Japanese
War was fought for a limited object--the assertion of certain claims over
territory which formed no part of the possessions of either belligerent.
Hostilities were conducted on entirely modern lines by two armed nations
and not by standing armies alone. But in the case of one belligerent her
interest in the object was so limited as to cause her to abandon it long
before her whole force as an armed nation was exhausted or even put forth.
The expense of life and treasure which the struggle was involving was
beyond what the object was worth.

This second distinction--that is, between Limited and Unlimited
wars--Clausewitz regarded as of greater importance than his previous one
founded on the negative or positive nature of the object. He was long in
reaching it. His great work _On War_ as he left it proceeds almost entirely
on the conception of offensive or defensive as applied to the Napoleonic
ideal of absolute war. The new idea came to him towards the end in the full
maturity of his prolonged study, and it came to him in endeavouring to
apply his strategical speculations to the practical process of framing a
war plan in anticipation of a threatened breach with France. It was only in
his final section _On War Plans_ that he began to deal with it. By that
time he had grasped the first practical result to which his theory led. He
saw that the distinction between Limited and Unlimited war connoted a
cardinal distinction in the methods of waging it. When the object was
unlimited, and would consequently call forth your enemy's whole war power,
it was evident that no firm decision of the struggle could be reached till
his war power was entirely crushed. Unless you had a reasonable hope of
being able to do this it was bad policy to seek your end by force--that is,
you ought not to go to war. In the case of a limited object, however, the
complete destruction of the enemy's armed force was beyond what was
necessary. Clearly you could achieve your end if you could seize the
object, and by availing yourself of the elements of strength inherent in
the defensive could set up such a situation that it would cost the enemy
more to turn you out than the object was worth to him.

Here then was a wide difference in the fundamental postulate of your war
plan. In the case of an unlimited war your main strategical offensive must
be directed against the armed forces of the enemy; in the case of a limited
war, even where its object was positive, it need not be. If conditions were
favourable, it would suffice to make the object itself the objective of
your main strategical offensive. Clearly, then, he had reached a
theoretical distinction which modified his whole conception of strategy. No
longer is there logically but one kind of war, the Absolute, and no longer
is there but one legitimate objective, the enemy's armed forces. Being
sound theory, it of course had an immediate practical value, for obviously
it was a distinction from which the actual work of framing a war plan must
take its departure.

A curious corroboration of the soundness of these views is that Jomini
reached an almost identical standpoint independently and by an entirely
different road. His method was severely concrete, based on the comparison
of observed facts, but it brought him as surely as the abstract method of
his rival to the conclusion that there were two distinct classes of object.
"They are of two different kinds," he says, "one which may be called
territorial or geographical ... the other on the contrary consists
exclusively in the destruction or disorganisation of the enemy's forces
without concerning yourself with geographical points of any kind." It is
under the first category of his first main classification "Of offensive
wars to assert rights," that he deals with what Clausewitz would call
"Limited Wars." Citing as an example Frederick the Great's war for the
conquest of Silesia, he says, "In such a war ... the offensive operations
ought to be proportional to the end in view. The first move is naturally to
occupy the provinces claimed" (not, be it noted, to direct your blow at the
enemy's main force). "Afterwards," he proceeds, "you can push the offensive
according to circumstances and your relative strength in order to obtain
the desired cession by menacing the enemy at home." Here we have
Clausewitz's whole doctrine of "Limited War"; firstly, the primary or
territorial stage, in which you endeavour to occupy the geographical
object, and then the secondary or coercive stage, in which you seek by
exerting general pressure upon your enemy to force him to accept the
adverse situation you have set up.

Such a method of making war obviously differs in a fundamental manner from
that which Napoleon habitually adopted, and yet we have it presented by
Jomini and Clausewitz, the two apostles of the Napoleonic method. The
explanation is, of course, that both of them had seen too much not to know
that Napoleon's method was only applicable when you could command a real
physical or moral preponderance. Given such a preponderance, both were
staunch for the use of extreme means in Napoleon's manner. It is not as
something better than the higher road that they commend the lower one, but
being veteran staff-officers and not mere theorists, they knew well that a
belligerent must sometimes find the higher road beyond his strength, or
beyond the effort which the spirit of the nation is prepared to make for
the end in view, and like the practical men they were, they set themselves
to study the potentialities of the lower road should hard necessity force
them to travel it. They found that these potentialities in certain
circumstances were great. As an example of a case where the lower form was
more appropriate Jomini cites Napoleon's campaign against Russia in 1812.
In his opinion it would have been better if Napoleon had been satisfied to
begin on the lower method with a limited territorial object, and he
attributes his failure to the abuse of a method which, however well suited
to his wars in Germany, was incapable of achieving success in the
conditions presented by a war with Russia.

Seeing how high was Napoleon's opinion of Jomini as a master of the science
of war, it is curious how his views on the two natures of wars have been
ignored in the present day. It is even more curious in the case of
Clausewitz, since we know that in the plenitude of his powers he came to
regard this classification as the master-key of the subject. The
explanation is that the distinction is not very clearly formulated in his
first seven books, which alone he left in anything like a finished
condition. It was not till he came to write his eighth book _On War Plans_
that he saw the vital importance of the distinction round which he had been
hovering. In that book the distinction is clearly laid down, but the book
unhappily was never completed. With his manuscript, however, he left a
"Note" warning us against regarding his earlier books as a full
presentation of his developed ideas. From the note it is also evident that
he thought the classification on which he had lighted was of the utmost
importance, that he believed it would clear up all the difficulties which
he had encountered in his earlier books--difficulties which he had come to
see arose from a too exclusive consideration of the Napoleonic method of
conducting war. "I look upon the first six books," he wrote in 1827, "as
only a mass of material which is still in a manner without form and which
has still to be revised again. In this revision the two kinds of wars will
be kept more distinctly in view all through, and thereby all ideas will
gain in clearness, in precision, and in exactness of application."
Evidently he had grown dissatisfied with the theory of Absolute War on
which he had started. His new discovery had convinced him that that theory
would not serve as a standard for all natures of wars. "Shall we," he asks
in his final book, "shall we now rest satisfied with this idea and by it
judge of all wars, however much they may differ?"[2] He answers his
question in the negative. "You cannot determine the requirements of all
wars from the Napoleonic type. Keep that type and its absolute method
before you to use _when you can_ or _when you must_, but keep equally
before you that there are two main natures of war."

  [2] Clausewitz, On War, Book viii, chap, ii

In his note written at this time, when the distinction first came to him,
he defines these two natures of war as follows: "First, those in which the
object is the _overthrow of the enemy_, whether it be we aim at his
political destruction or merely at disarming him and forcing him to
conclude peace on our terms; and secondly, those in which our object is
_merely to make some conquests on the frontiers of his country_, either for
the purpose of retaining them permanently or of turning them to account as
a matter of exchange in settling terms of peace."[3] It was in his eighth
book that he intended, had he lived, to have worked out the comprehensive
idea he had conceived. Of that book he says, "The chief object will be to
make good the two points of view above mentioned, by which everything will
be simplified and at the same time be given the breath of life. I hope in
this book to iron out many creases in the heads of strategists and
statesmen, and at least to show the object of action and the real point to
be considered in war."[4]

  [3] Ibid, Preparatory Notice, p. vii.

  [4] Ibid, p. viii

That hope was never realised, and that perhaps is why his penetrating
analysis has been so much ignored. The eighth book as we have it is only a
fragment. In the spring of 1830--an anxious moment, when it seemed that
Prussia would require all her best for another struggle single-handed with
France--he was called away to an active command. What he left of the book
on "War Plans" he describes as "merely a track roughly cleared, as it were,
through the mass, in order to ascertain the points of greatest moment." It
was his intention, he says, to "carry the spirit of these ideas into his
first six books"--to put the crown on his work, in fact, by elaborating and
insisting upon his two great propositions, viz. that war was a form of
policy, and that being so it might be Limited or Unlimited.

The extent to which he would have infused his new idea into the whole every
one is at liberty to judge for himself; but this indisputable fact remains.
In the winter in view of the threatening attitude of France in regard to
Belgium he drew up a war plan, and it was designed not on the Napoleonic
method of making the enemy's armed force the main strategical objective,
but on seizing a limited territorial object and forcing a disadvantageous
counter-offensive upon the French. The revolutionary movement throughout
Europe had broken the Holy Alliance to pieces. Not only did Prussia find
herself almost single-handed against France, but she herself was sapped by
revolution. To adopt the higher form of war and seek to destroy the armed
force of the enemy was beyond her power. But she could still use the lower
form, and by seizing Belgium she could herself force so exhausting a task
on France that success was well within her strength. It was exactly so we
endeavoured to begin the Seven Years' War; and it was exactly so the
Japanese successfully conducted their war with Russia; and what is more
striking, it was on similar lines that in 1859 Moltke in similar
circumstances drew up his first war plan against France. His idea at that
time was on the lines which Jomini held should have been Napoleon's in
1812. It was not to strike directly at Paris or the French main army, but
to occupy Alsace-Lorraine and hold that territory till altered conditions
should give him the necessary preponderance for proceeding to the higher
form or forcing a favourable peace.

In conclusion, then, we have to note that the matured fruit of the
Napoleonic period was a theory of war based not on the single absolute
idea, but on the dual distinction of Limited and Unlimited. Whatever
practical importance we may attach to the distinction, so much must be
admitted on the clear and emphatic pronouncements of Clausewitz and Jomini.
The practical importance is another matter. It may fairly be argued that in
continental warfare--in spite of the instances quoted by both the classical
writers--it is not very great, for reasons that will appear directly. But
it must be remembered that continental warfare is not the only form in
which great international issues are decided. Standing at the final point
which Clausewitz and Jomini reached, we are indeed only on the threshold of
the subject. We have to begin where they left off and inquire what their
ideas have to tell for the modern conditions of worldwide imperial States,
where the sea becomes a direct and vital factor.

                   CHAPTER FOUR

        LIMITED WAR AND MARITIME EMPIRES--

   Development of Clausewitz's and Jomini's
   Theory of a Limited Territorial Object, and Its
   Application to Modern Imperial Conditions

The German war plans already cited, which were based respectively on the
occupation of Belgium and Alsace-Lorraine, and Jomini's remarks on
Napoleon's disastrous Russian campaign serve well to show the point to
which continental strategists have advanced along the road which Clausewitz
was the first to indicate clearly. We have now to consider its application
to modern imperial conditions, and above all where the maritime element
forcibly asserts itself. We shall then see how small that advance has been
compared with its far-reaching effects for a maritime and above all an
insular Power.

It is clear that Clausewitz himself never apprehended the full significance
of his brilliant theory. His outlook was still purely continental, and the
limitations of continental warfare tend to veil the fuller meaning of the
principle he had framed. Had he lived, there is little doubt he would have
worked it out to its logical conclusion, but his death condemned his theory
of limited war to remain in the inchoate condition in which he had left it.

It will be observed, as was natural enough, that all through his work
Clausewitz had in his mind war between two contiguous or at least adjacent
continental States, and a moment's consideration will show that in that
type of war the principle of the limited object can rarely if ever assert
itself in perfect precision. Clausewitz himself put it quite clearly.
Assuming a case where "the overthrow of the enemy"--that is, unlimited
war--is beyond our strength, he points out that we need not therefore
necessarily act on the defensive. Our action may still be positive and
offensive, but the object can be nothing more than "the conquest of part of
the enemy's country." Such a conquest he knew might so far weaken your
enemy or strengthen your own position as to enable you to secure a
satisfactory peace. The path of history is indeed strewn with such cases.
But he was careful to point out that such a form of war was open to the
gravest objections. Once you had occupied the territory you aimed at, your
offensive action was, as a rule, arrested. A defensive attitude had to be
assumed, and such an arrest of offensive action he had previously shown was
inherently vicious, if only for moral reasons. Added to this you might find
that in your effort to occupy the territorial object you had so
irretrievably separated your striking force from your home-defence force as
to be in no position to meet your enemy if he was able to retort by acting
on unlimited lines with a stroke at your heart. A case in point was the
Austerlitz campaign, where Austria's object was to wrest North Italy from
Napoleon's empire. She sent her main army under the Archduke Charles to
seize the territory she desired. Napoleon immediately struck at Vienna,
destroyed her home army, and occupied the capital before the Archduke could
turn to bar his way.

The argument is this: that, as all strategic attack tends to leave points
of your own uncovered, it always involves greater or less provision for
their defence. It is obvious, therefore, that if we are aiming at a limited
territorial object the proportion of defence required will tend to be much
greater than if we are directing our attack on the main forces of the
enemy. In unlimited war our attack will itself tend to defend everything
elsewhere, by forcing the enemy to concentrate against our attack. Whether
the limited form is justifiable or not therefore depends, as Clausewitz
points out, on the geographical position of the object.

So far British experience is with him, but he then goes on to say the more
closely the territory in question is an annex of our own the safer is this
form of war, because then our offensive action will the more surely cover
our home country. As a case in point he cites Frederick the Great's opening
of the Seven Years' War with the occupation of Saxony--a piece of work
which materially strengthened Prussian defence. Of the British opening in
Canada he says nothing. His outlook was too exclusively continental for it
to occur to him to test his doctrine with a conspicuously successful case
in which the territory aimed at was distant from the home territory and in
no way covered it. Had he done so he must have seen how much stronger an
example of the strength of limited war was the case of Canada than the case
of Saxony. Moreover, he would have seen that the difficulties, which in
spite of his faith in his discovery accompanied his attempt to apply it,
arose from the fact that the examples he selected were not really examples
at all.

When he conceived the idea, the only kind of limited object he had in his
mind was, to use his own words, "some conquests on the frontiers of the
enemy's country," such as Silesia and Saxony for Frederick the Great,
Belgium in his own war plan, and Alsace-Lorraine in that of Moltke. Now it
is obvious that such objects are not truly limited, for two reasons. In the
first place, such territory is usually an organic part of your enemy's
country, or otherwise of so much importance to him that he will be willing
to use unlimited effort to retain it. In the second place, there will be no
strategical obstacle to his being able to use his whole force to that end.
To satisfy the full conception of a limited object, one of two conditions
is essential. Firstly, it must be not merely limited in area, but of really
limited political importance; and secondly, it must be so situated as to be
strategically isolated or to be capable of being reduced to practical
isolation by strategical operations. Unless this condition exists, it is in
the power of either belligerent, as Clausewitz himself saw, to pass to
unlimited war if he so desires, and, ignoring the territorial objective, to
strike at the heart of his enemy and force him to desist.

If, then, we only regard war between contiguous continental States, in
which the object is the conquest of territory on either of their frontiers,
we get no real generic difference between limited and unlimited war. The
line between them is in any case too shadowy or unstable to give a
classification of any solidity. It is a difference of degree rather than of
kind. If, on the other hand, we extend our view to wars between worldwide
empires, the distinction at once becomes organic. Possessions which lie
oversea or at the extremities of vast areas of imperfectly settled
territory are in an entirely different category from those limited objects
which Clausewitz contemplated. History shows that they can never have the
political importance of objects which are organically part of the European
system, and it shows further that they can be isolated by naval action
sufficiently to set up the conditions of true limited war.

Jomini approaches the point, but without clearly detaching it. In his
chapter "On Great Invasions and Distant Expeditions," he points out how
unsafe it is to take the conditions of war between contiguous States and
apply them crudely to cases where the belligerents are separated by large
areas of land or sea. He hovers round the sea factor, feeling how great a
difference it makes, but without getting close to the real distinction. His
conception of the inter-action of fleets and armies never rises above their
actual co-operation in touch one with the other in a distant theatre. He
has in mind the assistance which the British fleet afforded Wellington in
the Peninsula, and Napoleon's dreams of Asiatic conquest, pronouncing such
distant invasions as impossible in modern times except perhaps in
combination with a powerful fleet that could provide the army of invasion
with successive advanced bases. Of the paramount value of the fleet's
isolating and preventive functions he gives no hint.

Even when he deals with oversea expeditions, as he does at some length, his
grip of the point is no closer. It is indeed significant of how entirely
continental thought had failed to penetrate the subject that in devoting
over thirty pages to an enumeration of the principles of oversea
expeditions, he, like Clausewitz, does not so much as mention the conquest
of Canada; and yet it is the leading case of a weak military Power
succeeding by the use of the limited form of war in forcing its will upon a
strong one, and succeeding because it was able by naval action to secure
its home defence and isolate the territorial object.

For our ideas of true limited objects, therefore, we must leave the
continental theatres and turn to mixed or maritime wars. We have to look to
such cases as Canada and Havana in the Seven Years' War, and Cuba in the
Spanish-American War, cases in which complete isolation of the object by
naval action was possible, or to such examples as the Crimea and Korea,
where sufficient isolation was attainable by naval action owing to the
length and difficulty of the enemy's land communications and to the
strategical situation of the territory at stake.

These examples will also serve to illustrate and enforce the second
essential of this kind of war. As has been already said, for a true limited
object we must have not only the power of isolation, but also the power by
a secure home defence of barring an unlimited counterstroke. In all the
above cases this condition existed. In all of them the belligerents had no
contiguous frontiers, and this point is vital. For it is obvious that if
two belligerents have a common frontier, it is open to the superior of
them, no matter how distant or how easy to isolate the limited object may
be, to pass at will to unlimited war by invasion. This process is even
possible when the belligerents are separated by a neutral State, since the
territory of a weak neutral will be violated if the object be of sufficient
importance, or if the neutral be too strong to coerce, there still remains
the possibility that his alliance may be secured.

We come, then, to this final proposition--that limited war is only
permanently possible to island Powers or between Powers which are separated
by sea, and then only when the Power desiring limited war is able to
command the sea to such a degree as to be able not only to isolate the
distant object, but also to render impossible the invasion of his home
territory.

Here, then, we reach the true meaning and highest military value of what we
call the command of the sea, and here we touch the secret of England's
success against Powers so greatly superior to herself in military strength.
It is only fitting that such a secret should have been first penetrated by
an Englishman. For so it was, though it must be said that except in the
light of Clausewitz's doctrine the full meaning of Bacon's famous aphorism
is not revealed. "This much is certain," said the great Elizabethan on the
experience of our first imperial war; "he that commands the sea is at great
liberty and may take as much or as little of the war as he will, whereas
those that be strongest by land are many times nevertheless in great
straits." It would be difficult to state more pithily the ultimate
significance of Clausewitz's doctrine. Its cardinal truth is clearly
indicated--that limited wars do not turn upon the armed strength of the
belligerents, but upon the amount of that strength which they are able or
willing to bring to bear at the decisive point.

It is much to be regretted that Clausewitz did not live to see with Bacon's
eyes and to work out the full comprehensiveness of his doctrine. His
ambition was to formulate a theory which would explain all wars. He
believed he had done so, and yet it is clear he never knew how complete was
his success, nor how wide was the field he had covered. To the end it would
seem he was unaware that he had found an explanation of one of the most
inscrutable problems in history--the expansion of England--at least so far
as it has been due to successful war. That a small country with a weak army
should have been able to gather to herself the most desirable regions of
the earth, and to gather them at the expense of the greatest military
Powers, is a paradox to which such Powers find it hard to be reconciled.
The phenomenon seemed always a matter of chance-an accident without any
foundation in the essential constants of war. It remained for Clausewitz,
unknown to himself, to discover that explanation, and he reveals it to us
in the inherent strength of limited war when means and conditions are
favourable for its use.

We find, then, if we take a wider view than was open to Clausewitz and
submit his latest ideas to the test of present imperial conditions, so far
from failing to cover the ground they gain a fuller meaning and a firmer
basis. Apply them to maritime warfare and it becomes clear that his
distinction between limited and unlimited war does not rest alone on the
moral factor. A war may be limited not only because the importance of the
object is too limited to call forth the whole national force, but also
because the sea may be made to present an insuperable physical obstacle to
the whole national force being brought to bear. That is to say, a war may
be limited physically by the strategical isolation of the object, as well
as morally by its comparative unimportance.

                  CHAPTER FIVE

              WARS OF INTERVENTION--
     LIMITED INTERFERENCE IN UNLIMITED WAR

Before leaving the general consideration of limited war, we have still to
deal with a form of it that has not yet been mentioned. Clausewitz gave it
provisionally the name of "War limited by contingent," and could find no
place for it in his system. It appeared to him to differ essentially from
war limited by its political object, or as Jomini put it, war with a
territorial object. Yet it had to be taken into account and explained, if
only for the part it had played in European history.

For us it calls for the most careful examination, not only because it
baffled the great German strategist to reconcile it with his theory of war,
but also because it is the form in which Great Britain most successfully
demonstrated the potentiality for direct continental interference of a
small army acting in conjunction with a dominant fleet.

The combined operations which were the normal expression of the British
method of making war on the limited basis were of two main classes.
Firstly, there were those designed purely for the conquest of the objects
for which we went to war, which were usually colonial or distant oversea
territory; and secondly, operations more or less upon the European seaboard
designed not for permanent conquest, but as a method of disturbing our
enemy's plans and strengthening the hands of our allies and our own
position. Such operations might take the form of insignificant coastal
diversions, or they might rise through all degrees of importance till, as
in Wellington's operations in the Peninsula, they became indistinguishable
in form from regular continental warfare.

It would seem, therefore, that these operations were distinguished not so
much by the nature of the object as by the fact that we devoted to them,
not the whole of our military strength, but only a certain part of it which
was known as our "disposal force." Consequently, they appear to call for
some such special classification, and to fall naturally into the category
which Clausewitz called "War limited by contingent."

It was a nature of war well enough known in another form on the Continent.
During the eighteenth century there had been a large number of cases of war
actually limited by contingent--that is, cases where a country not having a
vital interest in the object made war by furnishing the chief belligerent
with an auxiliary force of a stipulated strength.

It was in the sixth chapter of his last book that Clausewitz intended to
deal with this anomalous form of hostility. His untimely death, however,
has left us with no more than a fragment, in which he confesses that such
cases are "embarrassing to his theory." If, he adds, the auxiliary force
were placed unreservedly at the disposal of the chief belligerent, the
problem would be simple enough. It would then, in effect, be the same thing
as unlimited war with the aid of a subsidised force. But in fact, as he
observes, this seldom happened, for the contingent was always more or less
controlled in accordance with the special political aims of the Government
which furnished it. Consequently, the only conclusion he succeeded in
reaching was that it was a form of war that had to be taken into account,
and that it was a form of limited war that appeared to differ essentially
from war limited by object. We are left, in fact, with an impression that
there must be two kinds of limited war.

But if we pursue his historical method and examine the cases in which this
nature of war was successful, and those in which it was unsuccessful, we
shall find that wherever success is taken as an index of its legitimate
employment, the practical distinction between the two kinds of limited war
tends to disappear. The indications are that where the essential factors
which justify the use of war limited by object are present in war limited
by contingent, then that form of war tends to succeed, but not otherwise.
We are brought, in fact, to this proposition, that the distinction "Limited
by contingent" is not one that is inherent in war, and is quite out of line
with the theory in hand--that, in reality, it is not a _form_ of war, but a
_method_ which may be employed either for limited or unlimited war. In
other words, war limited by contingent, if it is to be regarded as a
legitimate form of war at all, must take frankly the one shape or the
other. Either the contingent must act as an organic unit of the force
making unlimited war without any reservations whatever, or else it should
be given a definite territorial object, with an independent organisation
and an independent limited function.

Our own experience seems to indicate that war by contingent or war with "a
disposal force" attains the highest success when it approaches most closely
to true limited war--that is, as in the case of the Peninsula and the
Crimea, where its object is to wrest or secure from the enemy a definite
piece of territory that to a greater or less extent can be isolated by
naval action. Its operative power, in fact, appears to bear some direct
relation to the intimacy with which naval and military action can be
combined to give the contingent a weight and mobility that are beyond its
intrinsic power.

If, then, we would unravel the difficulties of war limited by contingent,
it seems necessary to distinguish between the continental and the British
form of it. The continental form, as we have seen, differs but little in
conception from unlimited war. The contingent is furnished at least
ostensibly with the idea that it is to be used by the chief belligerent to
assist him in overthrowing the common enemy, and that its objective will be
the enemy's organised forces or his capital. Or it may be that the
contingent is to be used as an army of observation to prevent a
counterstroke, so as to facilitate and secure the main offensive movement
of the chief belligerent. In either case, however small may be our
contribution to the allied force, we are using the unlimited form and
aiming at an unlimited and not a mere territorial object.

If now we turn to British experience of war limited by contingent, we find
that the continental form has frequently been used, but we also find it
almost invariably accompanied by a popular repugnance, as though there were
something in it antagonistic to the national instinct. A leading case is
the assistance we sent to Frederick the Great in the Seven Years' War. At
the opening of the war, so great was the popular repugnance that the
measure was found impossible, and it was not till Frederick's dazzling
resistance to the Catholic powers had clothed him with the glory of a
Protestant hero, that Pitt could do what he wanted. The old religious fire
was stirred. The most potent of all national instincts kindled the people
to a generous warmth which overcame their inborn antipathy to continental
operations, and it was possible to send a substantial contingent to
Frederick's assistance. In the end the support fully achieved its purpose,
but it must be noted that even in this case the operations were limited not
only by contingent but also by object. It is true that Frederick was
engaged in an unlimited war in which the continued existence of Prussia was
at stake, and that the British force was an organic element in his war
plan. Nevertheless, it formed part of a British subsidised army under
Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, who though nominated by Frederick was a
British commander-in-chief. His army was in organisation entirely distinct
from that of Frederick, and it was assigned the very definite and limited
function of preventing the French occupying Hanover and so turning the
Prussian right flank. Finally it must be noted that its ability to perform
this function was due to the fact that the theatre of operations assigned
to it was such that in no probable event could it lose touch with the sea,
nor could the enemy cut its lines of supply and retreat.

These features of the enterprise should be noted. They differentiate it
from our earlier use of war limited by contingent in the continental
manner, of which Marlborough's campaigns were typical, and they exhibit the
special form which Marlborough would have chosen had political exigencies
permitted and which was to become characteristic of British effort from
Pitt's time onward. In the method of our greatest War Minister we have not
only the limit by contingent but also the limit of a definite and
independent function, and finally we have touch with the sea. This is the
really vital factor, and upon it, as will presently appear, depends the
strength of the method.

In the earlier part of the Great War we employed the same form in our
operations in North-Western Europe. There we had also the limited function
of securing Holland, and also complete touch with the sea, but our theatre
of operations was not independent. Intimate concerted action with other
forces was involved, and the result in every case was failure. Later on in
Sicily, where absolute isolation was attainable, the strength of the method
enabled us to achieve a lasting result with very slender means. But the
result was purely defensive. It was not till the Peninsular War developed
that we found a theatre for war limited by contingent in which all the
conditions that make for success were present. Even there so long as our
army was regarded as a contingent auxiliary to the Spanish army the usual
failure ensued. Only in Portugal, the defence of which was a true limited
object, and where we had a sea-girt theatre independent of extraneous
allies, was success achieved from the first. So strong was the method here,
and so exhausting the method which it forced on the enemy, that the local
balance of force was eventually reversed and we were able to pass to a
drastic offensive.

The real secret of Wellington's success--apart from his own genius--was
that in perfect conditions he was applying the limited form to an unlimited
war. Our object was unlimited. It was nothing less than the overthrow of
Napoleon. Complete success at sea had failed to do it, but that success had
given us the power of applying the limited form, which was the most
decisive form of offence within our means. Its substantial contribution to
the final achievement of the object is now universally recognised.

The general result, then, of these considerations is that war by contingent
in the continental form seldom or never differs generically from unlimited
war, for the conditions required by limited war are seldom or never
present. But what may be called the British or maritime form is in fact the
application of the limited method to the unlimited form, as ancillary to
the larger operations of our allies--a method which has usually been open
to us because the control of the sea has enabled us to select a theatre in
effect truly limited.[5]

  [5] Wellington's view of the essential factor was expressed to Rear
  Admiral Martin, who was sent to Spain by the Admiralty to confer with him
  in September 1813. "If anyone," he said, "wishes to know the history of
  this war, I will tell them it is our maritime superiority gives me the
  power of maintaining my army while the enemy are unable to do so."
  (_Letters of Sir T. Byam Martin_) [Navy Records Society], ii, p. 499.

But what if the conditions of the struggle in which we wish to intervene
are such that no truly limited theatre is available? In that case we have
to choose between placing a contingent frankly at the disposal of our ally,
or confining ourselves to coastal diversion, as we did at Frederick the
Great's request in the early campaigns of the Seven Years' War. Such
operations can seldom be satisfactory to either party. The small positive
results of our efforts to intervene in this way have indeed done more than
anything to discredit this form of war, and to brand it as unworthy of a
first-class Power. Yet the fact remains that all the great continental
masters of war have feared or valued British intervention of this character
even in the most unfavourable conditions. It was because they looked for
its effects rather in the threat than in the performance. They did not
reckon for positive results at all. So long as such intervention took an
amphibious form they knew its disturbing effect upon a European situation
was always out of all proportion to the intrinsic strength employed or the
positive results it could give. Its operative action was that it threatened
positive results unless it were strongly met. Its effect, in short, was
negative. Its value lay in its power of containing force greater than its
own. That is all that can be claimed for it, but it may be all that is
required. It is not the most drastic method of intervention, but it has
proved itself the most drastic for a Power whose forces are not adapted for
the higher method. Frederick the Great was the first great soldier to
recognise it, and Napoleon was the last. For years he shut his eyes to it,
laughed at it, covered it with a contempt that grew ever more irritable. In
1805 he called Craig's expedition a "pygmy combination," yet the
preparation of another combined force for an entirely different destination
caused him to see the first as an advance guard of a movement he could not
ignore, and he sacrificed his fleet in an impotent effort to deal with it.

It was not, however, till four years later that he was forced to place on
record his recognition of the principle. Then, curiously enough, he was
convinced by an expedition which we have come to regard as above all others
condemnatory of amphibious operations against the Continent. The Walcheren
expedition is now usually held as the leading case of fatuous war
administration. Historians can find no words too bad for it. They ignore
the fact that it was a step--the final and most difficult step--in our
post-Trafalgar policy of using the army to perfect our command of the sea
against a fleet acting stubbornly on the defensive. It began with
Copenhagen in 1807. It failed at the Dardanelles because fleet and army
were separated; it succeeded at Lisbon and at Cadiz by demonstration alone.
Walcheren, long contemplated, had been put off till the last as the most
formidable and the least pressing. Napoleon had been looking for the
attempt ever since the idea was first broached in this country, but as time
passed and the blow did not fall, the danger came to be more and more
ignored. Finally, the moment came when he was heavily engaged in Austria
and forced to call up the bulk of his strength to deal with the Archduke
Charles. The risks were still great, but the British Government faced them
boldly with open eyes. It was now or never. They were bent on developing
their utmost military strength in the Peninsula, and so long as a potent
and growing fleet remained in the North Sea it would always act as an
increasing drag on such development. The prospective gain of success was in
the eyes of the Government out of all proportion to the probable loss by
failure. So when Napoleon least expected it they determined to act, and
caught him napping. The defences of Antwerp had been left incomplete. There
was no army to meet the blow--nothing but a polyglot rabble without staff
or even officers. For a week at least success was in our hands. Napoleon's
fleet only escaped by twenty-four hours, and yet the failure was not only
complete but disastrous. Still so entirely were the causes of failure
accidental, and so near had it come to success, that Napoleon received a
thorough shock and looked for a quick repetition of the attempt. So
seriously indeed did he regard his narrow escape that he found himself
driven to reconsider his whole system of home defence. Not only did he deem
it necessary to spend large sums in increasing the fixed defences of
Antwerp and Toulon, but his Director of Conscription was called upon to
work out a scheme for providing a permanent force of no less than 300,000
men from the National Guard to defend the French coasts. "With 30,000 men
in transports at the Downs," the Emperor wrote, "the English can paralyse
300,000 of my army, and that will reduce us to the rank of a second-class
Power."[6]

  [6] _Correspondance de Napoléon_, xix, 421, 4 September.

The concentration of the British efforts in the Peninsula apparently
rendered the realisation of this project unnecessary--that is, our line of
operation was declared and the threat ceased. But none the less Napoleon's
recognition of the principle remains on record--not in one of his speeches
made for some ulterior purpose, but in a staff order to the principal
officer concerned.

It is generally held that modern developments in military organisation and
transport will enable a great continental Power to ignore such threats.
Napoleon ignored them in the past, but only to verify the truth that in war
to ignore a threat is too often to create an opportunity. Such
opportunities may occur late or early. As both Lord Ligonier and Wolfe laid
it down for such operations, surprise is not necessarily to be looked for
at the beginning. We have usually had to create or wait for our
opportunity--too often because we were either not ready or not bold enough
to seize the first that occurred.

The cases in which such intervention has been most potent have been of two
classes. Firstly, there is the intrusion into a war plan which our enemy
has designed without allowing for our intervention, and to which he is
irrevocably committed by his opening movements. Secondly, there is
intervention to deprive the enemy of the fruits of victory. This form finds
its efficacy in the principle that unlimited wars are not always decided by
the destruction of armies. There usually remains the difficult work of
conquering the people afterwards with an exhausted army. The intrusion of a
small fresh force from the sea in such cases may suffice to turn the scale,
as it did in the Peninsula, and as, in the opinion of some high
authorities, it might have done in France in 1871.

Such a suggestion will appear to be almost heretical as sinning against the
principle which condemns a strategical reserve. We say that the whole
available force should be developed for the vital period of the struggle.
No one can be found to dispute it nowadays. It is too obviously true when
it is a question of a conflict between organised forces, but in the absence
of all proof we are entitled to doubt whether it is true for that
exhausting and demoralising period which lies beyond the shock of armies.

                  CHAPTER SIX

     CONDITIONS OF STRENGTH IN LIMITED WAR

The elements of strength in limited war are closely analogous to those
generally inherent in defence. That is to say, that as a correct use of
defence will sometimes enable an inferior force to gain its end against a
superior one, so are there instances in which the correct use of the
limited form of war has enabled a weak military Power to attain success
against a much stronger one, and these instances are too numerous to permit
us to regard the results as accidental.

An obvious element of strength is that where the geographical conditions
are favourable we are able by the use of our navy to restrict the amount of
force our army will have to deal with. We can in fact bring up our fleet to
redress the adverse balance of our land force. But apart from this very
practical reason there is another, which is rooted in the first principles
of strategy.

It is that limited war permits the use of the defensive without its usual
drawbacks to a degree that is impossible in unlimited war. These drawbacks
are chiefly that it tends to surrender the initiative to the enemy and that
it deprives us of the moral exhilaration of the offensive. But in limited
war, as we shall see, this need not be the case, and if without making
these sacrifices we are able to act mainly on the defensive our position
becomes exceedingly strong.

The proposition really admits of no doubt. For even if we be not in
whole-hearted agreement with Clausewitz's doctrine of the strength of
defence, still we may at least accept Moltke's modification of it. He held
that the strongest form of war--that is, the form which economically makes
for the highest development of strength in a given force--is strategic
offensive combined with tactical defensive. Now these are in effect the
conditions which limited war should give--that is, if the theatre and
method be rightly chosen. Let it be remembered that the use of this form of
war presupposes that we are able by superior readiness or mobility or by
being more conveniently situated to establish ourselves in the territorial
object before our opponent can gather strength to prevent us. This done, we
have the initiative, and the enemy being unable by hypothesis to attack us
at home, must conform to our opening by endeavouring to turn us out. We are
in a position to meet his attack on ground of our own choice and to avail
ourselves of such opportunities of counter-attack as his distant and
therefore exhausting offensive movements are likely to offer. Assuming, as
in our own case we always must assume, that the territorial object is
sea-girt and our enemy is not able to command the sea, such opportunities
are certain to present themselves, and even if they are not used will
greatly embarrass the main attack--as was abundantly shown in the Russian
nervousness during their advance into the Liaotung Peninsula, due to the
fear of a counter-stroke from the Gulf of Pe-chi-li.

The actual situation which this method of procedure sets up is that our
major strategy is offensive--that is, our main movement is positive, having
for its aim the occupation of the territorial object. The minor strategy
that follows should be in its general lines defensive, designed, so soon as
the enemy sets about dislodging us, to develop the utmost energy of
counter-attack which our force and opportunities justify.

Now if we consider that by universal agreement it is no longer possible in
the present conditions of land warfare to draw a line between tactics and
minor strategy, we have in our favour for all practical purposes the
identical position which Moltke regarded as constituting the strongest form
of war. That is to say, our major strategy is offensive and our minor
strategy is defensive.

If, then, the limited form of war has this element of strength over and
above the unlimited form, it must be correct to use it when we are not
strong enough to use the more exhausting form and when the object is
limited; just as much as it is correct to use the defensive when our object
is negative and we are too weak for the offensive. The point is of the
highest importance, for it is a direct negation of the current doctrine
that in war there can be but one legitimate object, the overthrow of the
enemy's means of resistance, and that the primary objective must always be
his armed forces. It raises in fact the whole question as to whether it is
not sometimes legitimate and even correct to aim directly at the ulterior
object of the war.

An impression appears to prevail--in spite of all that Clausewitz and
Jomini had to say on the point--that the question admits of only one
answer. Von der Goltz, for instance, is particularly emphatic in asserting
that the overthrow of the enemy must always be the object in modern war. He
lays it down as "the first principle of modern warfare," that "the
immediate objective against which all our efforts must be directed is the
hostile main army." Similarly Prince Kraft has the maxim that "the first
aim should be to overcome the enemy's army. Everything else, the occupation
of the country, &c., only comes in the second line."

It will be observed that he here admits that the process of occupying the
enemy's territory is an operation distinct from the overthrow of the
enemy's force. Von der Goltz goes further, and protests against the common
error of regarding the annihilation of the enemy's principal army as
synonymous with the complete attainment of the object. He is careful to
assert that the current doctrine only holds good "when the two belligerent
states are of approximately the same nature." If, then, there are cases in
which the occupation of territory must be undertaken as an operation
distinct from defeating the enemy's forces, and if in such cases the
conditions are such that we can occupy the territory with advantage without
first defeating the enemy, it is surely mere pedantry to insist that we
should put off till to-morrow what we can do better to-day. If the
occupation of the enemy's whole territory is involved, or even a
substantial part of it, the German principle of course holds good, but all
wars are not of that character.

Insistence on the principle of "overthrow," and even its exaggeration, was
of value, in its day, to prevent a recurrence to the old and discredited
methods. But its work is done, and blind adherence to it without regard to
the principles on which it rests tends to turn the art of war into mere
bludgeon play.

Clausewitz, at any rate, as General Von Caemmerer has pointed out,[7] was
far too practical a soldier to commit himself to so abstract a proposition
in all its modern crudity. If it were true, it would never be possible for
a weaker Power to make successful war against a stronger one in any cause
whatever--a conclusion abundantly refuted by historical experience. That
the higher form like the offensive is the more drastic is certain, if
conditions are suitable for its use, but Clausewitz, it must be remembered,
distinctly lays it down that such conditions presuppose in the belligerent
employing the higher form a great physical or moral superiority or a great
spirit of enterprise--an innate propensity for extreme hazards. Jomini did
not go even so far as this. He certainly would have ruled out "an innate
propensity to extreme hazards," for in his judgment it was this innate
propensity which led Napoleon to abuse the higher form to his own undoing.
So entirely indeed does history, no less than theory, fail to support the
idea of the one answer, that it would seem that even in Germany a reaction
to Clausewitz's real teaching is beginning. In expounding it Von Caemmerer
says, "Since the majority of the most prominent military authors of our
time uphold the principle that in war our efforts must always be directed
to their utmost limits and that a deliberate employment of lower means
betrays more or less weakness, I feel bound to declare that the wideness of
Clausewitz's views have inspired me with a high degree of admiration."

  [7] _Development of Strategical Science._

Now what Clausewitz held precisely was this--that when the conditions are
not favourable for the use of the higher form, the seizure of a small part
of the enemy's territory may be regarded as a correct alternative to
destroying his armed forces. But he clearly regards this form of war only
as a make-shift. His purely continental outlook prevented his considering
that there might be cases where the object was actually so limited in
character that the lower form of war would be at once the more effective
and the more economical to use. In continental warfare, as we have seen,
such cases can hardly occur, but they tend to declare themselves strongly
when the maritime factor is introduced to any serious extent.

The tendency of British warfare to take the lower or limited form has
always been as clearly marked as is the opposite tendency on the Continent.
To attribute such a tendency, as is sometimes the fashion, to an inherent
lack of warlike spirit is sufficiently contradicted by the results it has
achieved. There is no reason indeed to put it down to anything but a
sagacious instinct for the kind of war that best accords with the
conditions of our existence. So strong has this instinct been that it has
led us usually to apply the lower form not only where the object of the war
was a well-defined territorial one, but to cases in which its correctness
was less obvious. As has been explained in the last chapter, we have
applied it, and applied it on the whole with success, when we have been
acting in concert with continental allies for an unlimited object--where,
that is, the common object has been the overthrow of the common enemy.

The choice between the two forms really depends upon the circumstances of
each case. We have to consider whether the political object is in fact
limited, whether if unlimited in the abstract it can be reduced to a
concrete object that is limited, and finally whether the strategical
conditions are such as lend themselves to the successful application of the
limited form.

What we require now is to determine those conditions with greater
exactness, and this will be best done by changing our method to the
concrete and taking a leading case.

The one which presents them in their clearest and simplest form is without
doubt the recent war between Russia and Japan. Here we have a particularly
striking example of a small Power having forced her will upon a much
greater Power without "overthrowing" her--that is, without having crushed
her power of resistance. That was entirely beyond the strength of Japan. So
manifest was the fact that everywhere upon the Continent, where the
overthrow of your enemy was regarded as the only admissible form of war,
the action of the Japanese in resorting to hostilities was regarded as
madness. Only in England, with her tradition and instinct for what an
island Power may achieve by the lower means, was Japan considered to have
any reasonable chance of success.

The case is particularly striking; for every one felt that the real object
of the war was in the abstract unlimited, that it was in fact to decide
whether Russia or Japan was to be the predominant power in the Far East.
Like the Franco-German War of 1870 it had all the aspect of what the
Germans call "a trial of strength." Such a war is one which above all
appears incapable of decision except by the complete overthrow of the one
Power or the other. There was no complication of alliances nor any
expectation of them. The Anglo-Japanese Treaty had isolated the struggle.
If ever issue hung on the sheer fighting force of the two belligerents it
would seem to have been this one. After the event we are inclined to
attribute the result to the moral qualities and superior training and
readiness of the victors. These qualities indeed played their part, and
they must not be minimised; but who will contend that if Japan had tried to
make her war with Russia, as Napoleon made his, she could have fared even
as well as he did? She had no such preponderance as Clausewitz laid down as
a condition precedent to attempting the overthrow of her enemy--the
employment of unlimited war.

Fortunately for her the circumstances did not call for the employment of
such extreme means. The political and geographical conditions were such
that she was able to reduce the intangible object of asserting her prestige
to the purely concrete form of a territorial objective. The penetration of
Russia into Manchuria threatened the absorption of Korea into the Russian
Empire, and this Japan regarded as fatal to her own position and future
development. Her power to maintain Korean integrity would be the outward
and visible sign of her ability to assert herself as a Pacific Power. Her
abstract quarrel with Russia could therefore be crystallised into a
concrete objective in the same way as the quarrel of the Western Powers
with Russia in 1854 crystallised into the concrete objective of Sebastopol.

In the Japanese case the immediate political object was exceptionally well
adapted for the use of limited war. Owing to the geographical position of
Korea and to the vast and undeveloped territories which separate it from
the centre of Russian power, it could be practically isolated by naval
action. Further than this, it fulfilled the condition to which Clausewitz
attached the greatest importance--that is to say, the seizure of the
particular object so far from weakening the home defence of Japan would
have the effect of greatly increasing the strength of her position. Though
offensive in effect and intention it was also, like Frederick's seizure of
Saxony, a sound piece of defensive work. So far from exposing her heart, it
served to cover it almost impregnably. The reason is plain. Owing to the
wide separation of the two Russian arsenals at Port Arthur and
Vladivostock, with a defile controlled by Japan interposed, the Russian
naval position was very faulty. The only way of correcting it was for
Russia to secure a base in the Straits of Korea, and for this she had been
striving by diplomatic means at Seoul for some time. Strategically the
integrity of Korea was for Japan very much what the integrity of the Low
Countries was for us, but in the case of the Low Countries, since they were
incapable of isolation, our power of direct action was always comparatively
weak. Portugal, with its unrivalled strategical harbour at Lisbon, was an
analogous case in our old oceanic wars, and since it was capable of being
in a measure isolated from the strength of our great rival by naval means
we were there almost uniformly successful. On the whole it must be said
that notwithstanding the success we achieved in our long series of wars
waged on a limited basis, in none of them were the conditions so favourable
for us as in this case they were for Japan. In none of them did our main
offensive movement so completely secure our home defence. Canada was as
eccentric as possible to our line of home defence, while in the Crimea so
completely did our offensive uncover the British Islands, that we had to
supplement our movement against the limited object by sending our main
fighting fleet to hold the exit of the Baltic against the danger of an
unlimited counter-stroke.[8]

  [8] The strategical object with which the Baltic fleet was sent was
  certainly to prevent a counter-stroke--that is, its main function in our
  war plan was negative. Its positive function was minor and diversionary
  only. It also had a political object as a demonstration to further our
  efforts to form a Baltic coalition against Russia, which entirely failed.
  Public opinion mistaking the whole situation expected direct positive
  results from this fleet, even the capture of St. Petersburg. Such an
  operation would have converted the war from a limited one to an unlimited
  one. It would have meant the "overthrow of the enemy," a task quite
  beyond the strength of the allies without the assistance of the Baltic
  Powers, and even so their assistance would not have justified changing
  the nature of the war, unless both Sweden and Russia had been ready to
  make unlimited war and nothing was further from their intention.

Whether or not it was on this principle that the Japanese conceived the war
from the outset matters little. The main considerations are that with so
favourable a territorial object as Korea limited war was possible in its
most formidable shape, that the war did in fact develop on limited lines,
and that it was entirely successful. Without waiting to secure the command
of the sea, Japan opened by a surprise seizure of Seoul, and then under
cover of minor operations of the fleet proceeded to complete her occupation
of Korea. As she faced the second stage, that of making good the defence of
her conquest, the admirable nature of her geographical object was further
displayed. The theoretical weakness of limited war at this point is the
arrest of your offensive action. But in this case such arrest was neither
necessary nor possible, and for these reasons. To render the conquest
secure not only must the Korean frontier be made inviolable, but Korea must
be permanently isolated by sea. This involved the destruction of the
Russian fleet, and this in its turn entailed the reduction of Port Arthur
by military means. Here, then, in the second stage Japan found herself
committed to two lines of operation with two distinct objectives, Port
Arthur and the Russian army that was slowly concentrating in Manchuria--a
thoroughly vicious situation. So fortunate, however, was the geographical
conformation of the theatre that by promptitude and the bold use of an
uncommanded sea it could be reduced to something far more correct. By
continuing the advance of the Korean army into Manchuria and landing
another force between it and the Port Arthur army the three corps could be
concentrated and the vicious separation of the lines of operations turned
to good account. They could be combined in such a way as to threaten an
enveloping counter-attack on Liao-yang before the Russian offensive
concentration could be completed. Not only was Liao-yang the Russian point
of concentration, but it also was a sound position both for defending Korea
and covering the siege of Port Arthur. Once secured, it gave the Japanese
all the advantages of defence and forced the Russians to exhaust themselves
in offensive operations which were beyond their strength. Nor was it only
ashore that this advantage was gained. The success of the system, which
culminated in the fall of Port Arthur, went further still. Not only did it
make Japan relatively superior at sea, but it enabled her to assume a naval
defensive and so to force the final naval decision on Russia with every
advantage of time, place, and strength in her own favour.

By the battle of Tsushima the territorial object was completely isolated by
sea, and the position of Japan in Korea was rendered as impregnable as that
of Wellington at Torres Vedras. All that remained was to proceed to the
third stage and demonstrate to Russia that the acceptance of the situation
that had been set up was more to her advantage than the further attempt to
break it down. This the final advance to Mukden accomplished, and Japan
obtained her end very far short of having overthrown her enemy. The
offensive power of Russia had never been so strong, while that of Japan was
almost if not quite exhausted.

Approached in this way, the Far Eastern struggle is seen to develop on the
same lines as all our great maritime wars of the past, which continental