BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE 
 
 JACOB H.SCHIFF 
 
 ENDOWMENT FOR THE PROMOTION 
 
 OF STUDIES IN 
 
 HUMAN CIVILIZATION 
 
 1918 
 
D 523.W6ri918'""'*' "*""" 
 iimR«iTO,SnlM.?!?S,,J!!?.?...war / 
 
 3 1924 027 858 392 
 
The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027858392 
 
GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
SY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 THE BRAIN OF AN ARMY 
 THE GREAT ALTERNATIVE 
 BRITAIN AT BAY 
 
GOVERNMENT 
 AND THE WAR 
 
 BY 
 
 SPENSER WILKINSON 
 
 CHICHBLE PROfESSOK OF MILITARY HISTORY; FELLOV/ OF ALL SOULS COLLKOB, 
 OXFORT> ; PRESIDENT OF THE MANCHESTER TACTICAL SOCIETY. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 ROBERT M. McBRIDE £sf COMPANY 
 
 1918 
 
Each of the chapters was a lecture delivered before 
 the University pf Oxford, with the exception of VI., 
 VIII., and X., '^^^ originally appeared (as did also 
 II. after its d|^^r) in The Nineteenth Century and 
 After, and are reprinted by the kind permission of 
 the Editor III. IV., and V. are printed for the 
 first time. 
 
 Prmttd in Grtat Britain 
 
TO MY COUNTRYMEN 
 
 Surely by this time, in the fourth year of the conflict, 
 the people of this country must be willing or even 
 anxious to know the truth about the war and about its 
 management. 'Seek and ye shall find'; if you dare 
 not open your eyes you must not expect to see. 
 
 In August, 19 14, when Germany struck for the 
 mastery, our people responded with no uncertain voice. 
 We accepted the challenge and we would fight it out. 
 We gave the Government full powers and a free hand. 
 Since then we have given the Government 7,500,000 
 men, of whom the Admiralty has had 400,000 and the 
 War Office the remainder. We have encouraged the 
 Government to spend money without limit. We have 
 given the whole country as a workshop. We have had 
 half the world as Allies. What is the position to-day ? 
 We were told that our navy would command the sea, 
 but it does not. The German submarines sink our 
 ships at such a rate that in spite of our efforts in ship- 
 building we have to be put on rations. We were to 
 crush Prussian 'Militarism,' which means, I suppose, 
 to shatter the armies of Germany and her Allies. But 
 
vi TO MY COUNTRYMEN 
 
 in Eastern Europe those armies have been victorious 
 and they are now collecting their strength for a fresh 
 blow in the West. When we look at the map we follow 
 the line of No Man's Land, which separates the oppos- 
 ing forces from the Channel to the Alps and from the 
 Alps to the Adriatic In Italy it has been pushed back 
 from the Isonzo to the Piave. In France and Belgium, 
 though It has here and there moved backwards or 
 forwards, the line remains substantially where it was 
 three years ago. This is not victory. 
 
 It is true that our troops have taken Baghdad and 
 Jerusalem and are still advancing in jthose regions, 
 but what effect can Baghdad and Jerusalem produce 
 on the conflict in Europe? 
 
 Suppose that the enemy in 191 8 should accomplish 
 in the West what he has already a.chieved in the East. 
 The eyes of those who thought that peace could 
 always be had for the asking must have been opened 
 by what they have seen in Russia. In presence of a 
 victorious enemy peace could be had only by sub- 
 mission. The victor will have his way affd the van- 
 quished are at his mercy. Germany expects and 
 intends to have her will, and has dearly enough ex- 
 plained what it is — to make an end of British sei- 
 powef, which is the British Empire. 
 
 Is it not the trUth that we have to destroy the 
 German na\ry, beginning with the Submarittes; and to 
 inflict upon the hostile armies defeat SO decisive as 
 
TO MY COUNTRYMEN vii 
 
 to compel the Geonan government to abandon the 
 hnpt of success ? In short, is not the choice between 
 victory and defeat ? 
 
 The reader who has followed me thus far can see 
 for himself whether I have described the situation as 
 it really is. I know that many people will not face 
 it. It seems to them too awful. They would rather 
 shut their eyes and build castles in the air labelled 
 ' After the War.' That seems to me the unconscious 
 hypocrisy of despair. I have faith in my country- 
 men. Nay, more, I have faith in the French and I 
 have faith in the Italians. But it is for my own 
 countrjrmen that I am writing. I am sure that they 
 feel with me and that they want to know the worst 
 and to do the best. All thait is required is a lead. 
 
 The object of this book is to tell you where to look 
 'for a lead. A great many peopk are asking for your 
 confrdence. Many are sjjying, 'Lo, here' and 'Lo, 
 there,' and you are rightly determined to beware of 
 false prophets. How are you to know whom to trust 
 or what sort of book it is worth your while now t® 
 read ? The best test of truth, I believe, in the long 
 rtm is consistency. If you want to iind the way you 
 don't look at a weathercock but at a compass. That 
 is the reason why I have no faith in any of the poli- 
 ticians, least of all in any of those who have beeft or 
 are ministers. No doubt many of them are remark- 
 able mien, conspicuous both ior ability and for char- 
 
viil TO MY COUNTRYMEN 
 
 acter. But I cannot convince myself that any one of 
 the whole number is fit to lead the nation in this war, 
 and I will tell you why. 
 
 You all know that Germany was preparing for this 
 war for many years before she began it. There was 
 no secrecy about it. Every increase of the German 
 navy and of the armies of Prussia, Bavaria, and 
 Austria was quite well known. Germany's objects 
 were also well known. A host of German writers were 
 discussing them for years. Berlin in peace is only 
 twenty-four hours' journey from London, and the 
 German language is very much easier to learn than 
 Greek or Latin. But which of our politicians told 
 the nation before the war that it would have to 
 fight Germany in a life-and-death struggle ? Which 
 of them got us ready for it? Were they not all 
 taken by surprise when it came? I think it was 
 the duty of those to whom the government of 
 the country was entrusted to know enough about 
 Europe to be able to grasp what was going on, to see 
 how it must affect us, and to have made up their 
 minds how they would carry on a war in case a war 
 should be forced upon us. They failed to perform 
 this duty. The result is the situation which I have 
 already described. 
 
 Many of the writers in the newspapers have kept on 
 telling you that you were winning. Either they did not 
 know the truth or were not allowed to tell it. In either 
 case you are hardly likely in future to attach much 
 
TO MY COUNTRYMEN ix 
 
 importance to what those writers and those news- 
 papers may have to say. 
 
 Why then do I venture to offer you a book 
 and why should you read it? I have not had 
 to change my mind during the war. Half my 
 book was written long before the war, so that, if I 
 did not tell you, you could hardly find out which 
 part was new and which part is old, except where I 
 discuss some of the actual events of the war itself. 
 I have given my life to trying to get to know what 
 can be known about war and to the endeavour to 
 arouse my countrymen to the realities of their posi- 
 tion. For a whole generation I have been telling you 
 that your army was not ready for war, your navy was 
 not ready, your government was not ready. I tried 
 to tell you what war was like, how armies and navies 
 were made ready for it, above edl that it must be 
 conducted by a statesman, and that the statesman's 
 first business was to understand it. What I wrote was 
 read and endorsed by the sailors and the soldiers, but 
 the public and the politicians took no interest in it. 
 In igog I wrote a book entitled "Britain at Bay," 
 to tell you that you were drifting into a war 
 with Germany, and that if you were to have a 
 chance of wiiming it you must change the whole 
 spirit of your politics. While that volume was in the 
 press I was chosen to direct the studies of those in 
 Oxford who wished to become acquainted with modern 
 
X TO- MY COUNTRYMEN 
 
 war and mbdern warfaire. That meant for me a fresh 
 study of the most recent great wars. But it meant 
 also a renewed effort to explain to others what war 
 is and means, how a government must carry it 
 on, and what are the qualifications of the statesman 
 to enable him to direct it. This volume contains the 
 work of nine years in thinking out those problems of 
 war which concern not so much the soldier as the 
 natibn and its government. It has been written not 
 for soldiers but for citizens. I have tried to set forth 
 the lines upon which a British government must work 
 if it is to obtain victory, and I believe that, if these 
 main ideas are rejected, defeat is certain. To seek dili- 
 gently for the truth, and then to express my conclu- 
 sions so that they may be imderstood by any reader — 
 that has been my atteinpt to serve my country. 
 
 S. W. 
 
 All Souls College, 
 March 3, 1918. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 TO MY COUNTRYMEN - V 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. THE STUDY OF WAR - - 1 
 
 U. WHAT IS PEACE? - 3 1 
 
 III. WHAT IS WAR? - - - - 65 
 
 IV. ENGLAND AND GERMANY 92 
 V. ENGLAND AND GERMANY — Continued 109 
 
 VI. THOUGHTS ON THE WAR - 130 
 
 VII. THE THEORY OF WAR 151 
 
 VIII. THE DARDANELLES COMMISSION - - 180 
 
 IX. NEGLECTED ASPECTS OF THE WAR - - 2IO 
 
 X. THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION AND THE CONDUCT 
 
 OF WAR - - - 232 
 
GOVERNMENT AND THE 
 WAR 
 
 THE STUDY OF WAR 
 
 inaugural lectxjre* 
 
 Mr. Vice-Chancellor, 
 
 You and those who under your auspices are assem- 
 bled here to-day can enter, as no other audience could 
 enter, into the feelings with which, as your first Pro- 
 fessor of Military History, I address you for the first 
 time. A man for whom the years spent under the 
 influence of this University were the prelude to the 
 battle of life, and who owes to his Oxford training, 
 however imperfectly received, his way of looking at 
 public affairs, now comes back among you with the 
 duty of contributing to the spiritual and intellectual 
 life of Oxford something of what he has learned in the 
 course of a prolonged effort to explore and understand 
 the currents of national energy. The duty laid upon 
 me is at the same time a privilege, for it gives me the 
 opportunity of endeavouring — I will not say to dis- 
 charge my filial obligation to our generous mother, for' 
 which of us could either wish or hope to repay that 
 • November 27, 1909. 
 
2 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 tiebt ? — but at any rate to prove that I am no thank- 
 less child. To you then I can and must speak freely 
 and sincerely, anji, sustained by your goodwill, I 
 shall, according to time-honoured tradition, attempt 
 to set forth the scope of the task which I now under- 
 take, and to interpret the purpose of the University in 
 conferring its freedom upon the study of Military 
 History. 
 
 Everything, it has been said, depends upon the 
 point of view. The point of view from which I see our 
 University is that of the nation to which we belong. 
 I conceive of the University as a community of 
 workers for England; and of the service which it 'per- 
 forms as consisting in the first place in the mainten- 
 ance and communication of a spiritual or intellectual 
 standard, and in the second place in the common life 
 which we here shax€, and which we regard as a pre- 
 paration for citizenship, as the means by which we 
 train not only the mind but the man. The spirit in 
 which our intellectual work is carried on is set forth 
 in the terse but pregnant terms of the Statute defining 
 the duties of Professors. A Professor is *to give 
 instruction to students, to assist the pursuit of know- 
 ledge, and to contribute to the advancement of it,' and 
 he is ' to give assistance to students in their studies by 
 advice, by informal instruction, and otherwise as he 
 may judge to be expedient.' In these clauses, the 
 University recognizes the character of knowledge as 
 something living and growir^, rather than as an 
 iiiorganic, inert, and limited mass; and insists on that 
 vital connexion between the advancement of know- 
 
THE STUDY OF WAR 3 
 
 ledge and its communication which makes it the first 
 qualification of the teacher that he should be himself 
 a learner. It recognizes further that, to use the words 
 of one of Oxford's great men, ' in the higher regions of 
 instruction it is not the substance of what is communi- 
 cated, but the act of communication between the older 
 and the younger mind, which is the important matter.' 
 
 If, in the twofold service which Oxford renders to 
 the nation, I place first the advancement of learning as 
 the means by which the University becomes a source 
 of ideas which are to permeate and inspire the com- 
 munity, it is because this is the function which quali- 
 fies her for her other duty — that of education. Here 
 she is a labourer in a specific field. I hardly think 
 you wiU quarrel with me when I assert that the special 
 education which we have to consider here is the train- 
 ing of servants for the nation, a training for citizenship 
 and for that statesmanship which is but citizenship 
 raised to a higher power. If we are to fulfil that mis- 
 sion, we must cherish in our students the qualities in 
 virtue of whidi they can render service. Our common 
 life should give them an object, their country, and 
 accustom them to do their work with that object in 
 view. The purpose of our instruction is to communi- 
 cate to them the power of seeing things as they are, 
 which is synonymous with science or true knowledge. 
 So long as our University can send out her young 
 men thus prepared and inspired for citizenship, so 
 long will she be a faithful servant — or, if you prefer 
 another name, a leader — of this nation. 
 
 There has been in this country for some time past a 
 
4 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 certain despondency ; many people have come to think 
 that England is standing still while other nations are 
 moving on and leaving her behind ; and there are 
 some who seem to think that Oxford herself is sta- 
 tionary, if not stagnant. I have to submit to you a 
 more hopeful view, to give you reasons for faith in our 
 country, and for the belief that Oxford still is, and will 
 continue to be, a spring of thought and a source of 
 action. 
 
 Forty-four years ago we were told that the business 
 of criticism was ' to know the best that is known and 
 thought in the world, and by in its turn making this 
 known to create a current of true and fresh ideas.' 
 The effort thus described has been carried on not only 
 elsewhere but here also. Men trained in the spirit of 
 that effort have been spread abroad through these 
 islands, and through the British Empire. As a result 
 of their labours, the people of this country have lost 
 the self-complacency that marked the middle of the 
 Victorian age. They have measured themselves, the 
 nation and its institutions, by higher standards. This 
 is the cause of the dissatisfaction which is so wide- 
 spread and so profound. It is the dissatisfaction not 
 of despair but of the resolve to approximate, as far 
 as is compatible with human imperfection, to the 
 better ideals that have been set up. 
 
 In this healthy process of self-criticism, or of the 
 expansion of ideals, Oxford has her part, due not only 
 to her national environment, but also to the continuity 
 of her own labours. It used to be, and I fancy still is, 
 the characteristic feature of Oxford studies that their 
 
THE STUDY OF WAR 5 
 
 main current runs in the humanities. We learn from 
 our Greek teachers to regard the State as the medium 
 of human life, to believe its purpose to be the sus- 
 tenance of a good life, its fruit and justification the 
 creation of a noble type of character to be impressed 
 upon all its citizens. Our effort to see things as they 
 really are compels us to be ever considering the State 
 in all its varying relations, so that our conception may 
 correspond with the living growth of human society. 
 But life and growth are prior to reflection, and specu- 
 lative thought necessarily follows after rather than 
 precedes the facts; and thus our political thinking 
 . follows after rather than precedes the phenomena of 
 English national life, though we may hope that our 
 attempts at analysis and synthesis may lead to fresh 
 and true ideas, to be afterwards with beneficial effect 
 diffused through the community. 
 
 Among the impulses of this national life which have 
 marked the last fifty years is one which has only 
 comparatively recently made itself felt in the region 
 of political consciousness or theory, the renewal of 
 the perception that the State has external relations 
 which may take the form of conflict. Our political 
 thinkers have slowly and reluctantly become aware 
 of a change in their views of the nature of peace, which 
 is at length seen to be insuf&ciently accounted for by 
 the absence of energy, and suspected to consist rather 
 in an equilibrium than in an absence of forces. The 
 system of states, of which we have long thought as 
 purely European, but which in our own day has 
 revealed itself as world-wide in extent, is seen to owe 
 
6 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 the existence of such equipoise as it possesses rather 
 to the constant operation of a multitude of counter- 
 acting pressures than to a universal inertia. It is 
 beginning to be felt that a theory of the State which 
 regards it purely from within, as something existing 
 isolated in space with no external relations, must be 
 supplemented and corrected by a theory of the rela- 
 tions between States, and of the place of physical 
 forces in those relations. The people of England 
 have gradually come to see that war is a part of the 
 real world, and that the idea of the State cannot be 
 fully comprehended without a knowledge of the prin- 
 ciples of international statics and dynamics. 
 
 This perception has followed, not preceded, the 
 spontaneous movement of the national life, of which 
 the first expression was the Volunteer movement in 
 1859, the second the agitations of 1888 and of 1894 
 for the expansion of the Navy. Both these movements 
 were followed by an impulse towards the study of war, 
 which was strengthened by the chief events of con- 
 temporary history — the great Civil War in the United 
 States, the conflicts between Prussia and Austria, and 
 between United Germany and the Third French Em- 
 pire. The Volunteer movement made itself felt in 
 Oxford, though it hardly became an integral part of 
 the life of the University. Here and there a student 
 was attracted to inquire into the phenomena of war 
 and into the history of wars; a not very large number 
 of young men received a slight initiation into the mili- 
 tary life ; a still smaller number associated themselves 
 for tactical exercises in the shape of the Kriegspiel or 
 
, THE STUDY OF WAR 7 
 
 War-game. At the time when this took place, about 
 1875, English military literature of permanent value 
 was represented almost entirely by the work of Sir 
 Edward Hamley. Modem English naval literature 
 had not then come into existence. It was not till 
 1883 that a Chichele Professor of Modern History 
 published a life of Lord Hawke, which preceded the 
 Treatise on Naval Warfare written by the late 
 Admiral Philip Colomb, himself the disciple of his 
 greater brother, the late Sir John Colomb. 
 
 The crisis of the South African War at length 
 brought home to the people of this country the reality 
 of a phenomenon they had too long ignored. This 
 produced an awakening effect upon Oxford, and in 
 particular upon All Souls College, which had some 
 years before specially dedicated itself to the service 
 of the' University, with the result which I have already 
 suggested as the natural accompaniment of such dedi- 
 cation. Two Fellows of AH Souls independently 
 undertook to write the history of that war ; and, soon 
 . after the pacification, the University began to take its 
 share in the national effort towards military reorgani- 
 zation. A number of commissions in the Army were 
 thrown open under certain conditions to graduates of 
 the Universities, Oxford admitted the subject of Mili- 
 tary History as a special 'subject for candidates for 
 Honours in the School of Modern History, and in 
 1905 the University, in consequence of the gift of a 
 private donor, established a Lectureship in that sub- 
 ject. The chosen Lecturer, Sir Foster Cunliffe, set the 
 example, both to his students and successors, of dili- 
 
8 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 gent and unwearying research, especially into the 
 great campaigns of Napoleon. It was his endeavour 
 to make military history teach war by the full and 
 accurate ascertainment of the facts from the contem- 
 porary documents so far as by industry and persever- 
 ance they could be made available. In the course of 
 last Term, All Souls College submitted to the Univer- 
 sity a proposal that the Lectureship should be trans- 
 formed into a Professorship, and the sanction of the 
 University enabled that intention to be realized. 
 Thus the University has bestowed its full franchise 
 upon the study of war. The foundation of the Chair 
 then, so far from being a fortuitous event, is the direct 
 outcome of that close contact which has long existed, 
 and which from year to year becomes more intimate, 
 between Oxford and the national life of England. 
 
 After the sketch I have given you of the origin of 
 the Chair there is no need to dwell at much length 
 upon its necessity, its logical justi&cation. Yet it may 
 be well to remind ourselves that we can no longer 
 think of the University as capable of doing its duty 
 without having in its scheme of work a place for the 
 study of war. 
 
 Our first business is what the Greeks called dempia, 
 seeing things as they are. We must get our vision of 
 the actual world into accordance with the facts, before 
 we can profitably attempt to dream of a better 
 world. 
 
 One of our main occupations here is with the life of 
 mankind, which is realized only in political communi- 
 
THE STUDY OF WAR 9 
 
 ties or states. In our school of Literae Humaniores 
 we study the idea of the State; in our schools of His- 
 tory the life and growth of states. It is to this part 
 of the University's work that the study of war belongs. 
 For war is one of the modes of human intercourse. It 
 is the form assumed by the conflict between com- 
 munities of men, the shape assumed by the acuter 
 stages of the struggle between states. A study of the 
 State or of states that should omit to examine war 
 must needs be crippled and defective. It would be 
 like a study of the ship which should take no account 
 of the sea. An ethics or a politics which failed to 
 analyze the nature and meaning of the conflict of wills 
 and of the collision between states would be an ethics 
 and a politics out of touch with the real world in 
 which we live. 
 
 We are thus bound to study war if we are to culti- 
 vate true ideas or to advance a healthy learning. And, 
 if we are to turn out citizens or statesmen equipped 
 for their functions in the actual State, we are bound 
 to teach the nature of war. 
 
 The first and most important of all the facts in 
 regard to war is that in its inception, in its course, 
 and in its conclusion, the control and direction of a 
 war, or of the activity of a state in and in regard to 
 war, is the function primarily of the statesman rather 
 than of the soldier, and that in regard to war the 
 architectonic art is policy or politics, not strategy or 
 generalship, which is not the master but the servant. 
 This is the very first of the principles which constitute 
 what is called the Art of War. If we use the word 
 
10 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 policy as a name for the personified intelligence and 
 will of the State, then, says the military historian, it 
 is the business of policy on every occasion to decide 
 whether or not the State shall engage in conflict with 
 another state, and to base that decision upon a true 
 estimate of the nature of the probable conflict, of the 
 risks and exertions to be undertaken, and of the evils 
 which may be incurred either by shrinking from a 
 necessary struggle, or by entering into one which is 
 unnecessary. Evidently, if this choice is to be rightly 
 made, the statesman must be acquainted with war ; he 
 need not be a master of the art, he need not himself 
 be able to handle fleets or armies; but he ought to 
 have a true knowledge of what can and what cannot 
 be done by those instruments, and of the way in which 
 their use or misuse will react upon the well-being of 
 the community which puts its trust in him. 
 
 This being the case, a University which ignored 
 war could hardly be a good school for those who may 
 become statesmen. By the adoption of democratic 
 forms of government, by the acceptance of the repre- 
 sentative system with all its consequences, the British 
 State has been popularized or nationalized. To it 
 therefore applies a saying which I recollect from one 
 of the lectures of my master, William Wallace, whose 
 untimely loss those of you who were his contem- 
 poraries here so deeply deplore. After quoting the 
 words of Plato, that, if the State was to be what it 
 ought to be, philosophers must be its rulers, Wallace 
 said : ' The reply of the modern spirit is that the 
 people must and shall become philosopheifs.' 
 
THE STUDY OF WAR n 
 
 So much by way of demonstration of the necessity 
 to the University of the study of Military History. 
 Before I can submit to you a view of its aim and scope 
 within the sphere of the University, I must give a brief 
 account of the view of its nature which results from 
 the labours of two or three generations of military 
 historians. 
 
 Military History is the effort to understand war, to 
 get to know what war is and what it means. There 
 is no method of getting to know war except the study 
 of wars, and the only wars that can be studied are 
 either wars that have happened and are over, or a 
 war that is taking place. But a war that is taking 
 place cannot be fully known. While it lasts, no one 
 whatever can be fully acquainted with it. Neither of 
 the Commanders-in-Chief know more than a fraction 
 of what his enemy is thinking and doing, and no one 
 except a Commander-in-Chief and those in his 
 intimate confidence is aware of more than a portion 
 of what is passing in the army to which he belongs 
 or with which he is in communication. 
 
 Accordingly, if we wish to study a war and to get 
 to know exactly what happened in it, we have to wait 
 until after its close, when the reasons for secrecy have 
 ceased to exist, when both sides have become willing 
 to let the facts be known, and when the principal 
 actors have recorded so much as they are able or will- 
 ing to divulge of their experience. This time does 
 not come as a rule until long after the events, for 
 neither governments nor individuals are very ready to 
 let the world know all their motives, or to have their 
 
12 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 conduct fully laid bare and open to discussion. 
 Reasons of state, considerations of friendship and of 
 regard for the reputation of distinguished men, tend 
 to postpone as long as possible the disclosure of the 
 exact truth, which in some cases never becomes 
 known. 
 
 For these reasons, full and trustworthy knowledge 
 of any war is obtainable only as a result of that pro- 
 longed and patient research to which we give the 
 name of History. 
 
 If we wish to know what war is in itself, what it 
 means for us, for our nation, and for mankind, we 
 must study not one particular war, but as many wars 
 as possible, in order by comparison between them to 
 learn what features and characteristics they have in 
 common, whether the events which composed them 
 happened at random, or whether they happened as 
 they did by reason of some inherent necessity. We 
 cannot but wish to discover whether there is not an 
 order in the infinite variety which they exhibit. But 
 the only basis either for a science or for an art of war 
 is Military History, the record of the facts ascer- 
 tained by methodical collection, sifting, and classifi- 
 cation of the evidence. 
 
 The features common to all wars are that they are 
 acts of force or violence with a political aim. They 
 are acts of state. Apart from these common char- 
 acteristics, wars differ almost infinitely one from 
 another. The mode of action of the Greek City 
 State in forcible conflict with a similar community or 
 with the Persian Empire differs from that of the 
 
THE STUDY OF WAR 13 
 
 Roman Commonwealth, and ancient armies had 
 little resemblance either in respect of weapons or of 
 organization to the levies of the feudal nobles of the 
 Middle Age. The first standing army was the begin- 
 ning of the collapse of feudalism, yet it was a very 
 different thing from the army maintained by one of 
 the enlightened despots of the eighteenth century. 
 As the State is, so will its army be; and the war of 
 any age is the reflection of the political and social 
 condition of the communities engaged in it. Weapons 
 will embody the progress of the constructive arts and 
 industries. Communications will be such as society 
 has made for itself. The organization will be the 
 expression of the community's conception of itself as 
 a more or less organized body. Thus the determin- 
 ing factor is always the nature and character of the 
 States engaged in the war; and changes in weapons, 
 carrying with them modifications in tactics, are but 
 a portion of the development given to war by the 
 development of political communities. 
 
 This cardinal principle is, so to speak, the back- 
 bone of our knowledge of the reality of war. Con- 
 siderations of time compel me to illustrate it in a 
 logical rather than a strictly historical form. The 
 State is the organized attempt of a community to 
 realize its conception of the best life. It will not 
 therefore rationally engage in a war except to over- 
 come some obstacle in the way of its realizing the 
 purpose of its existence. Accordingly, in the ideal 
 the whole sum of its energies will be concentrated in 
 the struggle, and the logical process would be that 
 
14 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 so soon as the struggle was determined upon, the 
 whole resources of the State would be mobilized for 
 a sharp and decisive effort, the whole nation would 
 rush to arms and move in a concentrated mass to 
 overthrow in a single battle the equally concentrated 
 force of the adversary, after which the successful 
 power would take possession of the territory emd the 
 State of its defeated adversary. The conditions of 
 such rapid and concentrated action, in which the 
 whole energies of the State would be collected into a 
 single blow, are the perfect organization of the nation 
 for the pursuit of its ends and the absolute control 
 of the community thus organized by a Government 
 which fully represented the intelligence and will of 
 all the citizens. This would be the character of the 
 war of an ideal State. The cause would seem just 
 to every citizen, whose faith in the State would 
 inspire him with unlimited devotion to its purposes, 
 so that as a matter of course he would be ready to 
 sacrifice himself to them. 
 
 This conception of war was revealed in the wars 
 of the French Revolution and Empire. The people 
 of France regarded themselves as having taken pos- 
 session of the French State, of which roughly speak- 
 ing they were in accord with the purposes, and the 
 permanent requisition or levie en masse was the 
 enunciation of the idea of the nation in arms. The 
 grandeur of these conceptions led to an enthusiasm 
 till then unprecedented, and to a breadth of design 
 in the military operations which had never before 
 been known. The miHtary history of the nineteenth 
 
THE STUDY OF WAR 15 
 
 century is the history of a persistent endeavour more 
 perfectly to realize this conception of war. First 
 Prussia and then Germany reorganized the State 
 with a view to attaining the utmost development of 
 collective action in conflict with other states ; and the 
 pattern thus disclosed was inevitably adopted by 
 the other states one after another, with success which 
 varied according to the stage of national organization 
 to which the several states had attained. 
 
 According to the time during which a conflict is 
 prolonged, to the duration of the struggle with the 
 enemy, is the extent to which it is capable of voluntary 
 and intelligent direction during its course. A war 
 that consisted of a long series of battles between com- 
 paratively small forces might resemble the series of 
 thrusts and parries of a couple of skilled fencers ; but 
 the rush of a whole population into the territories of a 
 hostile state, leading directly to a collision between 
 two concentrated armies, tends rather to resemble 
 some great explosion which, once the train has been 
 laid and the match applied, admits of no further con- 
 trol or guidance. In proportion as war has assumed 
 the character of a conflict between highly organized 
 nations, and in proportion as the military intention 
 has been to crush and destroy the military forces of 
 the adversary, has been the strength of the tendency 
 to put the main work of direction, the chief effort of 
 the guiding military intelligence, into the period of 
 preparation preceding the actual collision. Cam- 
 paigns have become shorter and more decisive, and 
 the work of generalship has more and more shown its 
 
i6 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 effectiveness in the previous elaboration of the design. 
 Napoleon, in his great campaigns, collected almost 
 his entire army into a single organized mass, threw 
 it after a few days' march upon a fraction or the 
 whole of the enemy's army, crushed that army in a 
 single decisive battle, and then occupied the enemy's 
 capital and dictated his terms. In the same way, 
 Moltke, within a few days of the outbreak of war, 
 crushed and reduced to impotence in a single battle, 
 or in a short series of battles, the mass of the enemy's 
 organized forces. 
 
 Thus the developments of war are the develop- 
 ments of the organization of society, and its increas- 
 ing intensity, rapidity, and decisiveness are the 
 results of progressive organization which more 
 and more identifies the' whole people with the 
 State. 
 
 The wars of the French Revolution and Empire 
 manifested an energy and a ruthlessness which had 
 long been unknown. They represented a new type, 
 the conflict between nationalized states. It was the 
 achievement of Clausewitz that he first recognized 
 this new type of war, and its origin in the new type 
 of State which had come into existence. He asked him- 
 self whether it was merely the passing phenomenon 
 of a day, or would reappear and persist in the future. 
 He was driven to the conclusion that whenever 
 national states should come into conflict in behalf of 
 interests which the mass of their people could recog- 
 nize as vital, the war between them would resemble 
 the wars of the French Revolution and Empire both 
 
THE STUDY OF WAR 17 
 
 in the energy which would be devoted to it and in 
 the grandeur of its designs. 
 
 The experience of three-quarters of a century has 
 confirmed the view suggested by Clausewitz that 
 whenever a war should be the affair of a whole nation 
 deeply stirred by the cause of quarrel, there would 
 be devoted to it a corresponding proportion of the 
 nation's resources, and the operations would reveal a 
 correspondingly great and comprehensive plan. The 
 conditions which produce the extreme energy of war, 
 what Clausewitz called war in its absolute form, have 
 not always accompanied all the campaigns that have 
 been fought since he wrote. There have been con- 
 flicts in which neither side has been a nationalized 
 State, and conflicts in which that quality could not 
 be predicated of both sides; but where the conditions 
 have been fulfilled, the prophecy of Clausewitz has 
 been realized. The notable instances are the Civil 
 War in the United States of America, the war 
 between Prussia and Austria in 1866, and the war 
 between Germany and France in 1870. The last 
 great war in the Far East was a case in which one 
 side (Japan) was a nationalized State in which the 
 motives of the war vibrated in the spirit of every 
 member of the community, while the adversary 
 (Russia) was very far removed from that stage of 
 political development in which the political purpose 
 of the struggle could be reflected in the mind and 
 conscience of every citizen or of every combatant. 
 Our own struggle in South Africa was a case in which 
 two small and uncentralized States of great territoriial 
 
i8 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 extent were inspired by a common determination with 
 which the mass of their citizens were imbued. The 
 whole mass therefore threw itself with great deter- 
 mination into the conflict; but on the British side 
 there were lacking on the part of the statesmen in 
 the first instance that clearness of conception and 
 that lucidity of exposition which might have brought 
 home to the whole body of citizens the necessity and 
 the justice of the cause, so that the national character 
 of the war was by no means fully understood until 
 the crisis was past. Accordingly, the nation was 
 surprised at what happened; and both the nation 
 and its members of all classes, both the soldiers 
 and those who were citizens without being soldiers, 
 received the impression that there was something in 
 the nature of war which they had not thoroughly 
 grasped, and which it might be desirable to under- 
 stand. Those who made the attempt to penetrate 
 beneath the surface, and to ascertain the bond 
 between cause and effect in the events of that war, 
 were led to beheve that citizens and soldiers alike 
 would be benefited by an abandonment of the neg- 
 lect with which the subject of war had too long been 
 treated. From the searchings of heart of that period 
 have resulted changes in the military organization, 
 changes in the arrangements for mihtary education, 
 as well as an expansion of the studies of more than 
 one University. Thus the movement of which one 
 of the results is our presence here to-day has been , 
 of very long and gradual growth spreading over the 
 whole world. It has as yet hardly exercised its full 
 
THE STUDY OF WAR 19 
 
 pressure upon our own country, which, however, will 
 be carried along in the stream of nationalizing and 
 organizing effort until there has been created in one 
 way or another an organization for war by land and 
 sea of all the resources of the nation. 
 
 The tendency of war towards concentration of 
 effort, towards the accumulation in a single decisive 
 collision of all the forces which a nation can accumu- 
 late, is best seen when the theatre of war is the sea. 
 At sea a fleet can move at twenty times the rate at 
 which an army can walk along the surface of the 
 ground. The ships carry in them all the necessaries 
 of life and action, so that a fleet does not, like an 
 army, trail behind it a lengthening chain of vulner- 
 able communications. There are in the open sea no 
 such geographical features as enable an army to find 
 obstacles which may serve as shelter against the 
 enemy's attacks. At sea, therefore, the difference 
 between attack and defence resolves itself into little 
 more than the difference between confidence and 
 hesitation. Accordingly, naval warfare is apt to be 
 decided in a single battle, in which the bulk of the 
 forces of both sides are engaged, and which, by the 
 almost complete destruction of the force of the 
 defeated side, determines the issues. The nation 
 that aspires in the event of war to assert for itself the 
 command of the sea may, thei'efore, have to hazard 
 its fate upon a single battle, of which the result will 
 in most cases have been predetermined by the char- 
 acter of the national efforts made during a long pre- 
 ceding period of preparation. The historian sees in 
 
20 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 Trafalgar and in Tsusima nothing but the inevitable 
 consequence of the previous lives of the navies con- 
 cerned. 
 
 In the modern world, when a nation — that is, a 
 people organized as a state — ^goes to war, the energy 
 developed is so great that nothing but a similarly 
 organized body can hope to withstand the shock; 
 and the effort involved on each side is so intense that 
 it must for the time being absorb the whole of the 
 national energies and carry with it a temporary sus- 
 pension of all other forms of activity. The effect of 
 war upon the State which has been successfully 
 invaded is comparable only to that of some great 
 natural cataclysm. The ravages of war, even when 
 carried on by a highly civilized and thoroughly dis- 
 ciplined army, resemble in their effects those of the 
 flood or of the earthquake. 
 
 But it is a mistake to dwell too much upon the 
 physical aspects of war. Far more important is its 
 spiritual character, of which the significance has been 
 increased a hundred-fold by the development of its 
 national quality. A nation cannot be called to arms 
 and mobilized except for the assertion of some cause 
 which appeals to the hearts and the consciences of 
 the mass of its citizens. For a nation, therefore, to 
 go to war, except in behalf of a cause which makes 
 that appeal, is to court defeat. There cannot in such 
 a case be that sudden and tremendous development 
 of energy without which it is idle to hope for victory. 
 The more .closely, therefore, a statesman has familiar- 
 ized himself with the nature of war and the more 
 
THE STUDY OF WAR 21 
 
 deeply he has explored the causes of victory and 
 defeat, the more profoundly will he be convinced that 
 the ultimate secret of success lies in the cause in 
 behalf of which he calls on his people to draw the 
 sword. 
 
 But the time when causes must be scrutinized is 
 not when a dispute has begun, when prejudices fill 
 the air, and when passions quicken the pulses. The 
 origin of wars lies in the conflict of policies, in the 
 incompatibility of the purposes of two states; the 
 time to weigh the possibilities of conflict is when the 
 national policy is taking shape. The chief result, 
 therefore, of the study of military history is to force 
 us to ask the question : What is the purpose of 
 national life, and what the specific purpose of our 
 own nation ? Oxford is the home of the doctrine 
 that the State arises for the purpose of rendering 
 human life possible, and that the object of its 
 development is to sustain a noble life in which its 
 citizens shall be sharers. A noble life is a life of 
 service to the community, and a great nation is one 
 that serves the other nations of mankind. We have 
 learned each for himself from a great leader of war 
 that England expects every man to do his duty. Let 
 us learn also, when called upon in our capacity as 
 citizens to consider the national policy, to say to our- 
 selves that Englishmen expect England to do her 
 duty. 
 
 I have dwelt at perhaps too much length upon the 
 main truths disclosed by military history as to the 
 nature of war, partly because I think that too little 
 
22 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 attention has been paid to them, and partly because 
 I derive from them my conception of the scope and 
 method of the University study of war. The Statute 
 prescribes that the Professor shall lecture and give 
 instruction in military history, with special reference 
 to the conditions of modern warfcire. In the matter 
 of warfare, the modern epoch begins in 1792 with the 
 first appearance of the nation in the field. The 
 period to which we must devote special attention is 
 from 1792, to the latest date up to which the publica- 
 tion or the accessibility of sufficient evidence enables 
 us to obtain accurate knowledge and to form a trust- 
 worthy judgment of the events. The area thus given 
 for our exploration is considerable. It includes a 
 number of wars of the first magnitude, and a number 
 of leaders of considerable power — several of them 
 stars of the first magnitude. I confess that I am 
 specially attracted by the two greatest of them, by 
 Napoleon and Moltke — ^by Napoleon, because he was 
 the originator of modern methods as well as the 
 greatest master of the art; by Moltke. because he 
 inherited and developed the tradition of the Napo- 
 leonic age, transforming and applying to conditions 
 in many respects new the ideas dfeveloped in the 
 earlier period. The researches of the last thirty years 
 have thrown a new light upon the revolutionary and 
 Napoleonic wars, and it seems prudent to begm by 
 the attempt to appreciate those wars by the aid of 
 the now available mass of evidence. My own special 
 endeavour has been for some years to trace the 
 genesis of Napoleon's generalship from his early 
 
THE STUDY OF WAR 2J 
 
 studies, from the environment in which he grew up, 
 and from the teaching which he inherited, in order 
 to arrive at an historical understanding of the rise 
 of modern strategy; and I hope that some of my 
 students will be able to associate themselves with me 
 in that, attempt. 
 
 There are three processes involved in the work of 
 the military historian. The first is the kind of criti- 
 cism which is here taught in the schools of History, 
 the sifting of the evidence with a view to the estab- 
 lishment of the facts. This is, and always must be, 
 the basis of all our work, for without it we shall be 
 dealing not with reality but with dreams. History 
 resembles Antaeus, who lost his strength when lifted 
 out of contact with the earth on which he walked — 
 in the case of history the facts as established by 
 evidence. 
 
 The second process consists in the application of 
 the military judgment. It is the attempt to arrange 
 the facts in their connexion of cause and effect, and 
 requires us to trace the course of the events with 
 sufficient minuteness to make sure so far as may be 
 that we know the intentions and the motives of the 
 chief actors. It is perhaps not the historian's busi- 
 ness to distribute praise and blame, but it may be his 
 function to inquire upon occasion whether the means 
 employed were those most suitable to produce the 
 result desired. This is the third process, of which 
 you may like to have an illustration. 
 
 In 1797 Napoleon, who in the previous year had 
 driven the Austrian armies from the north of Italy 
 
24 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 and made himself master of the plain from the Alps 
 to the Ticino and of the hills as far north as the 
 Brenner, set out with such forces as he could collect 
 to advance on the line from Verona to Vienna. The 
 Austrian Government saw itself compelled to with- 
 draw for the defence of Vienna the portion of its 
 forces which was facing the French armies in South 
 Germany, and with which, in 1796, the Archduke 
 Charles had brilliantly defeated those armies. The 
 Archduke Charles collected a small army in the 
 north-east of Italy at the foot of the mountains which 
 interposed between the Italian plain and the plain of 
 Austria-Hungary. He put himself as well as he 
 could between Napoleon and his objective. The first 
 critical historian of this war, Jomini, expressed the 
 opinion that the Archduke Charles would have done 
 better if he had collected his army in the Tyrol and 
 thereby compelled Napoleon to turn to his left rather 
 than go straight on. The next great critic, Clause- 
 witz, was unwilling to disapprove of the action of a 
 commander previously so prudent and able as the 
 Archduke Charles. He therefore speculated on the 
 reasons which might have induced the Archduke to 
 follow the course which he actually adopted, and 
 these speculations will always be worth studying 
 because they reveal the breadth and the strength of 
 the judgment of one of the greatest of all critics. 
 Clausewitz had no means of knowing, and was aware 
 that he had no means of knowing, the principal fact, 
 namely, the real ideas and intentions of the Ajrch- 
 duke. Many years after the death of Clausewitz 
 
THE STUDY OF WAR 25 
 
 were published the military memoirs of the Arch- 
 duke, who in them discussed this question. After 
 reviewing the situation at the opening of the cam- 
 paign, he says : ' To all these unfavourable circum- 
 stances were further added the erroneous views of 
 the Archduke Charles, who was recalled from the 
 Rhine and replaced at the head of the troops in Italy, 
 and whose mind was too much dominated by old-, 
 fashioned ideas. . . . Accordingly, he took up a 
 quite unsuitable, mistaken position, leaving only a 
 small force in Tyrol, and collecting the greater part 
 on the Tagliamento.' 
 
 In this kind of inquiry the military judgment is 
 formed, and it may be found useful for the student 
 from time to time to give it further exercise by 
 attempting in the imagination an independent solu- 
 tion of the problems with which generals in the past 
 have been confronted. For the conclusion that a 
 particular operation was not the most appropriate for 
 the end in view cannot be demonstrated except by 
 an exposition of a more appropriate means, and by 
 the examination of what would have been the prob- 
 able results of its employment. 
 
 I think it would be, in accordance with the spirit 
 of the Statute that I should from time to time, as 
 opportunity offers, try to show for the benefit of his- 
 torical students not directly concerned with military 
 history, the way in which the modern knowledge of 
 war throws light on some of the obscure problems 
 with which historians sometimes deal. I hope, for 
 example, at no very distant date, to discuss in the 
 
26 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 light of modem military research the problem, some- 
 times thought insoluble, of Hannibal's passage across 
 the Alps, 
 
 I do not conceive it to be the function of the 
 University to undertake the technical instruction of 
 professional officers, or to give its students practice 
 in the art of leading troops. Yet the University may 
 well be of some use to those who have charge of the 
 management of the army. If our work is rightly 
 carried on, we may throw some light upon aspects 
 of war with which the professional soldier has not 
 always time to occupy himself; and we shall hope 
 to derive help and guidance from the historical and 
 other scientific labours carried on by the general staff 
 at the War Office. The greatest services, however, 
 which the University can render to the army, as to 
 the nation, must consist in the effort which we carry 
 on to obtain and to communicate true ideas of human 
 life and society, and in the inspiration which we may 
 be able to give to our students. If we are able to 
 send out into the working life of England a stream 
 of men of sound intellectual training, with a large 
 outlook on life and a high purpose of service to the 
 nation, it is for the army to attract them to the par- 
 ticular career which it has to offer. 
 
 The ultimate outcome of the activity of the mili- 
 tary historian is the insight which he gains into the 
 nature of war, and which he may attempt to express 
 in a view or theory of its nature and of its several 
 parts or manifestations. I doubt whether there has 
 been in recent times an English view of war. English 
 
THE STUDY OF WAR 17 
 
 students for the most part have accepted the theory 
 set forth either by Jomini, the head of the French 
 school, or by Clausewitz, the founder after Scharn- 
 horst of the German school. To some, these two 
 views have seemed to be inconsistent with one 
 another, and there have been those who have tried, 
 both in discussion and in action, to defend one theory 
 against the other, very much as those politicians 
 whose thinking is divorced from history imagine the 
 State to be the corpus vile upon which experiments 
 may be made concerning the results of particular 
 abstract theories. More than three-quarters of a cen- 
 tury have passed since Jomini and Clausewitz gave 
 to the world such insight as they had acquired 
 during a generation of war into its nature and work- 
 ings. In my view, the subsequent experience recon- 
 ciles and confirms them both, and I have often 
 thought it possible that the continuance of their 
 labours might well be the work of some English 
 hand. To-day, I cannot but dream of an Oxford 
 School of War developing that which time has con- 
 firmed of the ideas of the older writers into a fresh 
 yet true idea adequate to the needs of the present 
 day and of our own people. It would attempt to be 
 a vision and not a dream, and would base itself upon 
 such knowledge as Oxford can supply of the nature 
 of society and of the State. 
 
 I may perhaps venture, in illustration of my fancy, 
 to touch upon one point where I suspect that the ideas 
 of the German thinkers are open to discussion. From 
 the evident necessity for harmony between policy 
 
28 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 and strategy they deduce the conclusion that it is 
 desirable that the political and the strategical direc- 
 tion of the State should be in a single hand. That 
 doctrine seems to me to lend itself to a possible inver- 
 sion of the true relations between the two activities. 
 A strategist in supreme authority may easily under- 
 rate the magnitude of those ethical laws which mani- 
 fest themselves in the life of nations. Is there not a 
 contrast to be drawn between Napoleon and Moltke ? 
 The more we study the conduct of Napoleon's cam- 
 paigns, the more we must admire his splendid insight 
 into the laws of force. Yet is it not clear that he was 
 blind to some of the laws of spiritual and national 
 life, and is it not the conflict between his insight and 
 his blindness which invests the story of his catas- 
 trophe with something of the awe of tragedy ? The 
 work of Moltke may have been less brilliant, but his 
 victories have certainly had more durable results, 
 and his serene end recalls the ancient saying that 
 we must estimate no man's happiness until his career 
 is over. Now Moltke was not, as Napoleon was, the 
 master of his State. His strategical genius was not 
 the dictator, but the obedient servant of his country. 
 Perhaps the deepest secret of his career is to be found 
 in the words inscribed on the little chapel which he 
 erected in the grounds of his Silesian country house 
 as a monument to what was dearest to him — ^the 
 words ' Love is the fulfilling of the law.' 
 
 Permit me now, in conclusion, to collect into a focus 
 the thought which I have been trying to express. 
 
THE STUDY OF WAR 29 
 
 My purpose has been to set before you a true idea of 
 war, that being the end and aim of my presence in 
 the University as Professor of Military History. A 
 true idea is like a living thing that grows from a 
 small seed, and its peculiar quality is that from the 
 beginning to the end of its growth it remains the 
 same, developing from an original kernel to a great 
 and complicalted organism. The true idea of war is 
 that it is a social effort, a part of the struggle of a 
 society for self-realization, its peculiar form being 
 that of violent conflict with another society, its rival 
 or enemy. This way of looking at war gives the clue 
 to all the phenomena observed in the history of 
 innumerable wars. It accounts for changes and 
 developments in the organization of combatant 
 forces, in their armament and administration, in their 
 tactics, and in the mechanism of their command and 
 control. From this point of view we are able to 
 understand the relation between the statesman and 
 the naval or military commander, and to grasp the 
 necessity of modifications of military systems in 
 accordance with the metamorphoses which the State 
 itself undergoes. 
 
 Applying this simple idea to the well-known facts 
 of modem history, we have seen how the transforma- 
 tion of the State which marked the close of the 
 eighteenth century, the transition from the mon- 
 archical to the democratic organization, brought with 
 it the possibility of a great expansion of the energies 
 and resources available for conflict. Once that pos- 
 sibility had been revealed in action the several states 
 
30 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 found themselves in turn compelled to reckon with it, 
 until the modern State, of which the general char- 
 acter is that of a whole people organized for political 
 purposes, or, as we say in a single word, a nation, 
 has tended to become, for that kind of self-realiza- 
 tion which we know as war, a nation in arms. This 
 idea of the nature of war I have put before you as 
 the essence of the teaching of that military history 
 which is identical with the science of war. If it is a 
 true idea it ought to explain all the phenomena, great 
 and small. I have therefore applied it in the explana- 
 tion of the beginnings of military studies at Oxford ; 
 and that inquiry has shown, I trust to your satisfac- 
 tion, that our University is, in this as in other 
 branches, consciously or unconsciously doing work in 
 the service of our country of which, though the fruits 
 are not yet seen, the character and quality may be 
 divined. 
 
 I have suggested that the development of the 
 national organization is bound by the conditions of 
 the world to adapt itself in some measure to the needs 
 of ever-possible conflict, so that our nation must and 
 will find its mode of constituting itself as a fighting 
 power. In that development Oxford will have her 
 part, which I imagine must be, according to the 
 nature of her activities, to cultivate, develop, and 
 diffuse the true idea of the nature of war. 
 
II 
 
 WHAT IS PEACE?* 
 
 Not for the first time have the thoughts and the hopes 
 of men been turned in our own day towards the ideal of 
 universal or perpetual peace, and towards the possi- 
 bility of the elimination of wars from among the troubles 
 that beset mankind. For many generations thinkers 
 have devised schemes intended to compass this object ; 
 and statesmen have made occasional hesitating 
 attempts to give reality to such portions of them as 
 seemed practicable. A masterly survey of these 
 suggestions and experiments was made so long ago 
 as 1874 in an academical address by the present 
 Master of Peterhouse,t and less comprehensive 
 historical sketch of the same kind was published in 
 1882 by the German jurist Franz von Holtzendorff.J 
 More recently the same ground has been covered, with 
 an eye to what has been accomplished in practice, 
 rather than to theoretical possibilities, by some of the 
 
 * June 3, 191 1. 
 
 t ' The Peace of Europe,' by A. W. Ward (^Essays and 
 Addresses by Professors and Lecturers at the Owens College, 
 London, 1874). 
 
 X Die Idee des euiigen Volkerfriedens, von Frank von Holtzen- 
 dorff. Berlin, 1882. 
 
 31 
 
32 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 contributors to the last volume of the Cambridge 
 History, more particularly by Sir Frederick Pollock. 
 
 Of late years a change has come over the spirit in 
 which the subject is approached. For, whereas the 
 men of the generation to which belong the three writers 
 just named have usually thought of peace as a pattern 
 set up in the intellectual world, as a condition of that 
 ' Kingdom of Heaven ' which represents the final goal 
 of human perfection, never attainable yet ever to be 
 approached, the new thought of the present day seems 
 to be that this ideal may even now be reached, if only 
 the right way be followed. 
 
 The large currents of public sentiment and public 
 opinion are impulsive, instinctive, and emotional rather 
 than rational; they resemble the lower courses of the 
 great rivers, which sometimes turn back upon them- 
 selves and press with immense energy in a. direction 
 opposite to that which leads towards their ultimate 
 destination. The engineers who have charge of such 
 a river attempt to straighten and simplify its course 
 by here and there cutting across the neck which 
 separates the beginning and end of a great loop and 
 thus maintaining the trend of the stream in one con- 
 stant direction. Their effort is to systematize its flow 
 and so to render it more useful. The function of the 
 critic in relation to public thought and feeling should 
 perhaps resemble that of the river engineer. A 
 systematic survey of a subject should enable him to 
 trace the general line, which must be followed by 
 thought consistent with itself, and in this way to ascer- 
 tain where the rush of thought is following a direction 
 
WHAT IS PEACE ? 33 
 
 which leads away from the ultimate goal, possibly 
 sometimes to detect the nature of the obstacle, spiritual 
 or intellectual, which is causing the diversion of the 
 current. The principal instruments of the intellectual 
 surveyor are the definition of the words employed and 
 the demonstration by argument and evidence of the 
 propositions advanced. Sometimes no greater service 
 can be rendered to truth than to point out that a state- 
 ment which men readily believe because it accords with 
 their wishes rests neither upon evidence nor upon 
 logical argument. 
 
 The attempt will here be made to seek the guidance 
 which may be expected from method and system in 
 regard to a subject of the greatest importance to man- 
 kind, and to put in order thoughts which are not 
 new .but which, in the luxuriance of disorder, may 
 become fertile of error. I shall attempt in the first 
 place to recall in outline the natural history of peace. 
 The structure of thought thus obtained will then be 
 briefly compared with the actual experience of man- 
 kind, which may be gathered from a general glance 
 at the record of history in regard to peace and war. 
 The third branch of the inquiry wiU be the comparison 
 between the order of thought ascertained from the 
 theory and from history with the thought put forward 
 by those who propose that men should change their 
 way of regarding the subject. In conclusion, some of 
 the proposed alternatives for war may be briefly 
 examined. 
 
34 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 The beginning of the subject is the natural history 
 of peace, which will be found to be identical with the 
 natural history of war. The word ' peace ' has at least 
 three meanings. It describes, first, a state of the 
 human spirit. The harmony of the soul for which 
 all men long, and of which the ecstatic sense is an 
 accompaniment of the religious life, receives its name 
 by way of metaphor ; and from the many metaphorical 
 uses of the word comes a great part of its attraction. 
 With none of these has the present inquiry any con- 
 cern, though perhaps the associations which they lend 
 to the term contribute not a little towards gaining 
 disciples for the spread of the doctrine that universal 
 peace is at hand. The word 'peace' describes, 
 secondly, the condition of orderly life produced by the 
 State for its citizens; and, thirdly, a special relation 
 between two or more States. We are concerned with 
 the second and the third of these meanings, between 
 which, however, we must distinguish. 
 
 Peace in the sense of the second definition being a 
 product of the State, and in that of the third being a 
 relation between States, it is desirable to define the 
 word 'State.' By a State we mean a community of 
 men so organized as to be directed by a single govern- 
 ment, and to have such unity as is implied by that 
 direction. It is unnecessary to describe the State at 
 length, but it may be convenient here to say that I 
 accept the Hellenic account of its mission, that its 
 purpose is in its genesis to provide the necessary con- 
 
WHAT IS PEACE ? 35 
 
 ditions of life, and in its maturity to render possible 
 a good life. Its function is to secure the freedom to 
 work and to rest, which is the basis of civilization ; and 
 this function it performs by the maintenance of order 
 and by the administration of justice. To these ends 
 it exercises supreme authority over its citizens, and 
 over all associations of citizens; and it asserts that 
 authority whenever necessary by the use of force. 
 
 The condition of peace within the community is the 
 result of the action of the State in enforcing a law by 
 which the relations between its members are deter- 
 mined; and a modern State prohibits or confines to 
 special and exceptional cases the right and the power 
 of individuals or of associations within it to assert 
 their will by force. The result of the law and order 
 thus asserted by the State is, in theory, though no 
 doubt it is not in practice always fully realized, to 
 create for the citizens the opportunity for that good 
 life which consists in the power to develop and to 
 exercise their best facilities. This condition of peace 
 is normal within the State ; being interrupted only by 
 attempts to destroy the State from within, to which is 
 applied the name of civil war. 
 
 Even during the existence of foreign war of conflict 
 between the State and another State, the peaceful 
 relation between the citizens of the State remains. 
 The State is the basis of all the social and spiritual 
 activities that make life worth living, the condition 
 of the possibility of men's devotion. to the best work 
 of which they are capable and of the possibility of a 
 good use of leisure. 
 
36 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 The State regards itself as autonomous and self- 
 sufficient ; and these qualities are its peculiar character- 
 istics, not possessed either by the individual or by 
 any association of individuals within it. 
 
 Peace in the sense of the third definition requires 
 the existence of two or more States in contact with 
 one another. A single State in isolation cannot, of 
 course, be at war ; but it would be a misapplication of 
 language to describe it as being at peace, except in 
 the sense of internal or domestic peace, nor can the 
 condition of peace be correctly said to exist between 
 two States that are not in relation with one another. 
 At the beginning of the eighteenth century, for 
 example, there was a State of Great Britain and there 
 was a State of Japan, but they were for practical 
 purposes as remote from one another as though they 
 had been on different planets; they were not in rela- 
 tion with one another; they were therefore neither at 
 war nor at peace. But, if two States exist side by. 
 side as neighbours, there is necessarily intercourse 
 between them ; and in that intercourse there are always 
 possibilities of conflict. The relation between them 
 is continuous and may take the shape either of peace 
 or of war. Two autonomies, two independent bodies, 
 placed side by side cannot be thought of as in neces- 
 sary accord. Their faculty of self-determination or 
 independence implies that they may at any time, in 
 regard to any dealings between them, have different 
 thoughts and different wills, and their co-existence 
 involves the possibility of discord which, in the absence 
 of an authority over both, may at any lime be resolved 
 
WHAT IS PEACE? 37 
 
 by force. We cannot think of the State except as 
 sovereign, autonomous, or independent; and we can- 
 not think of two co-existent States in relation with one 
 another without admitting that their relation involves 
 equally the possibility of agreement and of disagree- 
 ment ; nor can we think of necessary agreement between 
 them except as imposed upon both of them by some 
 external authority ; in other words, except as the result 
 of the merging of their separate autonomies into a 
 single sovereignty supreme over both. 
 
 In the Platonic account of the State the moment the 
 aim of the community is directed to something more 
 than mere physical existence the immediate result is 
 ,an expansion, of which the consequence is thought of 
 as war. 
 
 ' I dare say,' says Socrates, ' that even the land which 
 was intended to support the first population will now 
 be insufficient and too small ?' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Glaucon. 
 
 'Then if we are to find enough for pasturage and 
 plough-land we must take a slice from our neighbours' 
 territory, and they will want to do the same with ours 
 if they also overpass the bounds of necessity and 
 plunge into reckless pursuit of wealth ?' 
 
 ' Yes, that must happen, Socrates,' he said. 
 
 ' Then shall we go to war at that point, Glaucon, or 
 what will happen ?' 
 
 ' We shall go to war.'* 
 
 It will be observed that this account of the origin 
 of war accords with the modem conception by which 
 
 ♦ The Republic of Plato, translated into English by A. D. 
 Lindsay, p. 60. 
 
38 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 expansion, taking place within the State, leads to 
 aggression and consequent conflict. This expansion 
 and consequent collision with another State is, in the 
 Platonic conception, the foundation of the whole con- 
 stitution. Here it is that Plato finds the origin of 
 Government. Jlis guardians are at once the rulers and 
 the army; the citizens are the soldiers. Thus to the 
 Greek mind the origin of the conception of duty was 
 in the obligation of fighting in the service of the State, 
 and it seems probable that even in the modern world 
 the conception of the duty of the citizen has had a 
 similar origin. Socrates had faced the enemy before 
 he drank the hemlock. 
 
 The relation between two States must be dis- 
 tinguished from the relations between their subjects 
 or citizens. The State to which a man belongs is the 
 source and support of all his rights and to it he looks 
 for their maintenance. But the State exercises direct 
 authority only within its own borders^ and when the 
 citizen travels outside the territory of his own State he 
 may find himself without rights and without pro- 
 tection. This difficulty is overcome by agreement 
 between the different States, which undertake each to 
 treat the other's subjects as though they were its own, 
 and to give them the benefit of the protection of its 
 own laws and its own authority. The difference of 
 laws and of customs is apt to lead to disputes which 
 are usually settled by negotiations between the 
 Governments representing the two States. Thus the 
 security of the citizen of one State within the borders 
 of another is produced by the action of his own State, 
 
WHAT IS PEACE ? 39 
 
 in making an agreement with the foreign State, and 
 such agreements are so universal that the subject of one 
 State may travel or may reside in the territories of 
 another and enjoy there all, or almost all, the benefits 
 which he would have if he were a subject of the 
 foreign State. The universality and the convenience 
 of these arrangements are so great as to obscure in 
 men's everyday consciousness the fact that these 
 facilities of travel and residence are the result of the 
 activity of their own State and of its agreements with 
 the other. There are at any given time many points 
 of contact between two States, every one of which is a 
 possible occasion either of agreement or of dispute. 
 The more civilized two neighbouring States become 
 and the greater the intercourse between them, the more 
 varied and frequent will be the opportunities of dis- 
 agreement and of dispute. Accordingly all States, in 
 proportion to the closeness of their relations with their 
 neighbours, devise an elaborate machinery for com- 
 munication with one another, and for negotiation on 
 matters of possible disagreement. Every State main- 
 tains in every other State a number of agents, diplo- 
 matic or consular, for the purpose of regulatmg the 
 intercourse between their citizens, and in every case 
 where a difficulty arises the matter is referred to the 
 two Governments. When the Governments take 
 opposite views an attempt is made to reach a settle- 
 ment either by compromise, by the mediation of a 
 third Government, or by reference to some arbiter. 
 But when the disagreement becomes a dispute, when 
 it turns upon some matter of great interest, and 
 
40 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 especially some right or claim in which men's feelings 
 are concerned, the disagreement may become a quarrel. 
 The Governments may become estranged from one 
 another; one side or the other may attempt to assert 
 its views by violence ; and the two Governments may 
 find themselves at war. Disagreement between States 
 evidently varies in intensity, from the friction caused 
 by trifling misunderstandings, to the great explosions 
 of passion and of violence which usually precede and 
 accompany the conflict of arms. 
 
 What then is the criterion by which to distinguish 
 between disputes that can be amicably settled and 
 those which from their nature must, by logical neces- 
 sity, lead to war ? The criterion may be deduced from 
 the nature of the State, which can on principle agree to 
 anything except its own destruction. No State can 
 voluntarily abandon its existence or its essential 
 , nature, which Jn the last resort will be found in its 
 ' autonomy, independence, or sovereignty ; nor will a 
 State, as a rule, except under compulsion, part with 
 territory or with anything felt to be necessary to its 
 well-being. Clearly in no case can it consent to its 
 own annihilation. Accordingly it is commonly, and 
 probably rightly, held that a State cannot bind itself 
 to submit to arbitration in a dispute which turns upon 
 an interest or a right vital to it. In other words, 
 since the normal business of a Government is to secure 
 to its subjects that freedom to work and to enjoy 
 leisure which constitutes domestic peace, it cannot 
 conceivably, for the sake of peace in its relations with 
 another State sacrifice the power of performing that 
 
WHAT IS PEACE ? 41 
 
 normal function. Two principles result from this train 
 of thought : fi.rst, that so long as there is a plurality 
 of sovereign or independent States the intercourse 
 between them may take the form of disputes; and, 
 secondly, that when a dispute turns upon a matter 
 held to be vital, when some purpose of one State 
 necessary to its welfare is inconsistent with some 
 necessary condition of the existence of another, the 
 conflict of purposes must lead to war. 
 
 Let us now examine the way in which, when war has 
 broken out, peace is restored. The act of war is a 
 measuring of forces by collision with one another; it 
 is a process in which the forces are consumed, and the 
 States engaged in it endeavour while it continues to 
 replenish or replace them. This process of measuring 
 by conflict and consumption continues until a palpable 
 result is manifest. Either the forces will reveal them- 
 selves as equal, or those of one side will preponderate 
 over those of the other. So soon as one or other of these 
 results have been attained and it is clear that the con- 
 tinuation of the process will not be likely to modify 
 the result, the two Governments will come to an agree- 
 ment and peace will be made. If the measurement 
 has revealed equality or equilibrium of forces the condi- 
 tions of peace will correspond in general to the status 
 quo; if the measurement has disclosed a decided pre- 
 ponderance of the forces of one side, the other side will 
 make concessions, of which the extent will depend 
 partly on the amount of the excess of force at the 
 disposal of the victor. Once, however, the balance 
 has been upset without the probability of its restora- 
 
42 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 tion, it is impossible beforehand to determine what 
 degree of concession may be necessary. In the extreme 
 case the victor may absorb the beaten State ; as a rule 
 he will be satisfied with something less, with a 
 province, with an indemnity, or even with an acknow- 
 ledgment of the disputed right or claim. But there 
 can be no guarantee that, once the balance has been 
 upset, the victor's demands may not far exceed what 
 would have satisfied him before the war began. Until 
 war has actually broken out, peace may usually be had 
 by Some specific concession, as indeed it can always 
 be had upon terms ; but the terms demanded are liable 
 to increase with victory. 
 
 This is in outline the logical analysis of peace and 
 of war. It receives, however, a modification in 
 practice. Not all disputes which should logically lead 
 to war do so in reality, for there is always carried on 
 even during peace a comparison of forces consisting, 
 not in measurement by coUison, use, and consump- 
 tion, but in an estimation attempted by Governments 
 and by public opinion. This speculative measure- 
 ment or estimation influences the decisions of Govern- 
 ments, which avoid disputes when they perceive, or 
 imagine they perceive, that the comparison of forces 
 is to their own disadvantage. By a speculative 
 estimate of forces policies are constantly determined ; 
 so that the framing of policy is usually affected by a 
 consideration of forces not actually employed. This 
 is the influence of strategy upon policy during peace ; 
 neglect of and mistakes in this function of speculative 
 estimation or comparison of forces are common causes 
 
WHAT IS PEACE? 43 
 
 of errors of policy during peace and of disasters dur- 
 ing war. It is this speculative comparison of forces 
 that sometimes prevents a war which, strictly speak- 
 ing, would be a logical necessity. A weak State, fully 
 aware of the impossibility of resisting a great State, 
 will sometimes submit to conditions which seem to 
 imply its destruction ; in the impossibility of successful 
 , resistance men acquiesce in what they see to be mevit- 
 able. They hope for some unforeseen issue from mis- 
 fortune. The two kinds of conditions of peace which 
 result from the actual measuring of forces in war — 
 namely, where, the balance having been upset, the 
 stronger side dictates terms, and where, an equilibrium 
 being revealed, peace results from compromise — ^have 
 their parallel in the settlements made between States 
 without recourse to war. An estimated equality of 
 forces leads to compromise, and an estimated in- 
 equality to concession. 
 
 II 
 
 From this sketch of the natural history of peace 
 we may pass to the retrospect of experience. The 
 beginning of European history reveals in the neigh- 
 bourhood of the .^gean a number of small States in 
 close relation with one another, sometimes at peace 
 and sometimes at war. During the central period of 
 Greek history the attempt was made to maintain 
 equilibrium by the association of States into groups ; 
 but at length the rivalry of the groups enabled one 
 State to upset the balance and to absorb the rest, so 
 that what may be called the first chapter of ancient 
 
44 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 history ends with the Empire of Alexander, which, 
 while it lasts, extends over a large area the peace pro- 
 vided by a single State. But this empire includes 
 too many types of a nature too diverse for coherence ; 
 the reign of peace is brief, and the single State falls 
 asunder. The process is then repeated on a grander 
 scale until the universal Empire of Rome becomes a 
 synonym for the peace of the world,, Thus ancient 
 history is a movement towards one of the two kinds 
 of conditions of peace, that produced by preponder- 
 ance and by the consequent absorption of the plurality 
 of States into a single one. 
 
 The single State, however, could not permanently 
 fulfil its purpose; it gave peace at the expense of 
 growth, of originality, of spontaneity, of vitality. 
 Freedom became uniformity. Meantime there was 
 growth and life outside the area of the one great 
 State ; and there began a process of ' penetration,' at 
 first peaceful, but in due time warlike, ending in the 
 disruption of the single State and the substitution 
 for it of a multitude of new communities. With the 
 disappearance of the single empire the peace which it 
 represented vanished; though, when the new set of 
 nations had at length begun to take shape, they were 
 influenced by the memory of the one State which had 
 so long meant peace and law. There were efforts 
 for the restoration of the old unity, efforts represented 
 by the mediaeval Empire, and attempts to establish a 
 universal arbiter, the Papacy. But these did not pre- 
 vent the rise and growth of a series of independent 
 States or sovereignties. 
 
WHAT IS PEACE ? 45 
 
 In modern times- the process of war and the condi- 
 tions of peace are usually of the second order, that 
 of which the marks are equilibrium and compromise. 
 The escape from war is constantly effected by a 
 mutual recognition of independence, the normal basis 
 of settiement being the conception of a balance of 
 power. This is the significance of the gteat pacifica- 
 tions, the Peace of Westphalia, the Peace of Utrecht,, 
 the Peace of Paris. In each case an equilibrium had 
 been sought from an association of States into 
 groups ; when the measuring of the forces in the field 
 had been accomplished the conditions of peace were 
 settled by conference between the groups. During 
 this epoch began the change in the nature of States 
 which constituted the Revolution. The English Revo- 
 lution, as Bernhardi has pointed out,* first identified 
 the State with the whole people, and set up the wel- 
 fare of the community as the object of government. 
 The French Revolution carried still further the pro- 
 cess of the nationalization of the State. To the 
 dictum of the Grand Monarque, L'etat c'est moi, the 
 French people retorted L'itat c'est nous! and, when 
 the national State found its existence endangered, 
 the Republic required every citizen to fight for it, 
 requisitioning without limit both men's persons and 
 their property. 
 
 The nationalization of the State, and consequently 
 of the army and the navy, carried out in every Euro- 
 pean State except the British, has had a transforming 
 
 * Geschichie Rtisslands und der Europaichen Politik, ii. 77. 
 
46 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 effect upon policy, upon war, and upon peace. It 
 has made wars less frequent but more intense. The 
 danger to any given State caused by the possibility 
 of conflict with a nation in arms has compelled every 
 Government on the Continent to organize its popula- 
 tion for war. In this way the forces which could be 
 called into play in a European conflict have been 
 enormously increased, and the dangers to any State 
 that might be overpowered have been proportionately 
 augmented. It follows that the function of correctly 
 estimating during peace the forces which might be 
 employed in war becomes more important than ever 
 for the statesman. For conflicts of policy tend more 
 and more to be settled without war by the easier pro- 
 cess of forecasting the probable issue of the struggle 
 which persistence in a given purpose opposed to that 
 of a rival might involve. The hesitation to make the 
 "prodigious effort of a war and to face its almost 
 unlimited risks renders all Governments willing to 
 accept modes of settlement other than war in cases 
 of dispute not felt to be vital. Negotiation, com- 
 promise, and concession are continuous, and arbitra- 
 tion is frequent, while war is reserf^ed for the supreme 
 moment of conflict upon matters of national exist- 
 ence, and when it cannot be avoided is waged with 
 an energy unparalleled in previous experience. 
 
 Another consequence of the development of 
 national organization is a strengthening of the im- 
 pulse of States to combine their policies and their 
 forces ; there is a revival of the attempt to secure that 
 equilibrium or balance of power which has been 
 
WHAT IS PEACE? 47 
 
 shown to be one of the two possible conditions of 
 peace. At the present moment the magnitude of the 
 forces available, as well as of the risks which would 
 be incurred, in a European war makes that event 
 improbable except in case of a vital opposition of 
 policies threatening the existence of some Great 
 Power, or group of Powers, and of an estimate , of 
 forces before trial promising a decided preponder- 
 ance to one side or the other. Should these condi- 
 tions co-exist, the weaker side would be tempted to 
 concession after concession as preferable to the 
 supreme risk and the supreme effort of a struggle for 
 the mastery, which, if it were undertaken, might end 
 in a transformation of the map of Europe and of the 
 world. 
 
 The future .of the existing system of States, a 
 system now no longer simply European but world- 
 wide, will be determined in one direction or another 
 according as there is or is not maintained an equili- 
 brium, not indeed between single States, but between 
 groups of Great Powers. If the equilibrium cannot 
 be preserved, the weak States will gravitate towards 
 the stronger group, and there will be a repetition of 
 the phenomenon of ancient history — the gradual 
 absorption by conquest or federation of the multitude 
 of States into unity. In that way a universal or at 
 any rate a widely extended and long-lasting condi- 
 tion of peace may be obtained through a series of 
 great wars. On the other hand, if it be possible to 
 preserve the balance of power between the various 
 groups of States, there may be no occasion for an 
 
48 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 actual trial of strength, and peace may be maintained 
 for an indefinite period upon conditions of com- 
 promise. 
 
 Ill 
 
 War then may be regarded as the form which will 
 be assumed by the intercourse between two States, 
 when they find themselves, in regard to a matter of 
 vital moment to each of them, in direct contradiction 
 to one another ; when the one feels bound to do some- 
 thing which must be injurious to the other, and which 
 that other is therefore bound to prevent or to resist. 
 If in thus looking at war we see it as it really is, our 
 view ought to show also the true character of such 
 contiguous objects as arbitration, disarmament, and 
 other possible alternatives for war. 
 
 A large space in the foreground is occupied by the 
 doctrines expounded by Mr. Norman Angell in a 
 volume entitled The Great Illusion, of which the 
 thesis is repeated but hardly modified in a later 
 work entitled The Foundations of. International 
 Politics. Are these doctrines substantial, or do they 
 merely constitute a cloud that obscures the land- 
 scape ? Mr. Norman Angell at one time summed up 
 his conclusions with commendable brevity in a letter 
 pubhshed by the Daily Mail (June 28th, 191 1): 
 
 ' My whole point is a very simple one, namely : The 
 all but universally accepted axiom of statecraft that 
 great economic and national advantage attaches to 
 military victory has been rendered nugatory by the 
 circumstances of modern development; that certain 
 economic phenomena peculiar to our generation — of 
 
WHAT IS PEACE ? 49 
 
 which reacting bourses and a synchronized bank 
 rate the world over are perhaps the most character- 
 istic — have deprived military victory of any advan- 
 tage which it might once have had ; that, could this 
 fact be realized generally by European (notably by 
 German) public opinion, tiie motives pushing to 
 aggression would be immensely weakened and the 
 risk of war by that much lessened; the moral being, 
 not that self-defence is out of date, but that aggres- 
 sion is, and that when aggression ceases self-defence , 
 will be no longer necessary.' 
 
 Here Mr. Angell asserts that it is a current maxim 
 of statecraft that 'economic and national advantage 
 attaches to military victory.' He then asserts that 
 ' economic phenomena have deprived military victory 
 of any advantage.' What, according to Mr. Angell, 
 is the precise purport of the current maxim ? Is it 
 that some of the advantages attributed to victory are 
 economic and others not economic? In that case 
 economic phenomena might render nugatory the 
 economic advantages of victory while leaving its 
 other advantages untouched. But Mr. Angell asserts 
 that economic phenomena have rendered nugatory 
 any advantage of victory. We are therefore bound 
 to interpret him as meaning that, in the view accepted 
 as he says by statesmen, victory brings economic 
 advantages and no others whatever. In other words, 
 Mr. Angell thinks of war merely as a means of 
 acquiring or of retaining wealth. Is it possible to 
 see eye to eye with a writer who thus expresses the 
 gist of his opinions? 
 
 'What,' asks Mr. Angell in the synopsis to his 
 
50 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 earlier volume^ ' are the real motives prompting inter- 
 national rivalry in armaments ?' This question he 
 answers as follows : 
 
 ' Each nation pleads that its armaments are purely 
 for defence, but such plea necessarily implies that 
 other nations have some interest in attack. What is 
 this interest or supposed interest? The supposed 
 interest has its origin in the universally accepted 
 theory that military and political power give a nation 
 commercial and social advantages, that the wealth 
 and prosperity of the defenceless nation are at the 
 mercy of stronger nations, who may be tempted by 
 such defencelessness to commit aggression, so that 
 each nation is compelled to protect itself against the 
 possible cupidity of its neighbours. The author 
 challenges this universal theory, and declares it to 
 be based upon a pure optical illusion. He sets out 
 to prove that military and political power give a 
 nation no commercial advantage; that it is an 
 economic impossibility for one nation to seize or 
 destroy the wealth of another, or for one nation to 
 enrich itself by subjugating another.' 
 
 He goes on to say : 
 
 'The idea that addition of territory adds to a 
 nation's wealth is an optical illusion of like naturie, 
 since the wealth of conquered territory remains in 
 the hands of the population of such territory.' 
 
 The argument of this passage appears to be that 
 the purpose of offensive war is to enrich the nation 
 which undertakes it and the purpose of defensive 
 war to prevent the impoverishment of the nation 
 which resists attack. The author contends that a 
 nation can neither be enriched by victory nor im- 
 
WHAT IS PEACE? 51- 
 
 poverished by defeat; and that therefore war is use- 
 less. He further implies that a nation is not bene- 
 fited by acquiring additional territory nor injured 
 by the loss of territory, and therefore that war for 
 territorial conquest or for the defence of territory is 
 a useless proceeding. He wishes us to infer that 
 victory and defeat are indifferent, conferring no 
 benefits on the victor and inflicting no injuries on 
 the vanquished. Accordingly all the energies devoted 
 by a nation to preparations for war, and all the 
 expenditure of life and of wealth in carrying on a 
 war, are mere meaningless waste of energy, signtfying 
 nothing. The whole conception of war which has 
 hitherto been shared by all mankind is an ' optical 
 illusion.' 
 
 The interesting question is not whether the theory 
 thus crudely stated is rational or acceptable, but 
 how, even when half concealed by the way in which 
 it is expressed, it can have commended itself to the 
 author. The answer will be found by an examina- 
 tion of the following passage from his second 
 chapter : 
 
 ' Is it true that wealth and prosperity and well- 
 being depend on the political power of nations, or, 
 indeed, that the one has anything whatever to do 
 with the other? Is it- true that one nation can gain 
 a solid, tangible advantage by the conquest of 
 another ? Does the political or military victory of a 
 nation give any advantage to the individuals of that 
 nation which is not still possessed by the individual 
 of the defeated nation ? Is it possible for one nation 
 to take by force anything in the way of material 
 
52 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 wealth from another ? Is it possible for a nation in 
 any real sense to " own " the territory of another — ^to 
 own it, that is, in any way which can benefit the 
 individual citizens of the owning country ? If Eng- 
 land could conquer Germany to-morrow, completely 
 conquer her, reduce her nationality to so much dust, 
 would the ordinary British subject be the better for 
 it ? If Germany could conquer England, would any 
 ordinary German subject be the better for it ? The 
 fact that all these questions have to be answered in 
 the negative, and that a negative answer seems to 
 outrage common sense, shows how much our political 
 axioms are in need of revision.' 
 
 In this passage the first sentence denies that well- 
 being goes with the political power of nations — in 
 other words, denies that human welfare is dependent 
 upon the existence of the State. The second sen- 
 tence denies that a nation can gain advantage by 
 victory in war. These two sentences are explained 
 and justified by the third, in which the author asserts 
 that victory does not give to the individuals of the 
 successful nation any advantage not still possessed 
 by those of the defeated nation. The three sen- 
 tences taken together reveal exactly what is in their 
 writer's mind. He obliterates the distinction between 
 a nation and the individuals that compose it. He 
 blots the State out of his own mind and wishes to 
 blot it out of the reader's mind. Having got rid" of 
 the State he supposes that he has got rid of war. 
 Here he is guided by a sound instinct, because war 
 is in its essence and nature a forcible conflict between 
 two States. His procedure confirms our judgment; 
 
WHAT IS PEACE? 53 
 
 without the State there is no war and no peace, but 
 merely indiscriminate anarchy. 
 
 Without the organization of force and the dis- 
 cipline that accompanies it there is no State, no law, 
 no order. The author of The Great Illusion professes 
 to be undermining men's ideas on the subject of war; 
 the real object of his attack is the State. A super- 
 ficial examination of his book might give the impres- 
 sion that he is unaware that this is its real purport; 
 it is therefore desirable to show that his assault on 
 the State is intentional and deliberate. In a chapter 
 entitled ' The State as a Person,' he says : 
 
 ' Conflict between nations and international pug- 
 nacity generally imply a conception of a State as a 
 homogeneous whole, having the same sort of respon- 
 sibility that we attach to a person who, hitting us, 
 provokes us to hit back. Now only to a very small 
 and rapidly diminishing extent can a States be 
 regarded as such a person.* 
 
 Discussing the ideals which are commonly asso- 
 ciated with the existence of the State, he says : 
 
 'The real divisions of all these ideals cut right 
 across State divisions, disregard them entirely. And 
 yet again it is only the State division which military 
 conflict has in view.* 
 
 At the conclusion of his chapter he quotes from 
 Dr. Baty's International Law, as follows ; 
 
 ' It is impossible to ignore the significance of Inter- 
 national Congresses, not only of Socialism, but of 
 pacificism, of esperantism, of feminism, of every kind 
 of art and science, that so conspicuously set their 
 
54 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 seal upon the holiday season. Nationality as a limit- 
 ing force is breaking down before cosmopolitanism. 
 In directing its forces into an international channel. 
 Socialism will have no difficulty whatever. . . . We 
 are, therefore, confronted with a coming condition of 
 affairs, in which the force of nationality will be dis- 
 tinctly inferior to the force of class-cohesion, and in 
 which classes will be internationally organized so as 
 to wield their force with effect.' 
 
 Mr. Angell goes on : 
 
 'We have here, at present in merely embryonic form, 
 a group of motives otherwise opposed, but meeting 
 and agreeing upon one point : the organization of 
 society on other than territorial and national divi- 
 sions.' 
 
 No observet will fail to recognize the existence of 
 the phenomenon described in the passage quoted 
 from Dr. Baty. The point with which we are now 
 concerned is that Mr. Angell's conception of the way 
 in which war is to be eliminated from human life is 
 by the abolition of the State and by the substitution 
 for it of a rearrangement of society in layers spread 
 over the territories of many States. The layers are 
 to represent classes and class interests; the conflict 
 between the several classes is in the author's judg- 
 ment more serious than the possible conflicts 
 between States. The new power is to be that 
 of class -cohesion; and the classes will be so 
 organized as to ' wield their force with effect' This 
 is a picture, not of peace universal and perpetual, 
 but of social war universal and perpetual. In his 
 attempt to make permanent and universal the peace 
 
WHAT IS PEACE? 55 
 
 which consists in the relation between States, Mr. 
 Angell is ready to destroy the internal peace which is 
 provided by the State itself. The content of Mr. 
 Angell's ideal future is a condition in which States 
 and nations will have given place to a universal 
 antagonism of classes. His doctrines lead not to 
 concord, co-operation, or harmony, but to the aboli- 
 tion of States and of those relations between them 
 which constitute both peace and war. 
 
 These deductions from Mr. Angell's account of war 
 are accepted and confirmed by him in various pas- 
 sages : 
 
 'In a thousand respects association cuts across State 
 boundaries, which are purely conventional, and 
 renders the biological division of mankind into inde- 
 pendent and warring States a scientific ineptitude.' 
 {The Great Illusion, p. 138.) 
 
 'Just as in the material domain the real biological 
 law, which is association and co-operation between 
 individuals of the same species in the struggle with 
 their environment, has pushed men in their material 
 struggle to conform with that law-, so will it do so 
 in the sentimental sphere. We shall come to realize 
 that the real psychic and moral divisions are not as 
 between nations, but as between opposing concep- 
 tions of life.' {The Great Illusion, p. 139.) 
 
 I am unable to persuade myself that the change 
 from the existing state of things to that contemplated 
 by Mr. Angell can be brought about without convul- 
 sions at least as painful as those of war. A State in 
 isolation might indeed dissolve into a chaos of 
 classes, out of which a new cosmos might evolve; but 
 
56 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 among a number of States in contact with one 
 another, the weakening of one State to such an extent 
 as to render this kind of dissolution conceivable must 
 make it a prey to the expansive energies of the 
 nearest of its neighbours which has not yet lost its 
 unity, cohesion, and strength. , Instead of spon- 
 taneous dissolution, the fate of the weakening State 
 would be conquest and absorption. 
 
 The analogy between the State and a person is, of 
 course, merely metaphorical. The metaphor serves 
 to convey the truth that in spite of the multifarious 
 aspects of modern life and the great territorial exten- 
 sion of modern nations, each State maintains its 
 unity, which, if it did not exist, would have to be 
 created. For only the State can co-ordinate the 
 many organizations and activities in which the 
 energy of a modern population finds its scope. So 
 great is the freedom conferred by the State organiza- 
 tion of society that the average man is hardly con- 
 scious of the State's existence; he is not aware of the 
 infinite differences by which his life, his habits, his 
 environment, and his thoughts, are distinguished 
 from those of his counterpart, the citizen of the next 
 country across the frontier or across the sea. Not 
 until he changes his residence to another country 
 does the Englishman discover how greatly at every 
 point of his spiritual, moral, and material existence 
 he is differentiated from the Frenchman, the German, 
 or the Italian. Yet to most men the sum of those 
 differences constitutes a cherished inheritance. For 
 this, among other reasons, nationality and all that 
 
WHAT IS PEACE ? 57 
 
 belongs to it, as well as the State which maintains 
 it, are likdy long to retain their hold upon man- 
 kind. 
 
 That the evolution of society has made the task of 
 the State more difficult and more complex than ever, 
 is true enough; and Mr. Angell's observation of this 
 evolution in finance, in trade, in the interdependence 
 of nations, and in the relations between rich and 
 poor, is not inaccurate. It is the deduction which he 
 makes from it which must be rejected. His works 
 are full of assertions which are summarized in the 
 statement that ' it has become a physical impossibility 
 to benefit by military conquest.' In every case these 
 statements rest upon the same fallacy. It is absurd 
 to deny that wealth can be destroyed and territory 
 transferred by force. But because conquered terri- 
 tory is not divided between the citizens of the vic- 
 torious State, Mr. Angell supposes that that State 
 can have no benefit from it. He ignores the economi- 
 cal and other forms of ruin caused by the destruction 
 which takes place in war. It is not necessary to 
 expose in detail the erroneous nature of all these 
 negations. The fundamental error arises from the 
 fact that Mr. Angell's thought ranges for the most 
 part only in the material world. When he has a 
 glimpse of moral forces dominating the material con- 
 ditions of life he decries them as ' sentimental,' as in 
 the passage quoted from page 139 of The Great Illu- 
 sion. But the truth is that the spiritual forces are 
 always and everywhere supreme, and that there is no 
 ' material domain ' which can be parted off as a 
 
58 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 branch of life by itself and treated apart from the 
 minds and wills of men. 
 
 It is not true that war is usually waged for sordid 
 ends, nor that policy is merely the servant of the 
 pursuit of wealth. It would be hard to discover an 
 economical or mere material motive underlying the 
 wars of the French Republic and Empire, the wars 
 of the revolutionary period of 1848 and of the years 
 immediately following, the Crimean War, the wars 
 of 1859 and 1866. 
 
 The error which pervades not only Mr. Angell's 
 work but too much of the pacifist literature of the 
 day, is the neglect of the purpose and function of 
 the State, and of the truth that the political com- 
 munity is the necessary condition of everything that 
 makes life worth living. In the State, and in the 
 State alone, force and right are identified. Every- 
 one is aware of this when he regards the State from 
 within. It is from this identification of two prin- 
 ciples, of force and right, amalgamated only in this 
 case, that the political community derives its char- 
 acter as the educator of mankind. But it is doubtful 
 whether the State could retain this character if it 
 ceased to be compelled by the existence of rivals, and 
 the possibility of conflict with them, to maintain its 
 force as the instrument of its self-defence or self-asser- 
 tion. The purpose of war is resistance to wrong- 
 doing and the assertion of right; and the ultimate 
 justification of the existence of the State is insepar- 
 able from the call which it makes upon its citizens to 
 sacrifice themselves as witnesses to the right or 
 
WHAT IS PEACE ? 59 
 
 righteousness which it represents. The conflict of 
 States is a competition between ideals, without which 
 the evolution of the race could hardly proceed. The 
 experience of the ancient world suggests that the 
 amalgamation of all existing States into one, which 
 is the only imaginable mode in which the conception 
 of universal peace could be attained, would change 
 into monotony and uniformity the diversity and 
 variety of life, would be accompanied by stagnation, 
 and would end in fresh divisions. The conception 
 that peace can exist only on the basis of law or right, 
 and that right can be established only through con- 
 test, has grown unfamiliar to our countrymen. It 
 was expounded many years ago with admirable force 
 and lucidity in Professor Jhering's essay, Der Kampf 
 urns Reckt. 
 
 IV 
 
 The question really is whether a dispute as to right 
 and wrong between two States can be settled by any 
 other means than a trial of strength. The alternative 
 means proposed is arbitration. Let us then assume 
 that two great Powers have bound themselves, in 
 case of any dispute whatever between them, without 
 reserve and without exception, to submit the question 
 at issue to an arbitral tribunal and to accept and 
 abide by the decision of that tribunal. Let us next 
 assume that, this obligation to submit to and accept 
 arbitration subsisting, the two States find themselves 
 at issue upon a question of right and wrong involving 
 consequences vital to each of them. This means that 
 
6o GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 the Government and the people of one of the two 
 States affirm some principle as to which they believe 
 that, if they acquiesced in its denial, their community 
 could no longer fulfil the purpose of its existence. In 
 such cases, and indeed in all cases of dispute, there 
 is something more than the assent by the intelligence 
 to a proposition ; the will is involved ; men are deter- 
 mined to maintain their State or their national exist- 
 ence. The Government and the people of the State 
 under consideration are therefore intellectually and 
 morally bound to affirm their proposition, to main- 
 tain their will ; not to do so is, in their judgment and 
 conviction, the annihilation of their community. It 
 follows that they cannot fulfil the stipulation of the 
 treaty ; they will either refuse to submit the matter to 
 arbitration, or, if the decision is adverse, to accept it. 
 The other State may be in precisely the same posi- 
 tion. In spite of the treaty there will be war which 
 will take the extreme form of a struggle for ejiistence. 
 ' There is in the abstract no escape from this analysis, 
 which rests upon the nature of the political com- 
 munity. The State is the only known means of 
 giving reality to the conception of right. In virtue 
 of that function it commands men's allegiance; if, 
 therefore, it fails in fulfilling its mission, the reason 
 for men's allegiance has disappeared, and the dissolu- 
 tion of the State must ensue. The extreme case, 
 which must be assumed for the guidance of our 
 thought, seldom occurs, but in examination reveals a 
 clue to all the actual phenomena. It shows the true 
 significance of victory and of defeat. For the vie- 
 
WHAT IS PEACE ? 61 
 
 torious nation is strengthened by the consciousness 
 that it has affirmed and made real the principle to 
 which it was devoted. It has established its case, 
 realized some portion of its ideal. It is, accordingly, 
 uplifted and its energy stimulated. The defeated 
 nation is correspondingly depressed. The faith of 
 the subjects in their State is in the one case increased 
 and in the other diminished. 
 
 We should say then that arbitration is admissible 
 between States the conditions of whose existence are 
 compatible with one another. The negotiation of A 
 treaty of general arbitration between two nations is 
 an evidence that the two peoples are unconscious of 
 serious rivalry. The acceptance of such a treaty may 
 therefore be taken as implying a probability that 
 it will be observed unless and until some change 
 of conditions discloses a previously unsuspected 
 antagonism of interests, aims, or ideals. 
 
 The disputes which have usually led to wars have, 
 however, seldom been of a nature which admitted of 
 their submission to arbitration. They have arisen in 
 consequence of changes due to the processes of growth 
 and decay, or perhaps it would be more accurate to 
 say, of unequal growth among the members of a system 
 of States. They are almost always questions, not 
 only of right or law, but at the same time of power. 
 In 1866 the purpose of Prussia was to acquire in Ger- 
 many a scope greater than had been accorded her in 
 the settlement of 181 5. No arbitral tribunal could 
 have eifected a settlement resembling that which was 
 obtained as the outcome of the war of 1866. Yet 
 
62 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 that settlement is now regarded as satisfactory by 
 most of the populations which were concerned, none 
 of whom, except perhaps the inhabitants of Northern 
 Schleswig, would wish it undone. I fail to discover 
 in the case of any of the principal wars of the past 
 hundred years what question could, before the war, 
 have been referred to an arbitral tribunal, or at what 
 moment in the proceedings prior to the war a refer- 
 ence to arbitration could reasonably have been pro- 
 posed. Moreover, in most of the cases, even if a 
 question could have been formulated suitable for sub- 
 mission to arbitrators, that step would have been 
 rendered impossible by the determination existing on 
 both sides to bring the matter to a trial of strength. 
 
 The effect of growth is an expansion and an 
 increase of power. It necessarily affects the environ- 
 ment of the growing organism; it interferes with the 
 status quo. Existing rights and interests are dis- 
 turbed by the fact of growth, which is itself a change. 
 The growing community finds itself hedged in by 
 previously existing and surviving conditions, and 
 fettered by prescriptive rights. There is, therefore, 
 an exertion of force to overcome resistance. No pro- 
 cess of law or of arbitration can deal with this 
 phenomenon, because any tribunal administering a 
 system of right or law must base its decision upon 
 the tradition of the past which has become unsuited 
 to the new conditions that have arisen. The grow- 
 ing State is necessarily expansive or aggressive. Its 
 aggression is resisted by its neighbours; its increas- 
 ing strength counter-balanced by combination be- 
 
WHAT IS PEACE ? 63 
 
 tween them. This was the meaning of the European 
 balance of power which aimed at self-preservation by 
 an equilibrium of forces. Growth is a fact that is not 
 amenable to codes or systems ; the forces which con- 
 stitute it are incalculable and immeasurable. 
 
 English statesmen and English thinkers ought to 
 be the first to recognize that this is the case. In a 
 brief span of historical time this nation has sent out 
 swarms of its people, who have spread themselves 
 over the choicest parts of three continents. Are 
 Englishmen to shut their eyes to the force of growth 
 in others or to imagine that even their own growth is 
 at an end ? Every social change carries with it new 
 possibilities of life, sometimes in the shape of an 
 increase of population, sometimes in the development 
 of higher qualities and higher powers. How was the 
 strength of France developed by her Revolution, and 
 how has that of Great Britain been increased by the 
 development that has taken place during the last 
 two reigns ? 
 
 It may be well to take a concrete illustration of the 
 fact that vital questions do not admit of submission 
 to any tribunal. Has Great Britain a right to the 
 command of the sea ? No conceivable tribunal could 
 affirm it, for what does that expression mean ? It is 
 a synonym for decisive naval victory and its conse- 
 quences. As the ability to gain decisive victory at 
 sea is the best defence of an island State, so the best 
 instrument of any British policy must be a navy 
 capable of such victory. How then can Great Britain 
 become a party to an international agreement for the 
 
64 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR" 
 
 limitation of armaments? No rival Power could 
 conceivably consent to an agreement such as would 
 leave England supreme, or even superior in strength, 
 at sea. Nor will any State consent to such condi- 
 tions as would restrict its own strength, for every 
 State must wish to be as strong as possible, or must 
 renounce its purpose of asserting in competition the 
 ideals which it represents. 
 
 It will be observed, as a consequence of the view 
 which has been set forth of the nature of peace and 
 war, that peace cannot rationally be the object of 
 policy. The function of a State or nation is to main- 
 tain domestic peace by the agency of law, and in its 
 intercourse with other States or nations to affirm its 
 conception of a good life, of justice or righteousness. 
 Its great aim may be said to be its own efficiency, 
 and if, by the action of another State, that is threat- 
 ened, the danger must be averted. When that can 
 be effected peaceably, there is no real opposition of 
 purposes; when it cannot, peace is to be had only by 
 humiliation. Thus the condition of human life, for 
 the State as for the individual, involves the perpetual 
 possibility of a choice between the sacrifice of life and 
 the sacrifice of what makes life worth living. 
 
Ill 
 
 WHAT IS WAR?* 
 
 The ideal of universal peace has in all ages been 
 cherished, and from time to time men have been 
 moved to suggest methods by which they have hoped 
 to prepare the vi^ay for its realization. Does it repre- 
 sent an attainable goal, or is the conception incon- 
 sistent with the realities of life? In a former lec- 
 ture I tried to give an account of the nature and con- 
 ditions of peace, and to show how the existence of a 
 plurality of States is inseparable from the possibility 
 of wars between them. I was led to the conclusion 
 that the intercourse between two States must assume 
 the form of war if they should find themselves, in 
 regard to a matter of vital moment to each of them, 
 in direct contradiction to one another; if the one 
 should feel bound to do something which must be 
 injurious to the other, and which that other, there- 
 fore, would be bound to prevent or to resist. To-day 
 I propose to inquire what light is thrown upon the 
 subject by the nature and conditions of wars, and in 
 particular by the modern development of wars and 
 of their theory. 
 
 The warlike activities of modern times fall into 
 
 * June 19, 1914. 
 
 6S S 
 
66 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 three periods, those of Frederick the Great, of Napo- 
 leon, and of Moltke, marked off, like so many 
 geological epochs, by certain specific changes in the 
 conditions. The first break or moment of decisive 
 change was the French Revolution, which brought 
 into warfare the new energy of a popular movement. 
 The second was marked by the appropriation to the 
 purposes of war of the results of mechanical inven- 
 tion and of the industrial revolution. The results 
 of advances in mechanism were first seen in the 
 American Civil War, and first generally appreciated 
 after the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. Men always 
 take a long time to perceive the full significance of 
 changes like these; the growth of theory lags behind 
 that of the activities with which it deals. Thus, the 
 last theoretical analysis and synthesis of war was 
 made by the contemporaries of Napoleon, and has 
 not yet been superseded. Napoleon himself did not 
 formulate a theory nor communicate a systematic 
 account of the nature of the business of which he was 
 the master. The first clear and correct analysis of 
 the methods of war of that period was made by 
 Jomini, a Swiss officer in the French service, whose 
 exposition satisfied French and English students 
 during the greater part of the nineteenth century. 
 Of Napoleon's antagonists, the Archduke Charles, 
 after his retirement in 1809, gave himself up to the 
 history of the campaigns of his time and to an expo- 
 sition of his principles. But he hardly went beyond 
 Jomini. Wellington was as little disposed to explore 
 the theory of war as to encourage historical inquiry. 
 
WHAT IS WAR? 67 
 
 Scharnhorst, whose mind was a spring of clear and 
 true thoughts about war, was struck down in 1813, 
 and left his doctrine to be developed by his friend 
 and pupil Clausewitz, who had the advantage of the 
 previous labours of Jomini and the Archduke Charles. 
 After the peace of 1815, Clausewitz gave the rest of 
 his life to the theory of war. He was free from 
 serious anxiety, domestic or economic, and from 
 heavy administrative responsibilities. He possessed 
 the supreme qualification for seeing the truth, the 
 single eye, and, as he wrote only for posterity, his 
 work could not be marred by the vanity that assails 
 the man who writes for a contemporary public. His 
 account of war is the most trustworthy and the most 
 adequate which we possess, and forms the starting- 
 point of every fresh inquiry. 
 
 According to Clausewitz, war is an act of force 
 having for its purpose to compel the enemy to submit 
 to our will. The way to compel him to submit is to 
 make it impossible for him to resist — ^that is, to 
 disarm him and overpower him, which we shall be 
 able to do if we defeat and destroy his armies and 
 take possession of his territories ; for then, even if his 
 will is recalcitrant, we shall at any rate have our own 
 way, and he cannot prevent us. It follows that if 
 two States go to war, each of them should try to 
 outbid the other in force and energy, because each 
 side must see that if it does not overpower the enemy, 
 it wiU probably be itself overpowered. Logically, 
 therefore, a State going to war would transmute all 
 its resources into military force, and would concen 
 
68 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 trate its energies upon the prosecution of the war 
 until the enemy was struck down and its own pur- 
 pose fully accomplished. The State's purpose in war 
 will be to have its own way concerning the matter in 
 dispute. But the army's object should always be 
 the same — to destroy the enemy's army, it being 
 evident that whatever it is you wish to compel the 
 enemy to do, the means of compelling him are always 
 the same; they will always consist in making him 
 powerless to resist you. 
 
 Clausewitz observed that this kind of war, logically 
 deduced from its definition, was seldom seen, and he 
 asked himself why the practice should fall short of 
 the logic. Would not every State going to war see 
 that it must outbid its opponent in force and energy ? 
 That there was the risk, if it did not crush the enemy, 
 that it might itself be crushed? Why was it that 
 States did not always, when they went to war, do it 
 with all their might ? First of all because the people 
 of any State usually have, or think they have, other 
 things to attend to besides the war. Look at the 
 memoirs of any Englishman or Frenchman not a 
 statesman or a soldier during the years between 1756 
 and 1763 ; look at the books written and read in those 
 years. You will probably not be aware in reading 
 the memoirs or the books that England was at war 
 with France, and France with Prussia. You will 
 find most people, in both countries, living their 
 ordinary lives, as though the armies and navies had 
 no existence or were merely engaged in manoeuvres 
 at a distance. 
 
WHAT IS WAR? 69 
 
 During the last South African War the usual busi- 
 ness of Parliament was carried on as though Great 
 Britain had been at peace, and the war regarded as 
 merely a disagreeable interruption; indeed, during 
 the course of the war there was a General Election in 
 which the management of the war was only one of a 
 number of topics discussed by the candidates. It is 
 quite possible that if, from the moment when the war 
 was seen to be probable, current legislation and other 
 business had, as far as possible, been laid aside, and 
 the attention of the country concentrated on the 
 prosecution of the war, the conflict might have been 
 ended sooner. 
 
 A second explanation of the departure of States 
 from logic in war is that a war is not over in an 
 instant, but usually lasts for a certain time. An 
 army is not quite like a bullet shot forth, or a mine 
 exploded, taking instantaneous effect and striking 
 down the enemy at once, so that the victorious 
 Government can immediately dictate terms. It makes 
 a continuous effort, or a series of successive pulsations 
 of effort, admitting of constant control by a directing 
 intelligence. Accordingly, States frequently go to 
 war without employing in the first instance the maxi- 
 mum forces which they might have put into the field. 
 They expect to have time to make further prepara- 
 tion and to increase their exertions during the course 
 of the conflict. This postponement of effort is usually 
 associated with failure. In 1805 the Emperor of 
 Austria picked a quarrel with Napoleon, although the 
 Archduke Charles had warned him that the Austrian 
 
JO GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR- 
 
 army was not strong enough to meet the French 
 army, and must be beaten before the Russian army, 
 on the assistance of which the Emperor Francis 
 relied, could possibly be at hand to assist him. The 
 Archduke proved right, for the Austrian and Russian 
 armies were crushed by Napoleon separately, in suc- 
 cession. In 1859 the Emperor Francis Joseph found 
 himself involved in a quarrel with Victor Emmanuel 
 and his ally Napoleon III. At the beginning of the 
 war he sent half his army into Italy, and when that 
 had been defeated took there the other half, which 
 was also defeated in its turn. In 1885 King Milan 
 of Serbia, about to attack Bulgaria, put half his army 
 into the field, and was well beaten before it was 
 possible to call out the other half. It will be fresh 
 in your recollection that, when the Emperor of 
 Russia forced a war on Japan, half of his fleet was 
 in the theatre of war and the other half in European 
 waters, and that the first half was destroyed long 
 before the second half could arrive upon the scene of 
 action. A third explanation of the abandonment of 
 logic is that the eiid of the war will not be the end 
 of history, so that the people of a State are apt to 
 hope that even if defeated now they may renew the 
 conflict hereafter, and then be victorious. 
 
 Logically, a Government would set out to crush 
 the antagonist's forces, and would continue the efi^ort 
 until the adversary was prostrate and cried, ' Hold ! 
 enough!' But in practice, so soon as the State 
 begins to feel the burden of a conflict, men revert to 
 the question of what they are fighting for, and ask 
 
WHAT IS WAR? 71 
 
 themselves whether it is worth while to continue their 
 sacrifices. Thus a war is apt to be a less desperate 
 affair than pure logic would make it. Its energy is 
 further diminished, as a rule, by loss of time. 
 
 We have seen that the energy of a nation in war 
 is apt to be diminished by the procrastination of the 
 State, which is prone to put off till too late the exer- 
 tions which it would rationally make in anticipation 
 of the conflict. A somewhat different kind of pro- 
 crastination affects the action of commanders in the 
 field. The only logical reason why either side should 
 make a pause in the conflict is to wait for a more 
 favourable moment for its next action. This ought 
 not rationally to create a pause, because, if the pre- 
 sent moment is unfavourable for one side, it will for 
 that very reason be favourable for the other; whyj 
 then, should time pass in inaction? Because of the 
 difference between attack and defence. Much morfe 
 energy is required to deliver a blow than to receive 
 it; in the warfare of armies the assailant must move, 
 while the defendant need not, and the ground affords 
 protection to the side that remains stationary and 
 takes advantage of it. A Blue and a Red army are 
 facing each other, each having a strong position at 
 its disposal. The Red army expects a reinforcement 
 next week, while the Blue army expects none. The 
 interest of the Blue commander is evidently to win 
 his battle before the Red can be reinforced, but he 
 does not feel strong enough to attack Red's position, 
 though he is confident of beating Red if Red should 
 attack his position, even though Red should first 
 
72 GOVERNMENT AND 'J'HE WAR 
 
 have been reinforced. Red's interest is evidently to 
 put oif the battle until his reinforcement arrives. 
 Blue's interest is, if possible, to bring about the trial 
 of strength before his enemy is reinforced. But, 
 since he does not feel strong enough to give up the 
 advantages of defence, he prefers to wait till next 
 week to be attacked rather than to attack now. 
 Accordingly, both sides wait for a week. Thus a 
 pause in the action is caused by the difference 
 between attack and defence, and this loss of time is 
 one of the elements which dilutes the energy with 
 which war is carried on. The pause is sometimes 
 occasioned, not by a real difference of strength 
 between the armies, but by an imaginary one, for one 
 of the difficulties which confronts every commander 
 is to appreciate correctly the strength, the doings, 
 and the situation of his opponent, which frequently 
 appear more formidable than they really are. In the 
 illustration just given it makes little difference to 
 Blue whether he knoWs or does not know that Red 
 is expecting reinforcements. 
 
 Not only ignorance, but chance, plays a large part 
 in war, so that every commander in some respects 
 resembles a gambler. Moreover, all the operations 
 take place in the medium of danger, and therefore 
 the action is affected by the spiritual quality of 
 courage, which is incalculable. 
 
 Thus it comes about that wars may be of all shades 
 of intensity. Yet they are all actions of the State 
 for ends of its own, and therefore the function of the 
 statesman in regard to them is to make sure that 
 
WHAT IS WAR? 73 
 
 the means are appropriate to the end. The first, the 
 greatest, and the most decisive act of judgment which 
 the statesman or the commander has to perform is 
 correctly to estimate the intensity of effort which will 
 be involved in a war in which he is about to engage. 
 When the motives of war are so strong as to affect 
 the whole life of the peoples concerned, and to pro- 
 duce a violent tension of feeling, the war will 
 approach its logical character; the efforts will be 
 directed to striking down the enemy, and the pur- 
 pose of the State will express itself in the army's 
 aim of crushing the foe. Such a strong, high purpose 
 of the State, appealing powerfully to its people, will 
 lead not only to an effort to strike down the enemy 
 but also to a well-thought-out plan of operations. 
 Accordingly, Clausewitz says to the statesman : 
 before you go to war you must consider whether the 
 object you have in view is so important to the nation 
 which you are leading as to justify the employment 
 of all its resources, and so enable you to aim at strik- 
 ing down the enemy and dictating your terms. If 
 you see your way to that, well and good. But if you 
 see that to be impracticable, if you have not the 
 forces required to disarm the enemy, and if the cause 
 for which you propose to fight will not induce your 
 nation to provide these forces, your army must evi- 
 dently aim at something less than the destruction of 
 the enemy. In that case you may set it to conquer a 
 province, and to hold on against the enemy's counter- 
 attacks until he is willing to make peace, and either 
 leave the province to you or make some concessions 
 
74 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 in exchange for its recovery. But before you go to 
 war for a limited object of this kind, you must well 
 consider how the other State will regard it, for it may 
 be that the other State will not so limit either its 
 object or its effort. It may feel able to attempt to 
 destroy your army, to invade your territory, and, 
 when you are helpless, to dictate terms involving 
 sacrifices far greater than you ever contemplated. 
 
 In other words, a nation that goes to war makes 
 a great mistake in supposing that it can limit its 
 liabilities. That depends on the enemy. The only 
 safe assumption for a statesman or a nation in begin- 
 ning a war is that it will be fought to a finish. There 
 can be no guarantee that the stake which is risked 
 will be anything less than the existence of the State 
 and the independence of the nation. 
 
 This is the theory set forth by Clausewitz in that 
 first chapter of his work which alone seemed to him 
 satisfactory. Its remarkable feature is the dualism 
 of view which pervades it. After carefully explain- 
 ing how a war ought to be waged, and setting up 
 both for statesmen and for generals an ideal of effec- 
 tive warfare, he hastens to warn us that the ideal is 
 seldom realized in practice, and to seek in human 
 weakness and inconsistency for an explanation of the 
 manner in which warfare usually falls short of what 
 correct thinking would make it. 
 
 The origin of this dualism is to be found in a later 
 volume, which gives the account of the plan of a war 
 when the military purpose is to crush the enemy's 
 forces, The essence of a plan of this kind is con- 
 
WHAT IS WAR? 75 
 
 centration of the action in time and space. You 
 must, as far as possible, discover your enemy's centre 
 of gravity. You must crystallize your blow against 
 that centre of gravity into one principal action, and 
 make all the subordinate actions as subordinate as 
 possible. 
 
 This account of a. plan of campaign was a generali- 
 zation from the practice of Napoleon. But when 
 Clausewitz came to study the history of earlier wars 
 he found a very different practice. The eighteenth- 
 century absolute monarch seemed to him to have been 
 apt to make war for personal or dynastic ends, and 
 to wage it with a standing army, composed of only a 
 fraction of the population and incapable of great 
 increase during the course of the struggle. If the 
 army was beaten, the monarch, having no other 
 resources and being anxious to preserve what was 
 left of his army, was ready to mjike terms. There 
 was a limit to the exertions he could undertake, as 
 there was to those of his opponent. Risks and gains 
 were alike limited- Clausewitz felt that the contrast 
 between the Napoleonic wars and those that had 
 preceded them was too great to admit of a theory 
 abstracted from the case of Napoleon being applied 
 to all cases of war. The Napoleonic practice he 
 called that of absolute warj and he contrasted it with 
 that of most other wars which had actually taken 
 place. 
 
 What are we to make of this dualism in the doc- 
 trine of Clausewitz? 
 
 We must remember that he left his work unfinished, 
 
76 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 and intended to recast it and to write it again. When 
 he sealed up his papers in 1830 to go off to the 
 expected campaign in Poland, he left a note in which 
 he described it as a collection of fragments that 
 needed to be rewritten. He had come to the con- 
 clusion that there were two kinds of wars : those in 
 which one side aimed at the overthrow of the other, 
 either at his political destruction or at rendering him 
 defenceless, so that he could be compelled to accept 
 any terms of peace that the victor might dictate ; and 
 those in which the purpose was merely to make a few 
 conquests beyond the border, in order either to keep 
 them or to have something in hand with which to 
 bargain in the discussion of terms. It had cost him 
 a long effort to find a common element in these two 
 kinds of wars, yet he felt sure that they belong to 
 the same genus, that the definition of war must be so 
 framed as to include them both, and that only such a 
 definition would embrace its essential characteristics. 
 The common element was this, that every war is 
 nothing but a continuance of the policy of a State 
 by other means. He felt satisfied that with this 
 explanation he had found the clue to the understand- 
 ing of war and of its phenomena; but, he felt that 
 his work as he left it was insufiiciently permeated by 
 this idea, and he intended, if he liyed, to go through 
 his manuscript again, in the hope of bringing his 
 view to greater unity and greater clearness. 
 
 I have never seen the question raised concerning 
 the form which Clausewitz would have given his 
 theory if he had lived to complete his work and to 
 
WHAT IS WAR? 77 
 
 think out to perfect clearness that relation between 
 war and the State which he saw to be the essence of 
 the subject. But since Clausewitz sealed up his 
 manuscript in 1830 there has been a considerable 
 further experience of wars, and those of our own 
 time have revealed a great variety of kinds. We 
 have seen two great Republics fighting in the United 
 States until one of them v/as destroyed ; we have seen 
 monarchies of every size and kind at war with each 
 other in Europe. We have seen the conflict between 
 the vast Russian Empire and the comparatively tiny 
 nation of Japan. We have seen the small prin- 
 cipalities of the Balkans more than once at war with 
 each other and with the Sultan of Turkey. The doc- 
 trine of Clausewitz has been applied to each of 
 these wars, before they began, during their course 
 and after their conclusion. The result is that the 
 thinkers of to-day are agreed in the opinion that the 
 type of war which- Clausewitz called absolute, logical, 
 or ideal, must be considered as normal, and that the 
 type which he thought of as weaker but nearer to 
 reality must be considered as exceptional. The war 
 that aims at striking down the enemy by the destruc- 
 tion of his forces is that of the successful State; the 
 war that tries to limit its aims, and therefore its 
 exertions, is that of the defeated. 
 
 The explanation of this development is given by 
 Clausewitz himself. ' Since Bonaparte,' he says, ' war, 
 by becoming, first on one side and then the other, an. 
 affair of the whole people, has acquired a different 
 nature, or rather has approached its true nature, its 
 
78 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 absolute perfection. . . . Whether this will always 
 be the case, whether all future wars in Europe will be 
 waged with the whole weight of the States, and con- 
 sequently only for great interests closely touching the 
 peoples, or whether there will again be a separation 
 between Government and people, it would be pre- 
 sumptuous to decide. But we may say that limita- 
 tions that consisted in not being aware of what was 
 possible, when they have once been broken down 
 cannot be easily set up again, and that, at any rate 
 whenever great interests are in question, the mutual 
 hostility will discharge itself in the same way as it 
 has done in our time.' 
 
 Here . Clausewitz touched the heart of the matter. 
 The energy with which a State carries on a war 
 depends on the accord between the Government and 
 the people, and on the degree to which the motive 
 of the war affects and stirs the population. In other 
 words, the transformation of the idea of the State, 
 of which the first trace is seen in the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, in the Revolution of 1689, and which was more 
 fully carried out in the French Revolution, has had 
 as its consequence a transformation of the character 
 of wars. 
 
 Bemhardi, i^ the sketch of the history of Europe 
 which is prefaced to the second volume of his History 
 of Russia since 181 5, expressed the opinion that the 
 'English Revolution of i68g had restored the con- 
 ception of the State and given it reality. England 
 was henceforth, in spite of the old forms which she 
 retained, no longer a mediaeval feudal monarchy, the 
 
WHAT IS WAR? 79 
 
 property of her King, with estates whose mission was 
 to defend privileges and class interests against the 
 dynastic interests of the lord of the land; England 
 was a commtinity, governed by King and Parliament 
 in combination, and the interests of the Government 
 were from that time on regarded as the interests of 
 the totality.' 
 
 The attempt to identify the State with the whole 
 people, which Bernhardi attributes to the English in 
 i68g, was made in earnest during the French Revo- 
 lution, when the nation was substituted for the King 
 as the possessor of sovereignty and the object of alle- 
 gjiance. To-day every European State thinks of itself 
 as a community, and regards its Government as the 
 representative or exponent of general interests, those 
 of the whole body of the people, of the nation. The 
 distinguishing character of modern wars is thus that 
 they are conflicts between national States, of which 
 the mark is that the Government represents and is at 
 one with the people. Modern wars, therefore, will 
 approach the absolute type in which, whatever the 
 cause of the quarrel, the military aim of either side 
 will be to strike down and disarm the adversary and 
 then to dictate terms. The condition on which war- 
 fare of that kind is possible is that the motive of the 
 war must appeal strongly, not only to the Govern- 
 ment, but to the whole people. An appeal of that 
 kind leads first of all to a large outlook and a com- 
 prehensive plan on the part of the exponents of the 
 nation's cause — I use the word ' nation ' to mean the 
 combination of Government and people, the organ- 
 
8o GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 ized State in which they are fused into one. It leads, 
 secondly, to the effort to devote the whole resources 
 of the nation to the prosecution of the war, to the 
 supplementing of a regular army by a militia and 
 by a volunteer army, and to the amalgamation of 
 both in a permanent requisition or conscription of 
 all able-bodied men and of all property and wealth 
 that can be transmuted into force; and, lastly-, it 
 leads to the effort to employ the utmost possible force 
 at the outset of the war. 
 
 These three efforts are the chief foundations of suc- 
 cess. They are forms of concentration of purpose, 
 applications to the nation of the maxim, ' Whatsoever 
 thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might* 
 
 You remember that I enumerated a series of wars 
 in which half an army or half a navy was sent out 
 to be beaten, and then the other half sent after it to, 
 suffer the same fate — Austria in 1859, Serbia in 1885, 
 Turkey in the last war, and even France in 1870, for 
 it was not till her regular army had been captured at 
 Sedan and Metz that she raised a new army of 
 citizens. In all these cases, except that of France in 
 1870, the war was the' Governments', but not the 
 peoples', and in France the distinction between 
 Government and people was such that the people did 
 not enter into the struggle until the Government had 
 been defeated, when it was too late. 
 
 That is, in my judgment, the theory of modern 
 war, its nature as it presents itself to the vision of 
 thosq whose lives have been given to the effort to 
 know what can be known about it. The truth was 
 
WHAT IS WAR? 8r 
 
 well summed up by Moltke when he wrote : ' The 
 wars of the present day call the whole peoples to 
 arms; hardly a family which is not involved. The 
 whole financial resources of the State are engaged, 
 and no change of seasons puts a stop to the unresting 
 action. As long as nations lead their several lives 
 there will be disputes that can only be settled by 
 arms, but it is to be hoped, in the interests of 
 humanity, that as they have become more terrible 
 wars will become less frequent.' How is that hope to 
 be fulfilled ? Has it any justification in the view of 
 war that I have put before you ? I think it has. 
 
 We have seen that wars to-day are of the national 
 type, in which the development and concentration of 
 energy are pushed to extremes, and which are fought 
 to a finish. 
 
 The conditions of effectual effort in such a case are 
 that the whole resources of the State should be thrown 
 into the conflict at the very outset, that they should 
 be employed without interruption upon a comprehen- 
 sive plan, and that this involves the utmost concen- 
 tration of the powers of the State, first in thought or 
 plaiming, then in organization, and lastly in execu- 
 tion. That these are in fact the conditions and are 
 recognized as such is shown by the action of modern 
 States, which have created general staffs as organs 
 of thought about possible wars and have arranged 
 to call out their whole manhood as combatants the 
 moment a war is seen to be inevitable. It is evident 
 that efforts of this magnitude will not be made. except 
 under the pressure of some all-compelling motive 
 
 6 
 
82 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 influencing both Government and people. What 
 motive has such a character? What is a vital 
 cause for which a nation will fight to the last 
 extremity ? 
 
 I think it must be sought in the nature of the com- 
 munity. The people gives itself a Government and 
 organizes itself as a State in order to secure for its 
 members a good life. If to create the conditions of 
 a good life is the function of the State or political 
 community, the State ceases to be of use if and when ■ 
 it is rendered incapable of securing that good life. 
 If, then, the action of another 'State would interfere 
 with that function or render it impossible, the State 
 so assailed in its essence will resist the interference. 
 The energy and unity of the citizens in resistance will 
 be proportionate to their sense of the utility of their 
 common life. If they feel that what makes life worth 
 living is their membership of the State, they will be 
 ready to die for that State. If they have not that 
 conviction there may be a limit to the sacrifices they 
 will be ready to make. In other words, the patriotism 
 of a population will be proportionate to the extent to 
 which their nation represents a common good- in 
 which they are conscious partners. It will be a con- 
 sequence of the efficiency or excellence of the national 
 organization. The healthy society in which everyone 
 has his work suited to his powers will prove stronger 
 than the community which less perfectly realizes that 
 condition. 
 
 We shall probably be right in saying that a conflict 
 of policy between two national States will not neces- 
 
WHAT IS WAR? 83 
 
 sarily lead to a war unless the purpose of each chal- 
 lenged by the other presents itself to Government and 
 people as essential to their efficiency. Whenever that 
 is the case a war will be inevitable, and should 
 logically result in the destruction of the weaker State. 
 For if either State could compromise the matter in 
 dispute, if it could see its way to continued efficiency 
 or even to unimpaired existence after conceding the 
 point, that point would thereby be proved not to 
 have been vital to it. 
 
 Suppose two nations to quarrel and to fight each 
 under the impression that the point at issue was 
 vital to itself. They set out each to crush the forces 
 of the other. The effort will be supreme on each 
 side, and, as the struggle goes on, the people of each 
 State will again and again consider the sacrifices 
 required from them in relation to the cause they, are 
 asserting. If the effort is thought disproportionate 
 to the end, there will be a relaxation of energy; the 
 end will be seen to be less important than was sup- 
 posed, and peace will be sought at the price of some 
 concession. No Government can' long exact from its 
 people sacrifi:ees and exertions which they feel to be 
 excessive for the purpose in haad, and therefore no 
 Government, without endangering, to an extent that 
 cannot be estimated beforehand, the prosperity aiiid 
 possibly the independence of its; State, can safely 
 enter a quarrel not imposed upon' it by the conditions 
 of its existence. I dsdiubt whether even the perfect 
 military organization of modern European States can 
 modify this fundamental condition. Professional 
 
84 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 soldiers may fight in obedience to orders regardless 
 of the cause. But citizens will not offer themselves 
 to be killed unless they know the reason why. They 
 will look for a cause that seems to them righteous 
 and necessary. If men's ideals are challenged, they 
 may be ready to bear witness to them with their 
 blood. You cannot have citizen soldiers, whether 
 you call them volunteers or trained recruits, except 
 upon the terms of martyrdom. 
 
 It follows that in a war between national States the 
 fundamental condition of success is a vital cause; it 
 must be a question of the State's power to carry on 
 its necessary work. A national State, therefore, may 
 hope for victory in a vital cause, but in any 
 other must accept defeat, with all the dread con- 
 sequences of lying prostrate under the heel of a 
 conqueror. 
 
 Who is to be the judge of what is vital to a 
 nation? Only the nation itself. Who is the judge 
 of the conduct of an individual ? To a certain extent, 
 no doubt, the jury or the court of law. But in the 
 last resort we all recognize that each man must decide 
 his conduct for himself. Conscience may bid him 
 defy the law and take the consequences. Is not the 
 dominant principle of human life that a man must 
 risk himself in obeying his own soul, even, if need be, 
 to the sacrifice of property, of career, and of life itself? 
 That is the ultimately real aspect of life which is por- 
 trayed by tragedy, and to which we give the name of 
 moral responsibility. 
 
 The nation, like the individual, has to stake itself 
 
WHAT IS WAR? 85 
 
 upon its conduct, which in its case we call policy, 
 and must be true to itself even at the risk of 
 destruction. 
 
 The conclusion with regard to the probability of 
 wars becoming less frequent, to which I am led by 
 the train of thought which I have tried to unfold, is 
 that in proportion as States become ef&ciently organ- 
 ized as communities, providing for their members the 
 conditions of a good life, they will refrain from 
 unnecessary wars and from quarrels, that do not 
 vitally concern them. The true pacifism, then, con- 
 sists in the effort of each nation to perfect its own 
 organization. The pacifism which seeks short cuts 
 to universal peace appears to me to arise from a lack 
 of faith in the State, even in the national State, and 
 its spread is, in my view, a symptom of the failure 
 of the States in which it is rife to fulfil their ideal 
 mission of providing the conditions of a good life 
 for the whole population. 
 
 The fundamental question of the whole subject is. 
 What is a necessary war ? and I have sought for the 
 answer by saying that a State must fight when its 
 power to do its proper work is challenged. 
 
 But I am not satisfied with the definition I have 
 offered, that the State's function is to create the con- 
 ditions of a good life for all its people. Of course 
 the State has that function. But it is one with which 
 another State seldom directly interferes. The con- 
 stitution and inner working of the State is its own 
 affair, and disturbances of it usually produce civil 
 war, which is not quite the same thing as the conflict 
 
86 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 of States with one another, though the process of 
 fighting is the same in both cases. 
 
 The mission of the State goes beyond its owh 
 constitution. Every community evolves a rule or 
 type of life, expressed in customs, institutions, and 
 laws, and covered by the general name ' civilization,' 
 a word which denotes that which it is the purpose 
 of the State to produce. The State no sooner has 
 created its civilization than it sets out to spread it. 
 Every State demands that the world shall recognize 
 its civilization. It requires other States to treat its 
 subjects in a certain way, and in regions where there 
 is no ordered Government it secures them due scope 
 for this work by setting about to protect them if it 
 can. That is the origin of most of the colonial settle- 
 ments and protectorates in the modern world. Many 
 of the British expeditions to Africa have had no 
 other motive than to secure for British subjects such 
 treatment as a civilized State would give them. 
 
 I suspect that when a community has developed 
 its own type of common life or of civilization it, 
 consciously or unconsciously, sets out to impose that 
 type upon the world, or to govern as much of the 
 world as it can in accordance with the conceptions 
 of right, righteousness, or justice which its people 
 have formed. The conflict of States may arise from 
 an opposition between two different conceptions of 
 a good life, or between two inconsistent applications 
 of it to a given subject. It may arise also from the 
 rivalry of two States in the effort to exert an influence 
 over or to govern territory in which they both have 
 
WHAT IS WAR? 87 
 
 an interest. Take the case of Germany in 1866. 
 Austria and Prussia were both members of its govern- 
 ing body. But they were rivals who could not work 
 well together. Each tried to increase its own influ- 
 ence and to diminish the other's over the govern- 
 ment of Germany. Prussia asserted that her share 
 in the government was vital to her. Austria made 
 the like assertion, and the result of a trial of strength 
 was that Austria found that she could quite well 
 exist after her influence had been shut out from Ger- 
 m:any altogether. Prussian historians assert that 
 the war was necessary for Prussia, and Austrian his- 
 torians do not deny that it was inevitable. To-day 
 all the States that were parties to the quarrel seem 
 to be satisfied with the settlement that was reached. 
 But no one suggests that that settlement could have 
 been reached by any other means than a trial of 
 strength. A nation, then, must be regarded not 
 merely from within as a community or association of 
 citizens. It js a body or corporation committed to 
 certain tasks, in the course of which it enforces a 
 conception of what ought to be. England, for 
 instance, has undertaken the government of India 
 and of various regions of Africa. She might exist 
 even if those tasks were interrupted or could not be 
 carried on. But she could not and would not 
 abandon any of them in obedience to a demand from 
 another State or Power. The demand would be 
 resented as an affront to the national personality. 
 Suppose such a demand to be made and resisted so 
 that a war arose out of it. Would the war be neces- 
 
88 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 sary or not? Most men would say that England 
 could not decline the challenge. I give this hypo- 
 thetical case to show that the question whether a war 
 is necessary or not cannot always be answered off- 
 hand. At any rate it plunges deep into the nature 
 of the State and into the conditions of its growth, 
 which are complex and various. Yet such a chal- 
 lenge as I have imagined would probably furnish a 
 motive which would stimulate to great exertions not 
 only the British Government and the people of the 
 United Kingdom, but also those of the other parts 
 of the British Empire. 
 
 Perhaps, then, we must add to our description of 
 the true pacifism that a nation must not oidy 
 organize itself, but also must mind its own business, 
 the responsibility for knowing what is and what is 
 not its business being that a mistake on the subject 
 will very probably lead through needless conflict to 
 defeat. 
 
 There is an analogy which suggests that the char- 
 acter of States and nations is the essential element 
 in the diminution of the evils of wars. The purpose 
 of the State being to secure a good life, the outcome 
 of a good type of character, every State is compelled 
 to forbid its subjects even in war to employ forms 
 of violence which would cause needless suffering. 
 That is the nature of the Geneva Convention and 
 other arrangements which introduce an element of 
 humanity into warfare. A civilized State cannot 
 afford to let its citizens become barbarians, and 
 therefore the States compare notes and embody cer- 
 
WHAT IS WAR? 89 
 
 tain restrictions in formulas which each of them can 
 recognize. The obligations they impose upon them- 
 selves have no commanding sanction other than their 
 own self-respect. 
 
 The argument I have given you has necessarily 
 been abstract in its nature. The theory of war from 
 which I set out is that of Continental thinkers, and 
 is based upon Continental conditions. It requires 
 to be supplemented by a glance at the conditions of 
 an insular State like our own. The fundamental 
 principle was that modern war, being national, knows 
 no limitation either of the means employed or of 
 the liabilities incurred. Does that condition of, un- 
 limited liability and consequent unlimited respon- 
 sibility apply to the island State? 
 
 Mr. Julian Corbett, in his essay on Some Prin- 
 cifles of Naval Strategy, seems to express the 
 opinion that British wars have been and \yill be 
 limited wars, in which there could be on neither side 
 the purpose of striking down the enemy. I am com- 
 pelled to dissent from that opinion. Naval war is 
 always swifter, more decisive, and more conclusive 
 than land war. I have discussed this character of 
 naval war in so many essays that I will not now 
 labour the point. But I would suggest for your con- 
 sideration that, since there is at sea no such differ- 
 ence between attack and defence as is peculiar to 
 land warfare, there is in naval warfare nothing 
 corresponding to the pause in operations caused by 
 that distinction. The aim of a navy is always to 
 destroy the enemy's navy, and, after that, to exert a 
 
90 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 command of the sea, which against the beaten enemy 
 is more absolute than anything known in land war- 
 fare. Every enemy of the island State must there- 
 fore aim at the destruction of the insular navy and 
 at the command of the sea. If that were obtained 
 the conquest of the island would probably be easier 
 than that of a i Continental State, because the 
 approaches by sea, for the Power that commands 
 the sea, are more advantageous for purposes of inva- 
 sion than the crossings of a land frontier, and in 
 the case of an island, enable the invader to strike 
 from any point in its whole periphery. The limita- 
 tions of English wars have hitherto been due to the 
 fact that the insular navy commanded the sea, that 
 nothing could be done by the enemy against the 
 island State, which itself had not the military force 
 to strike decisive blows, unaided by allies, upon 
 land. The responsibility of the island State to 
 refrain from unnecessary war and not to shrink from 
 necessary war is therefore not less, but greater, than 
 that of a Continental State, for the island State in 
 every serious war — and, as we have seen, national 
 wars are always infinitely serious — must stake her 
 very independence and all that goes with it upon 
 her chances of victory at sea. The nature of modern 
 war, then, lays upon every State the obligation to 
 keep the peace except in the defence of its own exist- 
 ence, material or spiritual, and the penalty of failure 
 to obey this law is defeat, of which the consequences 
 cannot be measured in advance. 
 
 There may conceivably be cases of war inecessary 
 
WHAT IS WAR? 91 
 
 to both parties, but they will certainly be rare. In 
 such cases, however, the overthrow of one side or 
 the other is as inevitable as the war. It will be a 
 question which of the two States is the fitter to sur- 
 vive. That is a question upon which no human 
 court can arbitrate, for what possible test is there of 
 fitness to survive except the fact of survival? 
 
 I conclude, then, that it is the possibility of war 
 which constrains nations to make themselves efficient. 
 National efficiency lies partly in the good organiza- 
 tion of the State itself, but partly also in the righ^ 
 choice of external aims and in the due regulation of 
 relations with the other States. These relations are 
 not only statical, but dynamical. They may be 
 those of peace or war according as they tend to 
 co-operation or to opposition. The statesman ought 
 to.be familiar with them in both forms, and any 
 science of the State which neglects this dynamical 
 aspect is imperfect — a science that is not a science. 
 For, after all, in regard to national policy, the states- 
 man has no more important function to discharge 
 than that of correctly estimating the bearings of 
 any course which he may set before himself, with 
 respect to the degree to which his nation's welfare 
 is involved in it, and therefore to the probability 
 that in case of opposition he may be able to carry 
 out his purpose. He may not always be able to 
 follow the path of peace. But if he must leave it, he 
 oug^t to know which way leads to defeat and which 
 to victory. 
 
IV 
 
 ENGLAND AND GERMAN\ * 
 
 My purpose is to ascertain what light is thrown by the 
 theory of war upon the problem of British policy 
 to-day. 
 
 By policy I jmean that sort of deliberate guidance 
 which would be given by an ideal statesman or by 
 a perfectly efficient Government to the whole of the 
 nation's affairs. 
 
 We are accustomed to distinguish between domestic 
 and foreign policy, between internal and external 
 affairs. But it will, I hope, appear from our inquiry 
 that the two branches are closely interdependent ; that 
 the domestic welfare of the State cannot be secured 
 without right action in the external field, and that 
 such action is impracticable unless the resources of the 
 State are so organized as to be available for the protec- 
 tion of its work. 
 
 I assume in Oxford, the home of the study of the 
 State, that you all recognize in the State or national 
 community the most important of all the associations 
 
 * June 8) 1912. 
 92 
 
ENGLAND AND GERMANY 93 
 
 in which men are united, and the one which sustains 
 and renders possible all the others, and that you 
 admit its mission to be to render possible to all its 
 members that good life which consists in the develop- 
 ment and use of men's best powers, or in doing the best 
 work of which they are capable. The political com- 
 munity to which we belong is the medium of our 
 education and of our industrial activity, and under 
 its shelter are rendered possible the development of 
 the social, intellectual, and spiritual activities which 
 constitute a good life, and make life worth living. To 
 facilitate these developments is the object of domestic 
 policy ; to protect them against disturbance from with- 
 out that of external policy. 
 
 Why should there be disturbances from without? 
 Because the State never exists in isolation, but as one 
 of a number of States in contact with one another. 
 
 Each State has its own independence or autonomy, 
 analogous to the personality of an individual, and 
 between a number of independent bodies in relation 
 with one another conflicts or collisions are always 
 possible. 
 
 In my lecture of last summer term on the subject of 
 the nature and conditions of peace, I discussed the 
 question whether there was a case in which a conflict 
 of purposes or interests between two States admitted 
 of no settlement by negotiation, compromise, or 
 arbitration, but only by a trial of strength. The 
 answer which imposed itself was that a community 
 can compromise or concede anything not vital to its 
 function, but that any action or demand threatening 
 
94 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 its power to realize the good life as conceived by its 
 members must necessarily be resisted. The absolute 
 case of inevitable war is when each of two States 
 regards as thus indispensable to its own welfare 
 action diametrically opposed to that similarly re- 
 garded as necessary by the other. 
 
 To this case negotiation, compromise, and arbitra- 
 tion, are all inapplicable. There must be a war in 
 which each State will believe itself to be fighting for 
 its existence. If the opposition is real, if the function 
 or mission of one State is incompatible with that of 
 the other, one or both of them will be destroyed. For 
 no nation will submit to its own extinction by diplo- 
 macy ; if its citizens have any love for it-they will face 
 the world in arms rather than submit to its extinction 
 by judicial decree. 
 
 But if the opposition is fictitious or imaginary, if 
 either State can well exist though it does not have its 
 will, the truth will be realized in the course of the 
 struggle, and the side which exaggerated its interest 
 in the matter in dispute will obtain peace upon such 
 terms as can be had. 
 
 I have brought you as quickly as I could to the 
 typical case of conflict of policies leading to war. 
 
 Before going further may I interrupt myself with 
 comments by the way ? 
 
 1. It is the fashion just now to denounce war as 
 wicked. But in this case which side is wicked ? 
 
 2. If either of the States is healthy, if it has the faith 
 and love of its people, they will cheerfully fight for 
 it. The life worth living is felt to be. worth sacrifices ; 
 
ENGLAND AND GERMANY 95 
 
 indeed, it can hardly be had without the idea of 
 sacii&ce. To die for one's community is not incon- 
 sistent with the best life ; nor is the best life possible 
 to a set of men unwilling to give their lives for their 
 nation, or, as we say, for their country. The more 
 fully the State fulfils its purpose, the greater the devo- 
 tion of its people. I remember a short speech of 
 Lord Kitchener's when unveiling a statue of General 
 Gordon. He said nothing but these words : ' A man 
 who lived a blameless life, who put duty before him- 
 self, and died happily for his country.' 
 
 3. This trial of strength seems to be the means of 
 selection among nations. The question is not whether 
 it is moral — we do not ask whether the earthquake! 
 the flood, or the lightning are moral — ^but whether 
 the statesman must take this possibility into account. 
 
 I believe that the statesman has no more important 
 duty, and that it involves — 
 
 (i) A thorough consideration of the needs and 
 aims of his own nation. 
 
 (2) A constant scrutiny of the policy of other 
 
 nations. 
 
 (3) A calculus of forces, those of his own and other 
 
 States. 
 
 For a wise policy will avoid needless quarrels, while 
 steadfastly pursuing the great aims of the nation; it 
 will not interfere with other nations' work, but will 
 carry on its own. But a nation's aims must be com- 
 mensurate with its powers, and therefore the basis of 
 a good policy must be a true strategy — ^that is, a true 
 
96 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 estimate of forces and of what can be done with them. 
 For policy is not the expression of a pious wish, but of 
 a will. It is action for a purpose. 
 
 If, then, we may describe a statesman as the 
 exponent and therefore the director of a nation's 
 policy, we must infer that, in case of a possible conflict 
 between the aims of his own and of another nation, 
 his first duty must be to form in advance a true 
 estimate of the nature of the war which, if the conflict 
 comes to a head, it wll involve. He must measure 
 the moral and physical forces by which each of the 
 contending aims will be supported. 
 
 This estimate is the statesman's work, because hi." 
 business is with the aims of his nation, and, if he ii. 
 to attain them, he must know also the aims of the 
 other nations with which his own has dealings. As 
 regards the possible forces concerned, he must, of 
 course, consult the strategist, whose business is with 
 the use of forces in action, and who therefore can form 
 a sound judgment of their quantity, quality, and 
 probable effects. The main point to be determined 
 is the character of a possible struggle. If our own 
 nation is challenged in regard to a vital matter, a 
 matter of life and death, it will fight to the last. Its 
 maxim will be death or victory. But if the point in 
 dispute is not really vital, there will be a limit to the 
 sacrifices we should be willing to make to gain it ; if we 
 find the adversary stronger than we expected, we shall 
 prefer to make a compromise or concede the point to 
 him rather than exhaust ourselves by continuing the 
 fight. In the one case we shall limit our liabilities. 
 
ENGLAND AND GERMANY 9r 
 
 in the other we cannot ; for if ^o concede the point is 
 to give up our national existence, we shall prefer to die 
 .fighting. 
 
 Within the memory of us all England has had 
 friction with several Great Powers, with France, with 
 Russia, and with Germany. The dif&culties with 
 France and Russia have been settled, and no conflict 
 now exists with either of these Powers. The friction 
 with Germany remains. What does it portend ? 
 
 In answering that question we shall do well to bear 
 in mind the views of German statesmen and strate- 
 gists, the views expounded more than eighty years 
 ago by Clausewitz and adopted by his countrymen. 
 
 According to him the political aim, the original 
 motive of a war, gives the nature of the goal to be 
 reached in the fighting, and the measure of the exer- 
 tions required to attain that goal. But the aim must 
 be considered in its effect on the people that cherishes 
 it, the appeal which it makes to them, and the response 
 which it evokes from them. If we are strong enough 
 we shall choose the highest goal, which is the entire 
 destruction of the adversary's forces, for, that accom- 
 plished, we can dictate our own terms of peace. 
 
 In order, then, to appreciate correctly the tension 
 between Germany and England, we must try to dis- 
 cover the political end set up for itself by the German 
 nation or by its statesmen, and to ascertain the kind 
 of appeal it makes to the German people and the 
 response which it calls out from them. 
 
 Germany's political end or purpose may seem at 
 first sight obscure, though it evidently consists in 
 
98 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 national self-assertion. But we can trace first the 
 growth of an anti-British policy and of a popular 
 feeling directed against England, and secondly, the 
 choice of a goal for warlike action, of a military objec- 
 tive. The German belief that England stands in the 
 way of Geirmany's growth is of gradual formation. Its 
 first stage was seen in 1883 in the beginnings of 
 German colonial enterprises, when England was 
 represented by Bismarck as putting hindrances in 
 Germany's path and as opposing her acquisition of 
 Cameroons, of Angra Pequena, and New Guinea. I 
 have written the history of these enterprises, and 
 shown how Bismarck contrived to give them an air of 
 hostility to England not justified by British policy, 
 and so to arouse in Germany the beginnings of a hatred 
 that has ever since been fomented by his successors. 
 This kind of propaganda was renewed over the 
 negotiations concerning Samoa, and was maintained 
 even after the acquisition, of Heligoland, which was 
 regarded as a masterstroke of German policy. The 
 same spirit accompanied the Emperor's famous saying, 
 ' Germany's future is on the water,' and his telegram 
 to President Kruger, which was accompanied at Berlin 
 by the careful consideration of plans of campaign 
 against England. 
 
 The South African War was the occasion of the 
 German Navy Act, of which the preamble is : ' Germany 
 must have a fighting fleet so strong that a war with 
 the adversary strongest at sea would be so dangerous 
 to that adversary as to imperil his position as a 
 Power.' Next came the Anglo-French agreement 
 
ENGLAND AND GERMANY 99 
 
 concerning Morocco and Egypt, followed by alterca- 
 tions between Germany and France, in the course of 
 which the British Government more than once gave 
 that of Germany to understand that an attack upon 
 France would find England ranged on her side. In 
 the crisis of 191 1 the speech made at a Bankers' dinner 
 at the Mansion House by Mr. Lloyd George to the 
 effect that in case of a new European war England 
 would not allow herself to be treated as a negligible 
 quantity was everywhere understood to be a warning 
 to Germany not to attack France. It was deeply 
 resented in Germany, where a Press campaign against 
 England was conducted by the Admiralty, and the 
 statement repeatedly made that the British Govern- 
 ment had contemplated and prepared a surprise attack 
 on the German Navy. This was followed by a new 
 Army and Navy Act. 
 
 Thus, the present feeling in Germany is that 
 England is the enemy. We may infer that the 
 situation is one of those in which the German 
 strategist* said that 'a small occasion would pr©duce 
 a great explosion.' 
 
 So far we have sought in vain for a British political 
 aim or end which would justify the German anti- 
 British feeling. Nor is more light to be had from our 
 examination of the motives of past disputes. In the 
 early eighties the Germans were taught to look round 
 the world for colonies of settlement. That was at the 
 time of the annexations in Africa and the Pacific, which 
 
 * Clausewitz, Vom Kriege, bk. i., § 11. 
 
loo GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 however, did not admit of European settlement, as 
 they were not in the temperate zone. But that cry has 
 been given up, for the emigjration from Germany has 
 long ceased to be large enough to be worth consider- 
 ing. Next was urged the need for Germany to have 
 colonies to produce materials for her manufacturing in- 
 dustries, and for markets for her goods. But the British 
 Colonies supply such materials and offer such markets 
 without restriction. They are as open to German 
 traders as to English. There can be no cause for a 
 great war in either of these cries for colonies. 
 
 More recently, however, has be«i set up the doctrine 
 that England is geographically in Germany's way ; that 
 the insular State lies across the sea-routes by which 
 Germany has access to the ocean, and that this situa- 
 tion of a maritime Power is a fetter upon Germany's 
 activity. 
 
 This is the view that has supplied the German 
 Government with its military objective — ^the British 
 navy. For the preamble to the German Navy Act of 
 19 1 2, already quoted, means that the purpose for which 
 the German navy exists is to overthrow the British 
 navy and the British State. I have given you the 
 purpose for which the German navy has been created 
 in the words of the German law. That law has been 
 expounded by German naval writers, by none more 
 forcibly than Admiral von Maltzahn, who wrote in the 
 Deutsche Revue in igo8 : 
 
 'Germany's endeavour must be to possess a fleet 
 strong enough to make a blockade of our coasts impos- 
 sible even to the strongest naval Power, which suffices 
 
ENGLAND AND GERMANY lOi 
 
 also to avert the danger of a landing and of a dis- 
 turbance of the coast towns. . . . This does not mean 
 that our sea-power must rival that of England, which 
 is neither necessary nor -possible. Our forces must be . 
 strong enough for their work. That work absolutely 
 requires a forcible o-ffensive. Nothing but an energetic 
 conduct of the war, in which all considerations are laid 
 aside \ruck,sichtslos'], in which all permitted means are 
 used, and which makes the assailant feel in their whole 
 weight the consequences of his conduct, can lead to 
 the goal in a war that would be forced upon us, and 
 which has for its purpose the economical ruin of our 
 country and the misery of our people.' 
 
 Observe the contradiction. You hear that the 
 German fleet is for defence, and does not want to rival . 
 that of England. But the defender aims at victory, 
 and the Admiral wants victory by the offensive. 
 
 No one has better put this German view than 
 Captain Mahan in his volume entitled The Interest 
 of America in International Conditions, published in 
 1 9 1 o. With what eagerness the doctrine that England 
 is the enemy has been accepted in Germany those of 
 you who have any acquaintance with the current 
 literature of Germany and with the German news- 
 papers and magazines need not be told. The fact is 
 that the whole German nation, with its sixty millions 
 of people, is bent upon being able to break the naval 
 power of England, and has been taught for years 
 that this action is vital to Germany's welfare. 
 
 That is one side of the picture. It ought not to 
 leave a British statesman in doubt as to the objective 
 of German policy, nor as to the degree to which 
 
102 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 that policy is supported by the mass of the German 
 people. 
 
 Turning to the other side of the problem, we must 
 see what estimate the German statesman will make 
 of the way in which England will regard German 
 policy. He can read in Mahan's volume to which I 
 have referred you that, 'for reasons absolutely vital, 
 Great Britain caimot afford to surrender the supremacy 
 at sea.' That is beyond doubt the belief of our 
 countrymen. The mere statement suffices to show that 
 between German and British policy there is a direct, 
 contradictory opposition. The one asserts that Great 
 Britain must have, the other that she shall not have, 
 the Command of the Sea. So far, then, we seem to 
 have the typical case of an inevitable war, a direct 
 opposition of wills upon a matter held on each side 
 to be vital. This is a case of a war sufficiently 
 probable to make it desirable for the statesman to 
 consult the strategist. 
 
 Let us hear what the German strategist says about 
 such consultation. In his classical treatise on war the 
 German cinalyst distinguishes between several degrees 
 or grades of war corresponding to the exertions that 
 the State is able and willing to make. First comes 
 defence, the attitude of. a Power that is unready or 
 the weaker of two antagonists. The purpose of 
 defence is to gain time either for reinforcements or for 
 assistance to come into the struggle. Next comes 
 attack, aiming at something short of the overthrow 
 of the adversary; and, lastly, attack which aims at 
 nothing less th;an. his overthrow. 
 
ENGLAND AND GERMANY 103 
 
 By overthrowing the adversary is meant — 
 
 (i) Crushing his army, if his power is in his army. 
 
 (2) Taking his capital. 
 
 (3) Striking an effective blow against his chief 
 
 ally, if the ally is stronger than he. 
 
 The Power that contemplates action of this kind must 
 be strong enough — 
 
 (i) To gain a decisive victory over the enemy's 
 
 force ; 
 (2) To carry on the effort to the point at which a 
 
 restoration of the equilibrium is not to be 
 
 thought of; 
 
 and must not by its victory stir up fresh enemies who 
 will compel it to let the first alone. 
 
 If these conditions can be fulfilled, the principles 
 that should govern the direction of the war are — 
 
 (i) To act with as much concentration as 
 
 possible. 
 (2) To act as quickly as possible. 
 
 Concentration. — You must analyze the enemy's 
 power till you have found its centre of gravity, if 
 possible its one centre of gravity ; you must limit your 
 blow against this one centre of gravity to as few main 
 actions as possible — if you can, to one. 
 The determination of the centre of gravity dep^ads — 
 (i) On the political conditions. Is there a single 
 enemy or is there an alliance ? If an alliance, what 
 
104 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 is the common purpose and what the strength of the 
 interests or of the will that holds the allies together ? 
 The maxim that applies against allies is divide et 
 impera; strike at the common interest. 
 
 (2) On the theatre of war. The German strate- 
 gists, so far as we know, began their serious study 
 of a war against England at the time of the 
 Emperor's message to President Kruger, when 
 a plan of campaign against England was con- 
 sidered by the naval and military authorities at 
 Berlin. In order to determine the centre of gravity of 
 England's strength, they would take the English 
 analyses accessible to them. These consisted in the 
 English writings on naval strategy and on national 
 defence published during the la;tter half of the niner 
 teenth century. The more important of them were 
 Sir John Colomb's Defence of Great and Greater 
 Britain, Admiral Colomb's Naval Warfare, and 
 the writings of Captain Mahan. The doctrine of these 
 writers were summed up in 1892 in an essay on 
 Imperial Defence, for which Sir Charles Dilke and I 
 shared the responsibility. 'The British Empire,' we 
 wrote, 'is the possession of the sea,' and that posses- 
 sion we explained as the consequence of the success 
 of the navy in a series of wars in each of which it had 
 been able to assert the command of the sea. We 
 defined the command of the sea as the possession of 
 a fleet which has gained so decisive a victory as to 
 render hopeless the renewal of the struggle against it. 
 On one point Sir Charles Dilke and I agreed to differ. 
 He was opposed to any British policy of alliance with 
 
ENGLAND AND GERMANY 105 
 
 other Powers. I came to the conclusion, after long 
 consideration, not that Great Britain should bind her 
 policy by pledges or promises, but that her command 
 of the sea had in fact been gained by co-operation 
 with other European Powers; that her policy had 
 been and must be to try to maintain the balance of 
 power in Europe; and that her navy had been and 
 must be the fly-wheel or balance-weight in the 
 European system, which is an association of indepen- 
 dent States for the purpose of resisting the domina- 
 tion of any one Great Power. All these ideas were 
 beyond doubt considered by the German strategists 
 and statesmen, and we may be sure that , German 
 policy aims — 
 
 (1) At severing the link between Great Britain 
 
 And the Continental Powers. 
 
 (2) At the drfeat of the British navy. 
 
 (3) At rendering England's recovery of the com- 
 
 mand of the sea impossible. 
 
 The defeat of the British navy would carry with 
 it— 
 
 (i) The loss of British independence, for Great 
 Britain, shorn of her navy, can always be 
 coerced. 
 (2) The disruption of the Empire, of which the 
 navy is the connecting-link. 
 
 Germany's present policy, embodied in her quite 
 recent legislation, is in fact — 
 
 (i) To increase her navy to the standard laid 
 down in the navy law. 
 
io6 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 (2) To increase her anny to a strength more than 
 equal to the French army together with the 
 British expeditionary force. 
 
 What must be the British policy in reply to this 
 action of Grermany ? 
 
 First of all, Great Britain must do, what she ought 
 in any case to do, make suitable preparations for 
 victory in a naval war. The most important matters 
 are to ha\>e a naval strategist as a member of the 
 Government, and to cherish and cultivate tactical skill 
 in her admirals. Next she must do all she can to 
 insure that in case of a German attack she will 
 have the co-operation of other Powers. For this there 
 are two methods — 
 
 (i) She must show that her national life serves 
 a purpose valuable to the rest of the world. 
 
 (2) She must show herself able to help the Powers 
 
 on whose co-operation she counts. 
 
 This means, as regards the co-operation of France, 
 that Great Britain, in addition to a navy well pre- 
 pared for victory, must have an army able to play its 
 part in a joint struggle with Germany, and strong 
 enough, in co-operation with the French army, to make 
 France secure. If the navy and the army are to reach 
 the standards thus defined, England must devote 
 some of ber best minds to the business of war, and 
 must find means of training her population to arms. 
 
 (3) British statesmen, in their dealings with other 
 
 Powers, must follow the maxim, 'Do right 
 and fear not' 
 
ENGLAND AND GERMANY 107 
 
 The c<w>peration with other Powers is a matter of 
 British aims and British strength rather than of nego- 
 tiating agreements. If two Powers have a common 
 aim they will co-operate for its realization, whether 
 bound by treaty or not, and if they are not in sub- 
 stantial accord any treaty they may make will be an 
 embarrassment rather than a help. 
 
 Meantime, Germany on her part is developing her 
 plans and taking pains to obtain the co-operation of 
 other Powers. Of Austria-Hungary she feels secure,* 
 of the co-operation of Italy she could not be sure, 
 owing to the discord between Italy and Austria- 
 Hungary. Of Turkey, Germany is making every 
 effort to secure the assistance. 
 
 Thus far I have based my exposition on German 
 views of German policy and strategy and of British 
 policy. It points to a war both inevitable and of 
 extreme violence — a outrance. That being the case, 
 at any rate in the German view, it behoves Great 
 Britain to make herself ready and to have a policy 
 of her own. But if she does that there need be no 
 war. For the object of a war is acceptable conditions 
 of peace. To England the status quo is satisfactory ; 
 she will begin no war to change it ; she will therefore 
 not attack Germany, and German statements to the 
 effect that she contemplates such attack are false. 
 What can Germany desire that is worth a war? 
 
 ♦ When I was at Vienna in 1907, Count Aehrenthal told me 
 in very strong terms that, in case she should be at war with 
 Germany, England would certainly find Austria- Hungary acting 
 side by side with Germany. 
 
io8 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 Colonies she may wish for, but, now that she has no 
 emigrants, can hardly be supposed to think them a 
 necessity. Markets she requires. But to British 
 markets she has the same access as have Englishmen, 
 though no doubt the adoption by Great Britain of 
 the policy of protective tariffs for the Empire would 
 alter that condition, and give Germany a plausible 
 case for quarrel. 
 
 I conclude that if Germany should take the initiative 
 in a war against England she would not do so under 
 the pressure of any vital necessity; she is not driven 
 to fight for her existence. She would therefore not 
 have the supreme reason for fighting to the last gasp, 
 and would be ready to make peace before that limit 
 were reached. That being the case, I doubt whether, 
 in case of real preparation on England's part and a 
 clear, decided policy expounded by her statesmen, the 
 statesmen of Germany would undertake an enterprise 
 which ought to be fraught with great danger. But 
 pray observe that the condition on which in my judg- 
 ment war can be avoided is not the passive indiffer- 
 ence of our own country to the affairs of Europe, which 
 I think so closely concern her, but her decided choice 
 of a policy in Europe, and a vigorous, determined 
 effort to set her forces in order for the assertion of that 
 policy. 
 
V 
 ENGLAND AND GERMANY* 
 
 II 
 
 In my last lecture I attempted a general reconnais- 
 sance of the nature of the conflict between British 
 and German policies. I endeavoured to give you a 
 glimpse into the German way of considering both 
 the problem of policy and the problem of strategy, 
 a glimpse which I am well aware could neither be 
 satisfactory nor conclusive, but without which it 
 might have been thought that I was lightly and 
 rashly approaching a subject the gravity of which 
 it is impossible to exaggerate. The preliminary con- 
 clusion which we reached was that while a British 
 command of the sea is regarded as the sine qua non 
 of any British policy whatever, the modern German 
 conception is that a British command of the sea is 
 inconsistent with the well-being and the necessary 
 development of the German Empire. Accordingly, 
 the English and German conceptions of policy are 
 directly contradictory. If they are both true, a war 
 between the two nations is inevitable, and the Ger- 
 
 * June IS, 1912. 
 109 
 
no GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 man conception of that war is that it must of neces- 
 sity have for its object the military overthrow of the 
 adversary. 
 
 To-day I shall, in the first place, attempt a more 
 exact statement of the essentials of British policy in 
 its dynamical and its spiritual aspects, which 
 together constitute the framework of the British 
 nation. I shall then recapitulate the means by 
 which Germany thinks she must attack the founda- 
 tions of that structure, and the means by which that 
 attack must be repelled. And in conclusion I shall 
 attempt to show that in boldly accepting the chal- 
 lenge lies the best hope of averting the collision and 
 of reconciling the welfare of the two nations. 
 
 The characteristic of a nation, of a people organ- 
 ized as a single State, is independence or sovereignty. 
 It submits to no constraint or dictation from out- 
 side, and the first condition of national existence is 
 therefore the power of resistance to such constraint, 
 the power of self-defence. The self-defence of an 
 island is mainly a matter of naval warfare, of which 
 the principles are consequences of the nature of the 
 sea. The combatants cannot move about on the 
 water as they can upon the land, and must make use 
 of vessels, all of which are governed by the law of 
 displacement, that any ship, with all that it contains, 
 weighs exactly the equivalent of the quantity of water 
 which she displaces. For this reason there is in all 
 ages of developed warfare a difference between the 
 merchant ship and the ship of war. The merchant 
 ship is made as light as is consistent with flotation 
 
ENGLAND AND GERMANY in 
 
 and protection from the waves; the ship of war is 
 made of great strength in order to protect her from 
 the blows of the enemy. The ship of war is, there- 
 fore, unsuited for trade, and the merchant ship 
 unsuited for fighting. The merchant ship, by reason 
 of the lightness of its structure and smallness of its 
 crew, is unfit for an encounter with the strongly built 
 and fully manned ship of war. Ships of war, being 
 costly, and being of little use for purposes of trade, 
 are never very numerous, and accordingly in naval war 
 the first object of either side is to destroy the enemy's 
 ships of war. The side which can do that, and 
 which, having done it, still has a fleet of warships 
 of its own, is said to have the command of the sea, 
 because the enemy has nothing with which he can 
 resist the surviving fleet, which itself can move to' 
 any point of the maritime theatre of war and ther^ 
 deliver its blow. Suppose the island State to have 
 gained this advantage, the adversary cannot attempt 
 to conquer it by military force, for he would have 
 to embark his army in ships, which by hypothesis 
 must be merchant ships, and to land them on the 
 island coast. The experiment will evidently be in 
 the highest degree risky, because if the fleet of trans- 
 ports be found by the island fleet of warships, the 
 transports will be defenceless, and will be either 
 taken or sunk. Thus, the effective defence of an 
 island State consists in victory at sea and in the 
 destruction of the hostile navy. Suppose the result 
 of the naval war to be unfavourable to the island 
 State, so that the adversary has gained the com- 
 
112 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 mand of the sea, there are then two weapons which 
 can be used against the island State. The first is 
 to move an army by sea, and to land it on the island 
 for its conquest. The insular State has lost the 
 power of preventing the transport; the army, there- 
 fore, can be landed with safety. The disembarka- 
 tion of an army can hardly be prevented by an army 
 on land, because the transports can move so quickly 
 from point to point that an army on land cannot 
 keep pace with them, and the army from the sea 
 can almost always begin its landing at some un- 
 defended point. Military history abounds with 
 instances of armies successfully landed. I find it 
 difficult to recall the case of a serious attempt at 
 landing which was not successful. The insular 
 State, therefore, as against a Power which has gained 
 the command of the sea, can hardly prevent inva- 
 sion, though if it has the stronger army it may defeat 
 the invader. It is powerless, also, to interfere with 
 the sea communications of the invading army. The 
 enemy victorious at sea will proceed to capture or 
 destroy the merchant ships of the island State, and 
 in this way to prevent that State from having any 
 communications with the rest of the world and from 
 carrying on exports and imports. The island State 
 will be like a besieged city, and if it is dependent on 
 supplies from without may be reduced by starvation. 
 These are the reasons why the defence of an insular 
 State consists in victory at sea carried to the point 
 at which the command of the sea is obtained. The 
 foundation of any and every British policy is the 
 
ENGLAND AND GERMANY 113 
 
 natural principle that an island State cannot per- 
 manently maintain its independence except by naval 
 victory, which, to be effective, must be carried to 
 the point at which it becomes the command of the 
 sea. This principle I would call the law of insularity. 
 
 There is no need to offer illustrations of a prin- 
 ciple which is the staple of the modern history 
 of England, as well as of the recent history of 
 Japan. 
 
 The power which is given by complete victory at 
 sea is peculiar and has no analogies. The vic- 
 torious fleet prevents the defeated enemy from mak- 
 ing any use of the sea at all, while retaining it as an 
 open road for itself and its own people, and this 
 power extends as far as the radius of action of a 
 fleet. As against the defeated enemy, it hardly has 
 limits. When the British navy in the last great war 
 had defeated the navies of its Continental enemies, 
 a British man-of-war could sail to any part of the 
 world with little risk of meeting any Continental 
 adversary. It could convoy merchant ships or trans- 
 ports to any point. Behind the British squadrons 
 watching the French fleets in the fortifled harbours 
 of the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts, the British 
 Mercantile Marine was busy on every sea, carrying 
 on trade with every coast and every port of Asia, 
 Africa, and America. And British troops were 
 engaged in local conflicts in each of those Conti- 
 nents. It is upon the success in war of the British 
 navy, and upon the potential command of the sea 
 which it has enjoyed during long periods of peace, 
 
 8 
 
114 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 that what we call the British Empire was founded 
 and is based. 
 
 The law of insularity would apply to any inhabited 
 world made up of land and sea, and it will probably 
 in the future be applicable, with modifications, to 
 the conditions of aerial warfare. Victory in the air 
 will give the command of the air to the side that 
 wins it. We are concerned with our own globe and 
 with actual conditions, and on this globe the islands 
 are small and the continents great; the more impor- 
 tant islands are very near to one or other of the 
 great continents, being, in fact, fragments of them. 
 How, then, can a State composed of a small island 
 like Great Britain, separated from a great Continent 
 like Europe by a shallow arm of the sea, retain an 
 independence which has to rest, first, upon victory at 
 sea; secondly, upon treaties of peace in which its 
 enemies acquiesce in that independence and in the 
 •^potential command of the sea which it implies, as 
 well as in the existence of the Empire which it 
 involves ? Two answers are given to this question. 
 The first is given in the history of England and of 
 Europe; the second by the ambition of Germany. 
 The history of modem Europe is that of the growth, 
 side by side, of a number of independent States or 
 sovereignties. In this process there have been a 
 series of attempts by one or another of the sovereign 
 Powers to make itself, to use a feudal expression, 
 lord paramount over the others. The Papacy, the 
 Holy Roman Empire and its Austrian heirs, the 
 Spanish Monarchy, the French Monarchy and the 
 
ENGLAND AND GERMANY 115 
 
 French Empire, have each of them in turn made this 
 effort. In every case it has been shipwrecked upon 
 the determination of the other nations concerned to 
 maintain their own freedom, their own independ- 
 ence, their own sovereignty. The interests of Eng- 
 land and of Great Britain have always been closely 
 interwoven with those of the various European 
 States. Her people have been concerned in the 
 questions of principle and her Government in the 
 questions of power which have divided the Conti- 
 nent. And, accordingly, in the great conflicts she 
 has taken her part, usually as one of a group of 
 allies united to resist some growing ascendancy and 
 to assert an independence equally vital to them all. 
 Her weapons have been a navy, usually in the end 
 victorious, and an army, the co-operation of which 
 has repeatedly been an important contributory 
 factor in the result. 
 
 The principle here concerned is that of the balance 
 of power, which is the phrase in which, for several 
 centuries, the European spirit has expressed the idea 
 of freedom, conceived in the shape of the independ- 
 ence of States or nations. In the economy of 
 Europe the British navy, supplemented by a British 
 army that could be moved to any theatre of war, 
 have performed the function of a flywheel, or regu- 
 lator of the balance, and by this means, in the Euro- 
 pean debates, England has had the casting vote. 
 
 I doubt whether any Continental historian, how- 
 ever biassed by national prejudice, fails to recognize 
 that this is the function that England has performed 
 
ii6 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 in and for the European system, or hesitates to 
 admit that it has been a service to the whole com- 
 munity. And the correlative to this service ren- 
 dered to Europe has been that England has been 
 able or been compelled to undertake that further 
 function which consists in the government of coun- 
 tries like India and Egypt, and in the establishment 
 of those colonies which are now known as the King's 
 Dominions Beyond the Seas. 
 
 To the question, then, how a small insular State 
 like Great Britain has been permitted to have the 
 command of the sea and the Empire which goes with 
 it, I submit, as the answer of history, that in fighting 
 for her own independence she has been fighting for 
 the freedom of Europe, and that the service thus 
 rendered to Europe and to mankind has carried with 
 it the possibility of that larger service to which we 
 give the name of Empire. 
 
 I wish I knew how to impress upon you the pro- 
 found conviction with which I am possessed that 
 service is the law of our national being. Our island 
 home is so placed that our independence, the possi- 
 bility of our governing ourselves, of maintaining 
 our free institution and our conception of a good 
 life (which, again, is the service of the individual to 
 the community), entirely depends on our being able 
 to defeat our enemies at sea. Our power to do that 
 within the conditions of Europe depends on our 
 policy being just and right in a sense that appeals 
 to our neighbours in Europe, so that we may be 
 regarded, as we have been in the past, as the 
 
ENGLAND AND GERMANY 117 
 
 defenders of the weak and the opposers of the stroijg. 
 In virtue of services that none but an insular Power 
 could render, England has been permitted to extend 
 her responsibilities in a fashion which, had she not 
 been insular, would have been a danger to the liber- 
 ties of Europe. If she should lose her sea-power 6r 
 become weaker in that form of strength than a rival, 
 she must cease to be independent. If she should 
 fail to use her sea-power to resist an overlordship of 
 the Continent, she must expect to have to defend 
 herself against Europe led by an overlord; and if 
 she should misuse it by employing it in a wrong 
 cause, she must expect a European combination to 
 transfer to other hands so potent an instrument. 
 That is in brief outline a statement of the British 
 position, dynamical in so far as it rests upon power 
 at sea, and spiritual in so far as it rests upon ser- 
 vice to other nations. 
 
 The view which I have given you of the structure 
 of our nation is not new, not popular, not taught in 
 our class-rooms. But it is the truth. You cannot 
 upset it, and the question is whether Germany can. 
 
 Not if our people are true to their history and 
 their calling. But there have been strange lapses. 
 When I first set forth this account of England and 
 her relations to Europe and the Empire, I quoted 
 from an old song a couplet in which Thompson in 
 his 'Alfred' expressed the power given by naval 
 victory : 
 
 ' All thine shall be the subject main, 
 And every shore it circles thine.' 
 
ii8 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 The Daily Nems reviled me for coining fictitious 
 extracts from spurious ballads. Its editor had never 
 read 'Rule, Britannia.' 
 
 The Empire, as I have shown, rests upon service 
 to Europe and victories won in conjunction with 
 half of Europe. Yet in our day one of the great 
 parties in the State has so far forgotten the founda- 
 tions of that Empire as to propose to turn it into 
 an estate for exclusive British exploitation by means 
 of a ring fence of tariffs. The British Empire is a 
 trust for humanity, and to convert it into a monopoly 
 would be a breach of trust. 
 
 The German writers do not, so far as I can gather, 
 deny the historical truth of this account. They do 
 not deny the services rendered by England in the 
 past; they admit that the modern growth of German 
 oversea trade and the possibility of Germany having 
 acquired such so-called colonies as she possesses are 
 due to the fact that for a hundred years the British 
 navy has been the policeman of every sea in the world. 
 But they assert that times have changed. I will not 
 now consider the extreme ideas preached, for example, 
 by General von Bemhardi, who boldly advocates a 
 war of conquest as needful for Germany's welfare. But 
 I will take the opinions of a naval strategist of great 
 breadth of judgment. Admiral Freiherr von Maltzahn, 
 who for some time had charge of the subject of naval 
 warfare at the Marine Academy at Kiel, and who in 
 1905 published an admirable historical sketch of naval 
 warfare. Admiral von Maltzahn declares that 'the 
 maritime interests of all States all over the world are 
 
ENGLAND AND GERMANY 119 
 
 so interwoven with one another as to have created a 
 solidarity of interests which would no longer endure 
 such a supremacy at sea of one State as resulted from 
 the Napoleonic wars.' 
 
 'The England of 18 10 was nearly bled to death by 
 the closing of the Continent, though she was not beaten 
 in war, and the British Empire of to-day would hardly 
 be able to endure a general conflagration (J^eltbrand) 
 in spite of the strength of her fleet, least of all with the 
 gap which would be caused in her armour by her fight- 
 ing down a strong opponent.' 
 
 This is vague language which I do not perfectly 
 understand. It reveals a hope that the British Empire 
 may be upset, and that Germany looks forward to 
 taking a hand in the war which is to produce that 
 result. 
 
 In another passage the Admiral describes the 
 present time as one of ' a community of the maritime 
 Powers' (Staatengemeinschaft der Seestaaten), and 
 gives as a synonym for that phrase the words ' an 
 armed -peace at sea.' 
 
 I am afraid these expressions will help you little. 
 The close connection of the interests of the maritime 
 Powers means no more than that in a European war, 
 now as of old, they would all sooner or later be com- 
 pelled to take sides ; that one side or the other would 
 be victorious, so that in the end the fleets of the 
 Powers taking the other side would all be destroj^d, 
 and the victors would command the sea. The great 
 question for the maritime and other Powers is whether 
 they wish Germany to destroy the other fleets, and. 
 
120 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 then, with her combined army and navy, to annex and 
 govern or protect all Europe, or whether they prefer 
 that naval victory should fall, as it did before, to 
 England. 
 
 But the Admiral goes on to explain an 'armed 
 peace' : 
 
 'War has for its aim to compel peace upon our 
 conditions. Armed peace aims at preparing the 
 means for war in such strength and in such a state of 
 readiness that the enemy, the State with whose in- 
 terests our interests conflict, will remain at peace imder 
 our conditions.' According to this fully qualified 
 exponent, the dynamical purpose of Grerman policy is 
 to be so strong as to compel other States, and England 
 in particular, to remain at peace under such conditions 
 as Germany may dictate. We usually think of utter 
 defeat as the case in which the beaten side has to allow 
 the victor to dictate his terms of peace ; but it appears 
 that the German conception at the present time is that 
 Germany, without actual fighting, by the mere prepara- 
 tion and display of force, is to obtain all the results 
 of decisive victory. 
 
 This is the policy of a perpetual standing ulti- 
 matum. Germany is represented by one of her most 
 serious thinkers as saying to her neighbours, more 
 especially to England, 'You can have peace so long 
 as we have our way; if you will not let us have our 
 way, you shall have war in which we shall aim at your 
 overthrow.' You may perhaps be a little startled by 
 this, the mildest expression which I have been able 
 to find of modem German policy. Do not let it arouse 
 
ENGLAND AND GERMANY 121 
 
 your patriotic indignation, which would be out of 
 place. Let us, above all things, be fair ; let us recog- 
 nize that the German writer from whom I have quoted 
 is, after all, only copying from English models. No 
 less a statesman than the Earl of Rosebery, in the 
 preface which he contributed now many years ago to 
 a popular account of the British Empire by our friend 
 Mr. George Parkin, described the British ideal as 
 'peace secured by preponderance,' which is only an^ 
 epigrammatic way of putting the thought expressed by 
 Admiral von Maltzahn. 
 
 I have now sufficiently set before you the nature of 
 the opposition between British and German policies. 
 You will see that it is not peace but preponderance 
 that is in each case the real object. The truth cannot 
 be too often repeated, that peace is never the object of 
 policy; you cannot define peace except by reference 
 to war, which is a means and never an end. 
 
 Let us turn now to England's defence, and consider 
 first briefly its material aspect. Evidently the funda- 
 mental thing is victory in the naval war. The ideal 
 would be to assert from the begirming and maintain 
 throughout the command of the sea. For that purpose 
 only one plan of campaign is known. You must from 
 the outset observe the enemy's ports, stationing near 
 to each of them a fleet able to fight, with fair chance 
 of success, any hostile fleet that may come out. You 
 must also tell off one or more cruisers to watch each 
 of the enemy's cruisers in any part of the world. This 
 is the system known, as regards the battle fleets, as 
 'masking,' while, as regards the cruisers, I suggested 
 
122 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 many years ago for this method the term ' shadowing.' 
 In 1888, when the necessity of the masking policy was 
 universally recognized by British Admirals, a com- 
 mittee of Admirals reported that for the masking 
 policy the battleships available should be in the pro- 
 portion of at least five to three of the enemy's vessels 
 in harbour, while the cruisers so employed should be 
 not less than two to one of those of the enemy's force 
 to be observed. The cruisers required for shadowing 
 are, of course, extra beyond this calculation. A glance 
 at the Dilke return issued last week gives the following 
 figures as regards battleships : 
 
 British Navy. 
 
 Built, 55 
 Building, 10 
 
 Foreign Navy. 
 
 i-Neeaea 
 for Masking-. 
 
 Germany (built), 33 
 
 55 
 
 Germany (building), 9 , 
 
 15 
 
 Austria (built), 12 
 
 20 
 
 Italy (built), 8 
 
 ... 14 or IS 
 
 Austria (building), 4 
 
 — 
 
 Italy (building), 6 
 
 — 
 
 France (built), 21 
 
 — 
 
 France (building), 7 
 
 — 
 
 According to these figures, the British navy is just 
 strong enough at this moment to carry out the masking 
 policy, the policy associated with the name of Lord 
 St. Vincent, against the German navy alone, though 
 for that operation a reserve is essential, and the reserve 
 would have to be drawn from ships not appearing in 
 the Dilke return, and therefore of doubtful fighting 
 value. When the ships building in both countries are 
 ready, the St. Vincent policy cannot be carried out 
 even against Germany alone. The Admiralty, there- 
 
ENGLAND AND GERMANY 123 
 
 fore, must be assumed to have abandoned the St. Vin- 
 cent policy, the only one by which the command of 
 the sea can be assumed at the outset. Any other 
 policy starts with a doubtful command of the sea, and 
 leaves the issue to be settled by battle, in which the 
 decisive factors are spiritual and intellectual rather 
 than material The moment that other Powers come 
 in on the German side, the British command of the sea 
 becomes more doubtful. When the ships building 
 are completed, the total for Germany and Austria- 
 Hungary becomes fifty-eight against the British sixty- 
 five. The British fleet would be operating in two 
 widely distant theatres of war, and could have a 
 decided superiority in one only by reducing her 
 fleet in the other to equality with the local adversary 
 there. A defeat in the area of equality would probably 
 upset the balance of the whole. 
 
 It looks as though the assumption were that another 
 navy or navies could be relied upon for co-operation 
 with the British, and that may be the case with the 
 French navy. In that event, of course, the French 
 army would have to fight against the German army, 
 which its Government could hardly be expected to 
 call upon it to do unless there were a fair prospect of 
 success. But the growth of Germany's population, 
 which is now half as large again as that of France, and 
 the additions just made to the German army, give 
 Germany the numerical preponderance. It seems, 
 therefore, natural to suppose that the naval co-opera- 
 tion of France with Great Britain must depend upon 
 the value of the military co-operation of Great Britain 
 
124 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 with France. The military question, therefore, is, 
 With what kind of an army is England prepared to 
 take part in a European war? Is she prepared, in 
 the age of nations in arms, to play again the part 
 which she played in the age of standing armies, and 
 to throw into the scale a Marlborough or a Wellington 
 with an army proportionate to those of the other 
 belligerents? (Forces in 1815: Allies together, 
 600,000; French altogether, 350,000. In the Nether- 
 lands : French, 130,000; Bliicher, 120,000; Wellington, 
 100,000.) 
 
 In 1 81 5 England, after carrying on by her own 
 resources the whole of the maritime war, took a serious 
 share in the land war. Wellington's army, however 
 raised, was comparable in strength with those of 
 Bliicher and of Napoleon. 
 
 To-day England's naval effort is by no means pro- 
 portionately equal to that which she made in the war 
 that ended at Trafalgar, while her military effort is 
 out of all proportion smaller. 
 
 Germany in 1888 made arrangements in case of a 
 war on two frontiers to place a million men on each 
 frontier, and to have a third million in reserve. 
 To-day she can put still larger forces in the field. 
 
 France makes, in proportion to her population, a 
 still greater military effort. 
 
 But the British expeditionary force at its best will 
 put on to the battlefield only some 160,000 men, a 
 number smaller than that of Wellington and Blucher in 
 1815, though it will be far better provided with artiUery. 
 
 These "figures prove that hitherto our statesmen and 
 
ENGLAND AND GERMANY 125 
 
 our pbople have not taken seriously the challenge 
 thrown down by Germany to their national existence. 
 To suppose that England can do no more is, of course, 
 absurd. She can do as much as other nations if she 
 exerts herself as they do. The answer to the question 
 of method is that where there is a will there is a way, 
 and little progress will be made by controversies about 
 means until our statesmen and our citizens have agreed 
 in a common recognition of the end. On the subject 
 of military means, therefore, I will con&ne myself to 
 the briefest possible statement of the essentials of an 
 army, as a help to your judgment concerning the value 
 for war of schemes that may be propounded. The 
 things that are vital for an army are the confidence of 
 the men in their leaders — ^that is, in the of&cers of all 
 ranks, especially of the highest rank — and skill in the 
 use of weapons, of which the most important is the 
 bullet. Skill in arms is a matter of practice; con- 
 fidence in the leaders depends on the leaders them- 
 selves. Thus, the problem of making an army is the 
 problem of the education of officers; it is insoluble 
 except as a part of a national education and a national 
 organization, for the education of officers will always 
 be based on that of the class from which they are 
 taken, and upon the conception of war cherished by 
 the statesmen and generals likely to be charged with 
 its conduct. The question of material means is subor- 
 dinate, because the real question is whether England 
 will accept or shirk the challenge thrown down to her, 
 whether she has faith in herself and her cause. I will 
 put before you a single consideration that shows what 
 the answer must be. 
 
126 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 There Is a third party to the conflict of policies 
 which I have described. Germany offers to take 
 England's place, to command the sea, to govern 
 Europe as England has never tried to do, and to 
 Teutonize the lands beyond the seas. The other 
 nations may have a word to say to that claim. They 
 may have a choice between Germany and England; 
 they may have a preference. But if there is no divi- 
 sion they cannot give their votes. They, not England 
 nor Germany, are the judges of which is the better 
 cause, but they carmot give judgment for England if 
 England abandons herself. The answer, therefore, 
 cannot be doubtful, though we are as a nation far from 
 realizing what it means. In 1792, when the last great 
 conflict was about to begin, Arthur Young wrote these 
 words : ' England holds to-day the balance of the 
 world ; she has but to speak and it is secure.' These 
 words are recalled by the events of last summer. You 
 saw war threatening. You heard the word spoken, 
 and perceived that the threat was abandoned and dis- 
 avowed. That word was a programme. It has to 
 be made good by an effort of this nation to fit her 
 people, rich and poor alike, to serve her in peace or 
 war by living and by dying for her. 
 
 Let the effort be made and the war-cloud may dis- 
 appear. For England aroused to the sense of her 
 calling will be stronger than ever before, and so soon 
 as that is seen to be the case, so soon as she shows the 
 will to stand up for herself in earnest, she will have, 
 I would not say followers, but comrades. Peace will 
 then indeed be secured by preponderance, and Germans 
 
ENGLAND AND GERMANY 127 
 
 may come to realize that Gennan/s future on the water 
 is not imperilled by that British navy which played 
 so decisive a part in what the Germans recognize as 
 their war of freedom. 
 
 Let us, then, try to awaken our country to the real 
 situation of the world to-day, and to the meaning of 
 Germany's rivalry. If we can do that, England will 
 soon enough have her navy equal to its tasks and her 
 citizens learning their duty as defenders of the nation 
 and of the work which it has to do in the world. The 
 conflict of policies will then become a competition in 
 national education, and the war for which England 
 will be prepared may be postponed to a remote future 
 and to a different quarrel. But unless we make that 
 effort and succeed in it the conflict will take the grim 
 shape of war, which will come upon us like a thief in 
 the night, and we shall have to learn in the presence 
 of death, perhaps too late, that a good life for an 
 Englishman is a life for England. The true signifi- 
 cance of war is as the test of nations. It is a more than 
 athletic contest in which the nation of nobler spirit 
 and better-knit frame attains to victory, and the nation 
 that has lost its heart is liable to lose its life also. 
 
 Let us, then, bear no grudge against our German 
 kinsmen who put to us the question whether we of 
 England are doing in the world services commen- 
 surate with the wonderful position which has been 
 given us by Nature and which our fathers made good. 
 
 The situation which I have tried to put before you 
 is that Germany, made strong by three generations 
 of patient effort and by her new-found nationhood. 
 
128 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 challenges at once England's maritime power, her 
 influence in the European commonwealth, her Empire, 
 and her very independence. That challenge is in the 
 first place an invitation to us all to examine our own 
 hearts and our country's mission. The examination, 
 so far as I can carry it, tells me that nations, like men, 
 stand and fall by their work; that England's work 
 as the island State is to keep her freedom by 
 fighting for it; that if she fulfils that first duty she 
 wiU also fulfil a second, the preservation of the liberties 
 of Europe, and a third, the accomplishment of her 
 responsibilities to the Dominions, to India, and to 
 Egypt. For it is the fate of the island nation to be 
 either the first among the nations — ^not the master, but 
 the first among equals — or to be the last. 
 
 For Englishmen there cannot be a doubt whether 
 or no the challenge is to be taken up. To evg.de it 
 would be to surrender all that makes an English- 
 man's life worth living. The practical question for all 
 Englishmen, and first for each of us here, is whether 
 England is fit to win, whether she is capable of lead- 
 ing Europe. There can be only one answer. She 
 must make herself fit, and every one of us must make 
 himself or herself fit to be a citizen of the country that 
 has such a work laid upon her. 
 
 If England is to be equal to her task, her people must 
 change their way of looking at things and their notion 
 of good living. They must set England — ^not merely 
 the land we live in, but the tasks for which our country 
 is set apjirt — in the innermost shrine of their hearts; 
 must open their eyes to see that to do one's work 
 
ENGLAND AND GERMANY . 129 
 
 properly is better than to become a millionaire, and 
 to make one's character noble a grander thing than to 
 be made a peer. If we have England in our hearts 
 we shall see clearly, and get rid of some of the perver- 
 sions that beset us. It may illuminate our social 
 problems. For in truth it is the master's function, not 
 the workman's, to raise the standard of wages, and 
 the workman's, not the master's, to raise the standard 
 of workmanship. 
 
 The idea of living, not for ourselves, but for England, 
 must uplift our political life. You have heard it said 
 that the function of an opposition is to oppose. I say 
 that this maxim is a maxim of treason ; that the adver- 
 sary is not the other party, but the foreign State whose 
 rulers have taught their people, rightly or wrongly, 
 the cry of, ' Down with England ' ! To that cry only 
 one reply can be given in the hall of this college, 
 dedicated by its founder to the memory of all the 
 faithfiJl departed of Oxford and anew under the 
 auspices of its present warden to the service of our 
 University and of our country. That reply and our 
 watchword is ' England for Ever ' ! 
 
THOUGHTS ON THE WAR* 
 
 It has been well said that the secret of success in 
 war is to b6 found in the harmony between policy and 
 strategy, and that the possibility of this harmony 
 depends upon the statesman and the strategist seeing 
 things as they really are, upon the truth of their 
 vision. The coming of a war is always a time of 
 strong feeling from which neither the statesman nor 
 the strategist can escape. Most men are carried away 
 by it. How then are they to see clearly and to pre- 
 serve, amid the hopes and fears by which they and 
 everyone else are possessed, the even balance of the 
 mind? 
 
 In times of trial a true man falls back upon the 
 resolves deliberately made during the meditations of 
 quiet hours. He abides by the principles which he has 
 previously sought and found. Those of us who dur- 
 ing many years of peace have tried to clear our minds 
 about the nature and conditions of war probably do 
 well now to trust rather to such insight as they may 
 have gained in those past efforts than to any of the 
 impulses or new thoughts of the moment. 
 
 Our statesmen and the public men who have written 
 about the war have been occupied chiefly with the 
 * January, 191 5. 
 130 
 
THOUGHTS ON THE WAR 131 
 
 statement of the British case. They have been find- 
 ing arguments to justify the nation's course in going 
 to war. I think this is really an effort made rather 
 late in the day to bring their own consciences into 
 harmony with that of the nation which knew quite 
 well as soon as the crisis began where its duty lay. 
 I have met no one who had any serious doubt on that 
 subject. There is a deeper question which should 
 have been asked ajid answered before. An ideally 
 perfect government would not make war unless and 
 until it saw clearly not only the purpose to accom- 
 plish which it chose the method of a fight, but also 
 how by fighting it could attain to the fulfilment of 
 that purpose. Perhaps no government is ideally per- 
 fect. The German government, which is steeped in 
 the theory of war, knew very well, and has let all the 
 world know, what it wanted to get by the war. It 
 thought it knew how it could get it; yet there may 
 have been an error in its vision, for it certainly did not 
 see England as its inevitable antagonist. That is 
 probably the explanation of its rage against this 
 country. 
 
 There is only one theory of war — that which is set 
 forth, with some differences of expression and of 
 detail, by Clausewitz, by Jomini, by Mahan. It dis- 
 tinguishes between two sorts of wars. In the one 
 class are small wars, the expeditions to which British 
 governments have been accustomed, and in the other 
 class is ' absolute war,' ' great war,' ' national war,' the 
 struggle of nations for existence, or, what is much the 
 same thing, for the mastery. Everyone knows which 
 
132 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 kind we are now waging. The theory describes the 
 lineaments, the large features of ' great war.' It is the 
 war in which you aim at crushing the adversary, 
 striking him down, disarming him, and dictating 
 your terms. It is the kind of war made by Napoleon, 
 the kind of war made by Moltke in 1866 with Bis- 
 marck to restrain him, and in 1870 with Bismarck to 
 urge him on. It is the kind of war which in July 
 Austria declared against Serbia, though she mistook it 
 for an expedition, and which in August Germany 
 declared against Russia and France, and of which in 
 Belgium she has manifested the ruthlessness, perhaps 
 the recklessness. 
 
 There are certain truths about 'great war' which 
 can be deduced from its nature as a struggle between 
 States for the mastery, and can also be gleaned from 
 the experience of aU the great wars of the past. The 
 first is that if 'great war ' is made against you, you 
 can meet it only by 'great war.' The fundamentcd 
 characteristic of 'great war' is that the whole nation 
 throws itself into the fight. , That is possible only 
 when every man and woman realizes that defeat means 
 ruin to him and to her, and that there is no escape 
 from it except by victory. When that happens a 
 nation makes war with all its might; everyone con- 
 tributes what he has — his money, his energy, his intelli- 
 gence, his body if it is fit, his life if he has the chance. 
 Then the nation is in earnest, and a nation in earnest 
 will pirobably sooner or later evolve a plan grand 
 enough for the occasion. It will perhaps not start 
 with a grand plan. There have been nations which 
 
THOUGHTS ON THE WAR 133 
 
 have been unexpectedly plunged into wars, even 'great 
 wars.' In such cases the men at the head of affairs 
 have not always thought out in advance the purpose 
 of the war and the scope of the operations. They may 
 have had quite other ends in view than victory in an 
 international struggle. And if that end has not been 
 constantly present to their minds they will not have 
 been occupied beforehand with the means by which 
 it is to be obtained. But a nation that means to have 
 victory will find the right leaders, whether it starts 
 with them or not, because when it is once awake it 
 ceases to consider persons and reputations. It goes 
 back to the elementary principle by which men must 
 ultimately be judged : ' By their fruits ye shall know 
 them,' the difficulty being that time is needed to reveal 
 the strength or weakness of leaders, and that in ' great 
 war' time is infinitely precious. 
 
 The ruling principle of 'great war' is the concentra- 
 tion of effort in time and space. 'Whatsoever thy 
 hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.' The aim in 
 a war of this kind is to disarm the adversary, to crush 
 his fighting forces, so that he is helpless and has no 
 choice but to accept your terms. If that result is to be 
 produced your forces must be so strong that they can 
 shatter those of the enemy in a great battle or series 
 of battles, and then go on to overrun his territory and 
 occupy his capital. At sea you must destroy his fleet 
 and coop up its relics in the ports in which they take 
 refuge. Napoleon destroys an army at Ulm, seizes 
 Vienna, and disperses a second army at Austerlitz. 
 Then he dictates peace. He shatters an army at Jena, 
 
134 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 occupies Berlin, and then defeats the Russian armies 
 that have come to the rescue. After that he does as 
 he hkes with Prussia. Moltke defeats one army at 
 Gravelotte, captures another at Sedan, and then 
 besieges Paris and defeats all the armies that try to 
 relieve it. Then he expounds his terms. Nelson 
 destroys a French fleet at the Battle of the Nile ; after 
 that the Mediterranean is his. He destroys a Franco- 
 Spanish fleet at Trafalgar; Great Britain could 
 thenceforth treat all the ocean as her private property 
 until in the third generation the Germans built a navy 
 to remind her that the command of the sea is a matter 
 not of right but of might. 
 
 It is popularly supposed that you can buy victory 
 with blood, but history shows that you may shed blood 
 in plenty and shed it in vain. For defeat you pay 
 with bloodshed ; for victory more is required. Victory 
 as a rule is the result of forethought. To most of our 
 people forethought has long seemed a trifle or an acci- 
 dent or a happy inspiration. But in truth the power 
 of thought which wins. battles is something that has 
 to be acquired. It is a costly acquisition ; a man gets 
 it only by giving his life to it. That is the history 
 of Alexander, of Hannibal, of Caesar, of Gustavus, of 
 Frederick, of Napoleon, of Wellington, and of Moltke. 
 At any rate, a man cannot possibly direct the opera- 
 tions of war successfully unless he has worked hard 
 to master it, and that is a wrestle which requires his 
 whole strength. Cromwell's letters reveal Cromwell 
 at white heat, his whole soul thrown into his war. 
 They do not reveal his labour in mastering the 
 
THOUGHTS ON THE WAR i35 
 
 methods of Gustavus, but we know that he had mas- 
 tered them. 
 
 Mr. Asquith has told us that the war must go on 
 until Prussian militarism has been destroyed. I do 
 not know whether by force you can destroy an -ism, 
 for an -ism is something spiritual. You can destroy 
 the Prussian army and the German navy provided 
 you go the right way about it. But I am sure that 
 you cannot do it by Prussian methods, for a copy is 
 not likely to be as good as the original. Prussia is a 
 military despotism of the first order. Any attempt 
 to imitate it in England would be an admission that 
 Prussia is right. It would be an acceptance of the 
 very thing which the Prime Minister says must be 
 destroyed. 
 
 The conditions of victory in this war, in order of 
 importance, though not necessarily of time, are first 
 that the German navy must be shattered in battle. 
 It must be beaten in a Trafalgar or a Quiberon Bay 
 or a Port Arthur. Secondly, the German army must 
 be crushed in a Sedan, a Jena, or a Waterloo, or in 
 a series of such battles. And, thirdly, the allied 
 armies, victorious, must march to Berlin, to Munich, 
 to Hanover. There might indeed be peace without 
 these prerequisites, but it would be only a truce. 
 Unless she is well beaten Germany will begin it all 
 over again. 
 
 The German navy, I say, must be destroyed. That 
 is no light matter. There are German admirals who 
 have paid the price of knowledge, havmg given their 
 lives to nothing else. We shall have to pay dearly for 
 
136 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 victory over them. The price may be our own navy. 
 We must not grudge it. The purpose ot our navy's 
 existence is to destroy the enemy's navy. If it suc- 
 ceeds it will have repeated Nelson's achievement and 
 given England all the sea; no price is too high for 
 that. 
 
 I hear men saying that it will be hard work to push 
 the German airmy back to the Rhine. There is harder 
 work than that to be done. The German army should 
 never be allowed to go back across the Rhine. Nothing 
 but its broken remnants ought to escape across that 
 stream. The passage of the Rhine by the allied 
 armies ought to be the beginning of the end. 
 
 So much and no more as to the scope of the war, 
 in regard to which I merely wish to assert that we 
 should think about it, to suggest the right way of 
 looking at it, and to hint at the kind of thoughts 
 which our admirals and generals must now be think- 
 ing, in order that we at home may adequately support 
 them by our sympathy. To say more would be to 
 trespass on their province, which is far from my 
 intention. 
 
 The only question which occupies us all just now 
 is not what our admirals or our generals ought to do, 
 not even in the first place what they axe doing ; we are 
 giving them and shall give them our full trust, know- 
 ing that they are doing and will do their best. The 
 question is. What is the best that the nation can do 
 to back them ? What can any of us do to contribute 
 towards victory? This is the joint affair of the 
 government and the people, which together make up 
 
THOUGHTS ON THE WAR i37 
 
 the nation. To begin with, let us recognize that the 
 government, too, has done its best, and that its best 
 has been very good. When the crisis came the Cabinet 
 felt that it must beware of entrance to a quarrel and 
 paused before crossing the Rubicon. We can all 
 understand that, although many of us were ashamed 
 that there should be doubts of England's duty and 
 shuddered at the consequences of delay. But once 
 the plunge had been taken the government showed 
 that it had large views. Wise measures were taken 
 to prevent a commercial panic and they were rewarded 
 with success. The prompt mobilization of the navy, 
 followed soon after by that of aU the military forces, 
 and the vote for half a million men taken on the 5th of 
 August, were an awakening call to which the people 
 responded. 
 
 But then came a series of measures by which a great 
 many people were puzzled and which were accom- 
 panied by vague impressions among a part of the 
 public which created a certain uneasiness. There was 
 an impression that the Territorial troops were not 
 appreciated at their full value, that an exaggerated 
 importance was attached to the word regular — ^to the 
 word rather than to what it really means — that per- 
 haps the calls for recruits were made a little in advance 
 of the organization for dealing with them, and that 
 rifles were a long time in coming. At the same time 
 it was felt that all concerned must be loyally and 
 heartily doing their best; that those who received the 
 impressions I have described were necessarily un- 
 acquainted With the tremendous difficulties that inevit- 
 
138 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 ably beset the work of improvising armies, and that 
 it would be impracticable for those charged with the 
 military administration to give public explanations 
 of all that they were doing, as such explanations 
 might be useful to the enemy. People rightly felt 
 that in a great war the government must be sup- 
 ported, that it was no time for fault-finding, and that 
 even the best of human efforts are full of imperfection. 
 This is the right spirit and we are all possessed with 
 it. We are all contributing to the success of the coun- 
 try's efforts by sinking our pet theories and our fads, 
 by remembering that le mieux est Vennemi du bien 
 and by throwing our whole energies into accomplish- 
 ing the tasks given us, even when their meaning is 
 shrouded in obscurity. At the same time one of our 
 strongest natural instincts is that which, if we were 
 to express it, would perhaps take the form of the cry 
 for more light. 
 
 I cannot but think that the light for which men are 
 longing would be given by setting before them the 
 idea or design which is to guide the effort which the 
 nation is now making. I mean, of course, not the 
 design of the naval and military operations. That 
 could in no case be divulged ; it would be worth mil- 
 lions to the enemy, and all the precautions of the 
 censorship aim at nothing but preventing his dis- 
 covering it. I mean the design for the making of 
 armies, for solving the very special problem, of quickly, 
 we might almost say suddenly, transforming a nation 
 of citizens into a fighting organism. Here it is the 
 large principles that are essential, and those prin- 
 
THOUGHTS ON THE WAR 139 
 
 ciples all men are free to think about, free because 
 thought is always free. 
 
 It may be well first to define two familiar words 
 •v.'hich, I think, denote two opposite perversions of 
 thought — pacifism and militarism. Pacifism is the 
 wrong thinking which mistakes peace, which is a 
 means, for the end. Militarism is the wrong think- 
 ing which mistakes war, which is a means, for the 
 end. As wrong thought always does, militarism car- 
 ries with it further errors. For while right thinking 
 sets up as the immediate object of the act of fighting, 
 to gain the victory, to destroy the enemy's forces, and 
 accepts every means consistent with self-respect which 
 will conduce to that end, militarism, mistaking the 
 means for the end, regards as vital the forms which 
 at some time or other in past circumstances have been 
 adopted as conducive to victory. Right thinking 
 about war, like all right thinking, values forms only 
 in relation to their meaning, to their use as means to 
 an end. 
 
 The war has been sprung upon us in conditions 
 which guard us for the moment against the error of 
 pacifism. How are we to guard against the opposite 
 error of militarism ? I think by attempting to see as a 
 whole the piece of work that is laid upon us. The Prime 
 Minister's view implies that the forces of the Allies 
 are to crush in a military sense the forces of the Ger- 
 mcin and Austro-Hungarian Empires. That is a 
 task of tremendous difficulty. In August last, Ger- 
 many, besides her navy, upon the arming and training 
 of which the German government has for many years 
 
I40 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 brought to bear its best thought and spent very large 
 sums of money, had, as far as I can ascertain, about 
 five miUion trained soldiers, for whom the arms and 
 the military organization were ready. She had also, 
 I think, a further two million men capable of being 
 trained and put into the field, and she had ready 
 the plan and the means of training them. Her plan 
 was to throw the bulk of her forces against France, 
 while Russia was to be resisted by the Austrian army 
 assisted by so much of the German army as could be 
 spared from the great attack upon France. The 
 British navy was to be paralyzed by the German 
 navy's keeping itself within an area in which coast and 
 harbour defences, mines, torpedoes, and submarines 
 might protect it against attack and destruction, and 
 therefore, postpone indefinitely the acquisition by 
 Great Britain of the absolute command of the sea. It 
 is a sound plan to which, I think, Germany will adhere. 
 We must expect the German attacks in the western 
 theatre of war to be renewed again and again always 
 with very large farces, or, if the pressure exerted by 
 Russia should seriously diminish the German strength 
 in the west, we must count upon an obstinate German 
 defence of some such line as she now holds covering 
 not only her Rhine provinces but also Belgium. She 
 holds in support of this line the great fortresses of 
 Metz, Namur, Liege, and Antwerp. Behind it she 
 has the line of the Rhine, with the great fortresses of 
 Strasburg, Mainz, Coblenz, Cologne, and Wesel. If 
 the Allies are to fulfil Mr. Asquith's programme and 
 dictate terms of peace to Germany, the enormous Ger- 
 
THOUGHTS ON THE WAR 141 
 
 man army in this carefully prepared theatre of war 
 will have to be attacked and decisively beaten. It is 
 doubtful whether France alone, even with an extreme 
 effort, can put into the field forces so superior to those 
 of Germany as to suffice for the crushing blow required. 
 The balance needed to produce this superiority must 
 be provided by British forces. You cannot count 
 on a crushing victory without greatly superior num- 
 bers, especially where you have to deal with an enemy 
 whose troops are remarkably well trained, organized, 
 ■and led. The greatest of all writers on strategy, dis- 
 cussing between 1820 and 1830 a plan of campaign 
 to be undertaken in case of need by the Allies against 
 France, assumed that they would put into the field 
 altogether 725,000 men, knowing that Napoleon at his 
 best had never had a French army larger than 450,000. 
 If three million Germans are to be crushed in the 
 region which I have roughly defined, the Allies would 
 do well to attack them with six millions, and if France 
 provides four millions England ought to provide two. 
 The difficulty lies not in finding the number of men 
 but in arming and training them so that they may be 
 fit to cope on terms of equality, regiment for regiment, 
 with the troops of the German army. That is the 
 problem which Great Britain has to solve. 
 
 Germany's immense number of trained men is the 
 result of a military system which is a Prussian inven- 
 tion and which it is important that we should under- 
 stand, as it has been adopted by all the Great Powers 
 of Europe except Great Britain. In the United King- 
 dom every child born must be registered, but after its 
 
142 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 birth the State takes no means of following its life's 
 history. In Germany the registration continues, so 
 that the State can follow the career of every person. 
 Every year there is a muster of all the males that were 
 born twenty years before, and of these the larger part, 
 a little more than half, those who are the strongest 
 and most active, are sent for two years to be soldiers 
 in the army. During those two years they are given 
 a thorough military training, according to a carefully 
 prepared programme drawn up with a view to the 
 exigencies of war. They are then turned out of the 
 army, though they remain soldiers, and are liable to 
 be called back to the ranks in case of war. When, at 
 the end of July, the army was put on a war footing 
 twenty annual classes were called to the ranks; all 
 the young men who had been bom in each of the 
 twenty successive yeaxs and had served their two 
 years in the army. Afterwards were called out men 
 of the same classes who had been excused from train- 
 ing, and men of some classes born before or after the 
 twenty years which had been covered by the first call. 
 This system makes the standing army — the various 
 regiments of infantry, cavalry, artillery, of the army 
 service corps, and of the railway corps — a war school 
 in which all the able-bodied young men are educated. 
 At the end of twenty years it produces the result 
 that the better part of the male population, rather 
 more than half of it, between the ages of twenty and 
 thirty-nine, are ready for the field, either immediately 
 or after a very short course for recapitulating the 
 lessons they have learned. The system enables the 
 
THOUGHTS ON THE WAR 143 
 
 nation that has adopted it, provided that it has been 
 in force for twenty years, to begin a war with a very 
 large army indeed. No one, as far as I know, has 
 ever proposed that it should be adopted in the United 
 Kingdom. The National Service League indeed 
 advocated a scheme by which every young man should 
 be compelled to receive a few months' military train- 
 ing. The League, if I remember right, at first pro- 
 posed two months, then four, and ultimately six, and 
 there was to be no liability to fight England's battles 
 except upon British soil. Six years ago, in an 
 essay entitled 'Britain at Bay,' I tried to show 
 how the Prussian system might be adapted to the 
 peculiar case of Great Britain, and what its costs 
 and results would be on the basis either of a one year's 
 or a two years' course; I held that Great Britain's 
 needs would not be met by the possession of any 
 force the employment of which was to be limited to 
 fighting in the United Kingdom, and that a British 
 army, if it was to be useful, must be ready to go and 
 win its country's battles in any theatre of war in 
 which England required victory. The point which it 
 appeared to me needed to be cleared up was one of 
 educational psychology. What is the shortest period 
 of training which will suffice to produce habits? I 
 think it is largely a matter of the spirit and method 
 with which the training is conducted. 
 
 At the present moment the discussion of the Con- 
 tinental or Prussian method is a waste of time." Its 
 whole value lies in its continuous application for many 
 years, in its taking the young men in annual classes 
 
144 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 year after year, so that everything can be done with- 
 out hurry in a leisurely and orderly manner. It is 
 applicable for making an army which you may have 
 to use twenty years hence or ten years hence, for its 
 essence consists in its taking the young men in a 
 manageable body composed of those of twenty and 
 those of twenty-one. It is of no use whatever when 
 you have to improvise a large army in a short time. 
 Some people seem to think that you can make an 
 army quickly by compulsion. I doubt it. If you had 
 a well-trained regiment you could increase its numbers 
 a little by putting into it a few pressed men, because 
 after a time most of them would catch the spirit of 
 their comrades, though a few o| them would always 
 cause trouble. It could be done in old days for the 
 navy, because a few pressed men on a ship were 
 actually in a prison from which there was no escape, 
 and found it more convenient to do as they were told 
 than to resist. But, again, it seems to me idle to talk 
 of compelling men to come in at a time when the 
 authorities have already many thousand more recruits 
 than they are able either to arm, train, or equip. On 
 the 1st of January, 191 4, the Regular Army numbered 
 156,000 and the Army Reserve and Special Reserve 
 200,000. In August and September supplementary 
 estimates for a further million were voted, and in the 
 middle of November, when a second million were 
 voted. Parliament was informed that the first million 
 had, roughly spealcing, been raised, and that recruits 
 were presenting themselves at the rate of 30,000 a 
 week. These figures did not include the Territorial 
 
THOUGHTS ON THE WAR 145 
 
 force, which numbered in January 250,000, was 
 recruited early in August up to its full establishment 
 of 315,000, and has since then been duplicated by the 
 creation of reserve units. Thus the United Kingdom 
 alone began the War with 350,000 trained men of the 
 Regular Army and its Reserves, with 250,000 more 
 or less trained Territorial troops, and has now nearly 
 a million and a half of further recruits undergoing 
 training. All the evidence points to a continuance of 
 the influx of recruits in proportion to the popular 
 grasp of the need for them, and to the strength of the 
 conviction that the school to which they are sent is a 
 good and successful school. 
 
 It is quite evident that the business of turning one 
 or two million recruits into soldiers fit for the field 
 in a few months is a very different thing from that by 
 which standing armies in the course of two or three 
 years transform a limited number of recruits into 
 trained soldiers. The standing armies are not con- 
 tent with the mere drill and instruction of their new 
 men. The British army, for example, has for many 
 years past been in the habit of giving its recruits a 
 four months' course, in which the lessons occupy a few 
 hours a day. But it has never thought that recruits 
 so trained would be ready for war, because it has 
 never passed men into the reserve until they have 
 completed three years in the ranks^ and it very much 
 dislikes letting them off with so short a course as three 
 years. The French and German armies have for 
 many years insisted upon a two years' course as 
 normal. England's necessities now require her to 
 
 10 
 
146 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 turn citizens into good soldiers in something like six 
 months. If this is to be possible it is evident that 
 the school ought to be provided with the very best 
 teachers and with the very best appliances. But the 
 best officers have all been sent to the front, and I know 
 not how many battalions are still waiting for the rifles, 
 without which their training for war cannot begin. 
 These are the difficulties which have to be overcome 
 and which ought to be thoroughly realized by anyone 
 who should attempt at the present time to criticize the 
 military administration. 
 
 I cannot but think that the work has been to some 
 extent embarrassed and impeded by the survival of 
 some traditions which are not those of war but of the 
 militarism of peace. Everyone appreciates the great 
 value of the thoroughly trained and seasoned soldier, 
 and as in our own regular army the training is longer 
 than in any other, while the relations between officers 
 and men are better than in any other, the small British 
 regular army, which since the South African war 
 has so much improved, was probably when it 
 mobilized at the beginning of August the best military 
 force in the world. No wonder that those who know 
 war set a high value on the quality of our regular 
 troops. They cannot be replaced, nor can troops of 
 the same character possibly be produced in the time 
 that is given us for preparation. Behind them were 
 tiieir own reserves, which have been fused with them, 
 and then the Territorial troops, which used to be 
 known by the better name of Volunteers. These 
 Territorials had their own officers, full of zeal and 
 
THOUGHTS ON THE WAR 147 
 
 intelligence, most of whom well understood their duty 
 and lacked only a period of continuous practice to 
 make them fully competent for the field,, while the men 
 had mastered the elements and also needed but a 
 few months of hard training, especially of musketry 
 practice, to make them very good troops. The bulk 
 of them volunteered for the front ; a minority held to 
 the terms of their engagement, which do not require 
 them to serve out of the United Kingdom. Those 
 who have volunteered for service abroad are, as 
 regards the military law under which they serve and 
 the pay which they receive, in precisely the same posi- 
 tion as the soldiers of the regular army. When it 
 was decided largely to increase the forces available 
 and calls were made for further men, the extra recruits 
 asked for were described as new 'regulars.' It was 
 like asking for new ' old china.* The special quality 
 of our regulars comes from their long period of train- 
 ing and their long association with a complete staflF 
 of professional officers. To call the new recruits 
 regulars was to misuse the term regulars; to try to 
 transfer the qualities which it implied to troops which 
 cannot possibly have those qualities. It was a piece 
 of wrong thinking and carried with it a second piece 
 of wrong thinking, for it implied that the new regulars 
 would be better troops than the old Territorials. This 
 was impossible, unless the new regulars were given 
 opportunities such as were to be denied the old Terri- 
 torials, which would have been an injustice and would 
 involve a loss of time and energy. Yet I find it hard 
 to resist the conviction that this mistake has been 
 
148 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 made and that there has survived from the militarism 
 of peace a prejudice against the Territorial troops 
 which has been detrimental to the nation's effort to 
 arm itself. I am familiar with the prejudices which 
 in 1792 and 1793 impeded the development of the 
 resources of the French Republic for war. There were 
 then three classes of troops — Regulars, Volunteers, 
 and Conscripts — and the attempt to maintain the dis- 
 tinctions between them greatly embarrassed the gen- 
 erals who were fighting in the field. Not until after 
 two and a half years of war was it decided to abolish 
 those distinctions and to treat all classes of French 
 soldiers on the same footing as citizens fighting for 
 their country. England would do well now to imitate 
 that example. 
 
 The training of troops should be ruled by what they 
 have to do in war, and in war the soldier must always 
 be ready and able to march ajid to use his weapons. 
 He must also be accustomed to follow the direction of 
 his leaders, which implies that mutual understanding 
 between leaders and followers which is called dis- 
 cipline. Discipline Comes of itself when ofiicers ai^d 
 men live together, provided that the officers have the 
 qualities that make good leaders. To march is a 
 matter of training and organization; to use weapons 
 a matter of skill, which comes only from practice. 
 These are the fundamental requisites of an army, and 
 there are no others. The time it will take to acquire 
 them depends upon the spirit of those immediately 
 concerned. The finest army ever made was composed 
 of Cromwell's Ironsides, and Cromwell rightly judged 
 
THOUGHTS ON THE WAR i49 
 
 that to make a good army he must get men of the right 
 spirit. Since the 4th of August there has been only 
 one spirit animating the people of this country, and 
 it has given us men of the right stamp by the million. 
 If you took a thousand such Englishmen determined 
 to make themselves into soldiers, and gave them fifty 
 men of the character, intelligence, and education that 
 qualify them to be leaders, they would make them- 
 selves into soldiers without wasting time, even if there 
 were not a trained officer among them. They can 
 read, there are plenty of good textbooks which they 
 can master, and, provided they have the tools— that is 
 the rifles and cartridges — ^they would not be very 
 long in learning how to handle them. If you could 
 give to each thousand one first-rate officer, they would 
 pick his brains in an incredibly short space of time. 
 The ante-Boer-War type of officer could not help 
 them, for he was brought up in ignorance of war and 
 filled with the dead traditions of peace militarism, 
 which in war are encumbrances to be got rid of. You 
 cannot improvise an army by means of voluminous 
 regulations; it is a question of the selection of first- 
 rate men to educate, to lead, and to command their 
 fellows. 
 
 There is only one thing that the typical hypothetical 
 thousand men with its leaders cannot do for them- 
 selves. They cannot supply themselves with arms 
 and ammunition. The quickest way to get the new 
 troops ready is for the central administration to con- 
 centrate its energies upon the supply of weapons, to 
 leave the supervision of the training of the troops to 
 
150 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 local officers, who should be the best that the army 
 can find, even if they have to be writhdrawn from the 
 front or promoted from the Territorial force, and to 
 entrust the movement of troops that are ready for the 
 field, at home or abroad, to the General Staff. To 
 centralize everything and to decentralize everything 
 lead equally to chaos. The art of organization con- 
 sists in doing at the centre only what can be done 
 nowhere else, and doing in the localities everything 
 that can possibly be done away from the centre. 
 
VII 
 
 THE THEORY OF WAR* 
 
 To-day I shall try to exhibit to you the science and 
 art of war and to point out the nature of the service 
 that can be rendered to our nation by the theory 
 which produces them. 
 
 Let me remind you to begin with of the meaning 
 of the word theory. It was the Greek name for the 
 rapt attention of the spectators at the Olympic 
 Games, and denotes an excitement of the soul pro- 
 ducing an intense effort of observation. The same 
 word came to be applied to that tension of a man's 
 whole being which marks his effort to see things as 
 they really are and to think them out. The best 
 example of this form of activity is furnished by 
 the lives of the great astronomers, the long and 
 painful striving after insight which we associate with 
 the names of men like Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, 
 and Newton. 
 
 In this sense the Greek word theory exactly trans- 
 lates the Latin word study, which was defined by a 
 great Roman writer as 'the persistent and impetuous 
 effort of the mind to take possession of the subject, 
 an effort requiring the driving power of a strong 
 will.' In its third and more usual sense theory 
 describes the result of this study, that which the 
 ♦ February 26, 19 16. 
 
152 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 observer sees with the mind's eye, the vision to which 
 he has attained. The Romans called it science, 
 knowledge. The type of such vision is again sup- 
 plied by the astronomers, whose work has given us 
 our knowledge of the visible universe and has 
 brought with it, as it has grown, the methods of the 
 mathematicians and those general principles which 
 we call metaphorically laws of nature, of which the 
 hypothesis of gravitation is the most universal, and 
 of which the whole series constitutes the science of 
 dynamics, the orderly account of the mode of the 
 operation of forces. It is perhaps worth noting that 
 the most perfect vision of the universe which has 
 resulted from the exertions of, the human spirit, con- 
 tinued during all the centuries of which we have 
 record, sees it in the guise of forces, operating 
 according to their own energy. 
 
 The science of war is the dynamics of nations. 
 It is the insight into the nature of war which has 
 been obtained by the devotion of many lives to the 
 effort to know what war really is. The name of 
 that effort is military history, the inquiry into wars. 
 The military historian is a naturalist. He collects 
 wars as specimens, he dissects them, he compares 
 and classifies them. His laboratory is a collection 
 of documents and maps. He examines the corres- 
 pondence of governments, to discover the aims with 
 which they made war, the records of armies and 
 navies to find out how they were constituted, the 
 secret dispatches of commanders to understand their 
 motives, the reports they received about the enemy 
 
THE THEORY OF WAR I53 
 
 and the orders they issued, which enable him to put 
 himself in their place, to see with their eyes, and to 
 think their thoughts. This kind of inquiry lays 
 bare the secret springs of action. For a great 
 decisive event, the plan of which seems to have arisen 
 in the commander's mind in an instant, in the 
 twinkling of an eye, usually proves to have been the 
 outcome of his brooding upon the modes in which 
 forces can be employed, so that his mind's eye is 
 prepared to recognize, when it comes, the opportunity 
 for a decisive stroke. 
 
 Nelson was for years pondering on the means by 
 which he could attack a part of an enemy's fleet with 
 the whole of his own. In August, 1796, he wrote 
 from the Mediterranean, in a private letter : ' This 
 Country is the most favourable possible for skill with 
 an inferior fleet; for the winds are so variable, that 
 at some one time in twenty-four hours you must be 
 able to attack a part of a large fleet, and the other 
 will be becalmed, or have a contrary wind.' Two 
 years later, on the ist of August, 1798, Nelson 
 destroyed a French fleet at the Battle of the Nile. 
 Writing afterwards to Lord Howe, he said : ' By 
 attacking the enemy's van and centre, the wind 
 blowing directly along the line, I was enabled to 
 throw what force I pleased on a few ships.' There 
 you have an example of the idea of a decisive battle 
 cherished years before the opportunity for its reali- 
 zation ; and I need hardly remind you how the same 
 idea led to the crowning victory of Trafalgar. 
 Nothing to the uninitiated seems a finer effort of 
 
154 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 extemporization than Cromwell's at Dunbar, when 
 he exclaimed as he saw his chance of a great blow : 
 'Let God arise and let His enemies be scattered.' 
 The historian knows that Cromwell's attack was the 
 application of the methods he had acquired by an 
 arduous eifort of long previous thought. 
 
 In his classification of wars the historian finds 
 that they are of very various degrees of energy. 
 There are the expeditions sent by a civilized State 
 to free itself from the annoyance occasioned by some 
 barbarous or half-civilized tribe on its borders. 
 These' involve no great effort and hardly affect the 
 welfare of the nations which undertake them. There 
 have also been, many wars between civilized States 
 in which the forces engaged seem hardly to have 
 been employed in earnest, and which were accom- 
 panied by a more or less polite discussion between 
 the governments engaged in them. There have also 
 been wars in which the employment of force was 
 checked by no considerations, struggles for exist- 
 ence between great nations, leading to decisive 
 battles which have changed the face of the world. 
 It is in these great wars, in which the relations 
 between nations are those of force, and force alone, 
 that the workings of forces can best be studied. It 
 is upon them that the military historian concentrates 
 his attention. It is from the examination of the 
 phenomena which characterize them that (he derives 
 his view of the nature of war, his science or insight 
 into its workings. 
 
 The science of war has of course innumerable 
 
THE THEORY OF WAR 155 
 
 branches. It treats of the creation, the organization 
 and the equipment of fleets and armies, of the modes 
 of employing them in battle; it presses into its ser- 
 vice a multitude of other sciences and arts, those of 
 the educator, of the engineer, of the manufacturer. 
 It deals with the arts of the general and the admiral 
 and also with the art of government itself. Indeed, 
 at its highest level the science of war is the science 
 of government. And it is for that reason that the 
 inquiry into war or military history forms a part 
 of the study of history or the inquiry into the nature 
 and working of governments. This is what gives 
 its importance to the distinction between the science 
 and art of strategy and the subordinate sciences and 
 arts. For strategy, another word which we inherit 
 from the Greeks, means the science and art of the 
 general management of war, the science and art of 
 victory as between nation and nation. 
 
 No one hasi more perfectly appreciated and 
 expressed the identity between the history of wars 
 and the theory of war than Napoleon, who drew with 
 perfect clearness the distinction between the master 
 art and its branches. ' Tactics,' he said, ' evolu- 
 tions, the science of the engineer and of the gunner 
 can be learned from treatises pretty much like 
 geometry, but the knowledge of the high parts of 
 war can be obtained only by the study of the wars 
 and the battles of the great captains and by experi- 
 ence'; and again, 'The principles of the art of war 
 are those which directed the great captains whose 
 high achievements have been handed down to us by 
 
156 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 history — Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar,' and the rest, 
 I need not go through the list. 
 
 What, then, is the use of the history or theory of 
 the high part of war ? The best way to answer that 
 question is to put the theory itself before you in 
 outline. For the very first phenomenon which meets 
 us is that the management of a war or rather of a 
 nation's action in war is a function of government. 
 Only a government can declare or begin a war or 
 conclude a treaty of peace. Only a government can 
 decide where to send fleets and armies and how to 
 distribute them in different theatres of war. Only 
 a government can select their commanders and 
 define the missions which they are to fulfil. Only a 
 government can turn the nation's resources in men 
 and money into fleets and armies. Only a govern- 
 ment can prepare for a war. Whoever exercises 
 these functions is in fact the government of the 
 country. I think it will be quite evident that none 
 of the functions I have enumerated can be well 
 exercised' without a knowledge of what Napoleon 
 called the high part of war, and that a government 
 must in some way be permeated with that know- 
 ledge. It must be endowed with a sound judgment 
 about the working of forces. It must be guaranteed 
 against any violation of the principles, against any 
 attempt to employ forces in a manner inconsistent 
 with their inherent nature. Moreover, its judgment 
 in these matters must be automatic. In short, a 
 government in order to conduct a war rightly must 
 be endowed with what I would venture to call a 
 
THE THEORY OF WAR I57 
 
 strategical conscience. I have sometimes thought 
 that the use of strategy to a government resembled 
 that of a clock — a contrivance to tell the time. But 
 there is nothing to insure that when a man is making 
 an important decision he will look at the clock; he 
 may forget to think about the time. A man's con- 
 science is always with him, speaks to him unasked 
 and makes a spontaneous effort to prevent him going 
 wrong. That is the service which the theory, the 
 history, or the science of war, seated in its right 
 place in the council chamber of government, can 
 render to a nation. 
 
 Let us return to the science, and look at the view 
 which history gives us of the nature of war. 
 
 Consider a typical war, a war fought to a finish. 
 In 1 86 1, certain States of the Federation known as 
 the United States withdrew from that Federation 
 and founded a new Confederacy. The Government 
 of the United States regarded this as an injury to 
 the Federation, and the existence of the Confederacy 
 as a menace to its own existence, or at least to its 
 own good working. A conflict began in which the 
 United States navy blockaded the coasts of the Con- 
 federacy (which, roughly speaking, had no navy, 
 and, therefore, could not oppose the fleets of the 
 United States), while the two sets of armies fought 
 for four years, until in 1865, the last Confederate 
 armies, defeated and surrounded, laid down their 
 arms. The Confederacy, thus disarmed, had to 
 submit to the Government of the United States, and 
 thereupon ceased to exist. 
 
158 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 Another case of a war fought to a finish is that 
 between Rome and Carthage. It had three stages. 
 The first was the destruction of the Carthaginian 
 fleet by a Roman fleet created for that purpose. 
 That gave Rome the command of the Mediterranean. 
 The second was Hannibal's great invasion, in which 
 he destroyed one Roman army at the Trebia, a 
 second at Lake Trasimene, and a third at Cannas. 
 The third stage was the destruction of the last Car- 
 thaginian army at Zama, which decided the struggle. 
 The fight for supremacy was ended; what followed 
 was but an epilogue. 
 
 These types reveal war as a struggle for the mas- 
 tery, in which the forces strike at one another until 
 those of one belligerent have destroyed those of the 
 other, after which the victorious State imposes its 
 will upon the vanquished. To the victor's will there 
 is no limit. He may and will, if he wishes, destroy 
 the conquered State and govern its people. There 
 is nothing except his will to prevent his making them 
 tributary, enslaving or even killing them. He might 
 be prevented by the interference of some third State 
 able to destroy him in turn, but I cannot recall an 
 instance of such successful interference after a war 
 fought to a finish between Great Powers. 
 
 Take a modem case. In 1806 there was a breach 
 between Napoleon and the King of Prussia. Hos- 
 tilities began on the 7th of October. On the 14th, 
 the Prussian army was crushed and shattered in the 
 two great battles of Jena and Auerstedt. Napoleon, 
 after marching to Berlin, and overwhelming the 
 
THE THEORY OF WAR 159 
 
 remaining fragments of the Prussian army, found 
 himself confronted by the army of the Russian 
 Emperor, the King of Prussia's ally. A fresh cam- 
 paign was necessary, in which that army was 
 defeated. The Russian Emperor, seeing he could 
 not help Prussia, abandoned her to her fate, and she 
 was left prostrate under Napoleon's heel. 
 
 If we take from these examples of wars fought to 
 a finish the elements that are common to them all, 
 and describe those elements in general terms, we get 
 a theory or view of what war is. A war is a conflict 
 or collision of the forces of States, proceeding by the 
 effort of those forces at mutual destruction, and end- 
 ing either in the overthrow of one or more of the 
 States concerned, or in a treaty of peace between 
 those that survive. The forces employed are fleets 
 and armies. TJiey require for their creation the 
 time needed to get together the men, to train and 
 discipline them, to build the ships and to construct 
 the weapons. Their quality is limited by the time 
 available, and by the knowledge in possession of 
 the government for its guidance in their creation. 
 Their size is limited by the resources of the nation in 
 population ' and wealth. 
 
 It follows from the nature of the forces that they 
 can be opposed only by similar forces. Nothing can 
 oppose a fleet at sea bt(t another fleet. Nothing 
 can oppose an army on land but another army. 
 Must we not add that nothing can oppose a fleet in 
 the air but another fleet in the air ? 
 
 Armies and navies, then, act by destruction, which 
 
i6o GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 is a mutual process, ajid the opinion is therefore 
 sometimes expressed that a war is a process of 
 mutual attrition or exhaustion. But this opinion 
 misses the essence of the whole matter. In every 
 collision each side loses men, weapons and stores 
 and in a naval battle usuially ships also, and the 
 effort to destroy the enemy's forces is accompanied 
 by a complementary effort to preserve one's own. 
 The purpose of a commander is to destroy the 
 enemy's fleet or army so as to remove it altogether 
 from the board while preserving his own fleet or 
 army for further use. So long as the loss of force 
 on both sides proceeds proportionately there is no 
 decision, and while that condition lasts the war is 
 a process of mutual exhaustion. The decision comes 
 when one antagonist has destroyed the fleets or 
 armies of the other and when they can no longer be 
 replaced. You will recognize that this is the reason- 
 able mode of using forces. If an admiral has 
 destroyed the enemy's navy there can be nothing on 
 the sea to resist him. He has the command of the 
 sea and can do what he likes. If a general has 
 destroyed his enemy's army he can march his own 
 army where he pleases in the theatre of war, of which 
 he has obtained the control. The analogy of land 
 and sea, where the method is to aim first at the 
 destruction of the enemy's forces and so to obtain 
 the command of the theatre of war, must probably, 
 as I have suggested, be applied to warfare in the air. 
 An aerial fleet that meets with no resistance in the 
 air can go where it pleases and do what it likes 
 
THE THEORY OF WAR i6i 
 
 within the range of a voyage out and home. The 
 obvious mode of preventing air raids is to seek out 
 and destroy the enemy's aerial fleets, for forces on 
 the ground can as well expect to destroy forces in 
 the air as to destroy fleets at sea. In the last resort 
 there is no security from an enemy's attacks on land, 
 by sea, or in the air, except that which results from 
 the destruction of his forces. That is the common 
 sense or logic of war, for war is force set free to act 
 according to its nature. 
 
 So much then for the science of war, the view of 
 its nature given to us by history or theory. Upon 
 this view is based the art of conducting war. Take 
 the typical case of a war to a finish; the case when 
 a State is fighting for its existence, when the object 
 must be to overthrow the adversary and dictate to 
 him the conditions of peace. Upon what principles 
 will the leader frame his plan of campaign? What 
 will he do by way of observing Napoleon's precept 
 of making war in accordance with the examples of 
 the great commanders? He will endeavour as far 
 as possible to concentrate his action in time and 
 space. He will try to discover the direction in which 
 a great blow will upset the enemy, and he will 
 deliver that blow with the greatest force that he 
 can possibly collect for it. That will be his main 
 action, and, if any subordinate actions are indis- 
 pensable, he will devote to them the least possible 
 force, so as to keep as much as he can for his main 
 action. And he will do all that he does as quickly 
 as possible. 
 
 IT 
 
1 62 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 In 1805 Napoleon was disturbed, during his duel 
 with Nelson, by the discovery of a new coalition 
 against him. He found that Austria was getting 
 her armies ready in haste and that Russian armies 
 were moving to co-operate with them, while Prussia 
 with her great forces was undecided between the 
 two parties. The coalition was dangerous. It was 
 moving not less than 380,000 men, 100,000 more than 
 Napoleon could put into the field. What was he to 
 do? Was he to wait on the defensive and trust to 
 impregnable lines of defence and to a war of attri- 
 tion ? Not Napoleon. He, like Nelson, had brooded 
 on the means of attacking a pa,rt with the whole. 
 The. armies of the coalition were spread out across 
 Europe; one was to move through Pomerania to 
 invade Hanover, a Russian army was moving to 
 force Prussia to join the coalition, a second Russian 
 army was on its march to join the first Austrian 
 army which was to move through Bavaria ; a second 
 Austrian army was gathering in the Tyrol, and a 
 third, the greatest of all, in Northern Italy to invade 
 Napoleon's kingdom of Italy, where the forces avail- 
 able for defence were not more than half its strength. 
 Napoleon's armies too were spread out. He had one 
 corps at Hanover, a second in Holland, four in 
 Flanders and a seventh in Brittany, too far off for 
 immediate use. He left Italy to the forces that were 
 there; it was a secondary matter; he abandoned 
 Hanover for the time, and marched the six corps 
 that he had in Hanover, Holland and Flanders, by 
 the shortest routes, to the Danube. Thus he col- 
 
THE THEORY OF WAR 163 
 
 lected 200,000 men and united them into an army 
 behind the Austrians, assembled in their chosen posi- 
 tion along the Iller, where they were getting ready 
 to be attacked in front and waiting to be joined by 
 the Russian army that was on its march through 
 Austria. Napoleon crossed the Danube, sent two 
 corps to keep off the Russians, and with the rest of 
 his army put a girdle round the Austrians, whose 
 scattered bodies were crushed, one after another, 
 until, within two months from the departure of the 
 first troops from Boulogne, all that was left of the 
 first Austrian army surrendered at Trochtelfingen 
 and at Ulm. Napoleon then marched swiftly to 
 Vienna, the Russian army escaping just in time 
 across the Danube to join the next Russian army in 
 Moravia. He followed it beyond Brunn and there 
 halted. The young Emperor of Russia, who ought 
 to have waited for the Austrian army from Italy and 
 for Prussia to join the allies, let himself be persuaded 
 to move forward and attack Napoleon, who crushed 
 his army at Austerlitz. The coalition was thus 
 broken in pieces, not by forces superior in numbers, 
 but by Napoleon's use of time and of the forces at 
 his disposal. 
 
 The cpmmander who knows his mind, and has a 
 plan, almost always attacks his enemy. A com- 
 mander without a plan invariably awaits events, 
 and excuses his inaction by supposing it to be 
 defence. This is a dangerous attitude, for an army 
 that is waiting must expect to be attacked, yet can- 
 not foresee where the blow will fall. It must station 
 
i64 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 troops at all the points where attack, if successful, 
 would be dangerous. Thus its troops are spread 
 out in positions. The assailant, when he sets out 
 to attack, can set his troops in motion from several 
 points towards the one chosen for the assault. But 
 the defending commander cannot be sure where the 
 blow wiU fall until it is delivered. Then he must 
 send orders to his distant troops to come and 
 reinforce those that are holding the point attacked. 
 Time is needed for these orders to reach the troops, 
 and more time for their march to the spot. The 
 chances are that they will come up too late. In 
 short, the great advantage of the attack is surprise, 
 and the worst sin of a commander inaction or pas- 
 sive defence. It is a waste of time, which is always 
 on the side of the commander who knows how to 
 use it. 
 
 I shall not to-day enter into tactical problems, for 
 I must confine myself to the master art. To aVoid 
 possible misunderstanding I will merely remind you 
 how vital to success is the quality of an army, the 
 fighting skill of its every part, and how this quality 
 depends on the knowledge and judgment with which 
 the training is inspired, above all the training of the 
 officers. Here you have a sidelight on the utility 
 of the theory. 
 
 One more principle and I shall have completed my 
 sketch of the science of war, the view of what it 
 really is. 
 
 I have touched on the classification of wars, 
 according to their intensity, and reminded you that 
 
THE THEORY OF WAR 165 
 
 some wars are little more than discussions accom- 
 panied by fighting, half war and half diplomatic 
 considerations, while in others the flood-gates of 
 force are thrown open and the conflict is fought to 
 a finish. What constitutes the difference? It is a 
 case of the dynamical principle that the momentum 
 of a body represents the product of its mass and 
 of its velocity. ' The extreme energy of war is 
 developed when a whole people rushes to arms. 
 That is not possible except when the mass of the 
 people is deeply stirred by the motives which pro- 
 duce the conflict. If and when that happens the 
 forces set in motion will be immense; those brought 
 into play by the adversary may be expected to be of 
 the same kind, and there will be no conventional 
 limits to the mode of their employment. Thus a 
 very great development of force implies a purpose 
 that appeals to a whole community, and such a pur- 
 pose, sooner or later, brings about a corresponding 
 grandeur in the ideas which inspire the plans of 
 operation. It is when a whole nation throws itself 
 into a war that the conception of overthrowing the 
 enemy by the destruction of his forces must be 
 expected to assert itself. 
 
 The importance to a government of this principle 
 is that it makes possible the foresight and the fore- 
 thought without which there can be no preparation 
 suitable for a coming war. You can imagine for 
 yourselves the case of a government which, being 
 prepared for a small expedition, or for one of the 
 half-and-half wars that can be settled by compromise 
 
1 66 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 after a short period of experimental hostilities, 
 should suddenly find itself plunged into the tremen- 
 dous adventure of a war to a finish against one of 
 the Great Powers of the world. 
 
 If a statesman could so far forget himself as to 
 think only of his nation's well-being, he would never 
 be the victim of a surprise of this kind. Such a man 
 would make it his business to face realities, and 
 would see that the well-being of a nation depends 
 on its fulfilment of its purpose in the world. What 
 is England's purpose in the interplay of .forces that 
 forms the framework in which all the activities of 
 mankind are set? What is the inherent nature of 
 the force which preserves her existence and makes 
 her a nation? We think of England as the home 
 of freedom, of which the first condition is her own 
 independence. The force that maintains her inde- 
 pendence is her navy, which acts by destroying the 
 navies of her antagonists, and has given her in one 
 war after another the command of the sea. How is 
 it possible for a small island State, surrounded by 
 the open road of the sea, the easiest of all avenues 
 of attack, to have again and again destroyed the 
 navies of Europe? Because Europe has always 
 been divided against herself by that very principle 
 of the independence of nations which is England's 
 breath of life. The strength of England's navy has 
 been thrown into the scale in behalf of this indepen- 
 dence, her own and that of Continental allies, against 
 each succeeding effort of some one Power to turn the 
 commonwealth of Europe into a single Empire. It 
 
THE THEORY OF WAR 167 
 
 is evident, therefore, that England's well-being, her 
 very life, depends upon the frustration of any such 
 ambition on the part of a Continental State, that 
 upon the appearance of such a design England must 
 be prepared to fight for existence. It is equally 
 evident that so long as freedom is dear to mankind, 
 so long as the n^ations cherish their independence, 
 England is not likely to stand alone in fighting 
 for it. 
 
 The war in which we are now engaged could 
 therefore be foreseen in its broad outline from the 
 moment, now many years ago, when the ambition of 
 Germany to be mistress of Europe was first revealed, 
 and more especially from two steps taken by the 
 German Government and proclaimed to all the 
 world. The first, the creation of a navy which could 
 have no other intelligible purpose, as the theory of 
 naval war makes plain, than the destruction of any 
 possibly hostile navy and the ultimate command of 
 the sea ; the seconci the creation of a fleet of airships 
 which could have no other object than to gain the 
 command of the air. 
 
 Is it needful to give further proof that a govern- 
 ment cannot expect to be able to secure a nation's 
 well-being unless it has eyes to look closely at war 
 and unless it has grasped the laws which regulate 
 the workings of force? Where is it to look for this 
 kind of knowledge? Where is such knowledge 
 necessarily cultivated ? 
 
 To answer that question let us watch a commander 
 in the field. We may take Wellington at his head^ 
 
i68 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 quarters at Brussels in 1815. His chief preoccupa- 
 tion was, of course, with the enemy, with what 
 Napoleon would do, and how he himself would direct 
 the British army when the time came. But he had a 
 hundred other businesses to look after. He had to 
 correspond with the Government at home, to keep it 
 informed and to obtain from it the troops and supplies 
 that he wanted. He had to keep in touch with the 
 Allied Governments; with their representatives, civil 
 and military, and above all, with his Prussian colleague 
 Bliicher. He had to see that his troops were comfort- 
 ably quartered and fed. His correspondence of 181 5 
 is, for the most part, concerned with everything imagin- 
 able except the movements of the troops against the 
 enemy, which scarcely iorm the subject of more letters 
 than will fill half a dozen pages. A man who is as 
 busy as that must have his confidential secretaries, 
 among whom he divides the business. One of them 
 attends to the orders to the troops, that part of the 
 business which consists in directing the army against 
 the enemy, the highest part of war. In 18 15 this 
 particular secretary was Sir William de Lancey, the 
 Quartermaster-General, and as he was killed in the 
 battle and his papers lost, there is some dif&culty in 
 tracing with entire accuracy the working of Welling- 
 ton's mind in the four critical days of the campaign. 
 The Quartermaster-General was the one person who 
 was likely to be initiated into all the secrets. Napoleon 
 had the assistance of Marshal Berthier, whose title 
 was Ministre de la Guerre, Major-Gineral, expidianf 
 tes ordres de TEmpereur, the officer whose mission it 
 
THE THEORY OF WAR 169 
 
 was to transmit the Emperor's oriders. If anybody 
 could follow Napoleon's inmost thoughts as to his 
 operations it must have been Earthier. Every Com- 
 mander has an officer in a position like that of 
 de Lancey or of Berthier. The eighteenth-century 
 title of the office was Quartermaster-General. It has 
 been, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, 
 the high school of war. On this point let me marshal 
 the evidence. 
 
 In 1734 General de Puysegur, who had served 
 twenty-three years as Quartermaster-General to French 
 armies in the field, recorded his opinion that the office 
 was the only one in which a large knowledge of war 
 could be gained; that it was the only post suited to 
 prepare a man for command, for the ordinary general 
 officers had no share in the high matters with which 
 the Quartermaster-General had to occupy himself. 
 The two writers from whom Napoleon derived his first 
 inspirations, Guibert and Bourcet, were products of 
 the same office, for Guibert ascribed his ideas to 
 the teachings of his father, a famous Quartermaster- 
 General, and Bourcet, one of the greatest of them all, 
 wrote: 'A Quartermaster-General is the soul of an 
 army. . . . He ought to have acquired, by his experi- 
 ence and his application, a knowledge of the most 
 sublime parts of war, for it is necessary that he should 
 make combinations, that he should examine and fore- 
 see events, and that, with a good judgment to make 
 the best of the circumstances in which he may find 
 himself, his mind may be able to supply him with ideas 
 or projects of operations.* And again, ' The ideas and 
 
170 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 projects of operations which the Quartermaster-General 
 or his Assistants are able to form, require to be thought 
 out and discussed. The discussion brings out the 
 advantages and disadvantages of the various means 
 of operating. For this purpose it takes into considera- 
 tion the enemy's situation, the obstacles which it may 
 present to us, all the various hypotheses which can 
 be made concerning the eneiny's possible action, his 
 general officers and staff being always assumed to be 
 as well instructed and daring as possible. Accord- 
 ingly the Quartermaster-General should assemble his 
 assistants, presumed to be officers possessed of prin- 
 ciples and of experience, and should propound to them 
 his said ideas. Their discussion cannot but be bene- 
 ficial both for the assistants and the chief, as the 
 projects will thereby be confirmed or criticized, and 
 will often lead to changes in the necessary arrange- 
 ments for the execution of the plan. Thus it is in 
 these private conversations that the best officers can 
 form themselves.' 
 
 Scharnhorst, the real organizer of victory for Prussia 
 in the ' war of liberation,' did his chief work as Quarter 
 master-General, and his great disciple Clausewitz 
 served in the same capacity though in a less exalted 
 sphere of action. 
 
 The French, after the Revolution, changed the title 
 of the office to Chef de VEtat Major, which the 
 Prussians translated by Chief of the General Staff, 
 In this office his experience was gained by Jomini, 
 the first great exponent of the theory of war. Moltke 
 was, during almost all his military life, engaged in the 
 same functions. 
 
THE THEORY OF WAR 171 
 
 The names I have giyen you are those of all the 
 great students to whom is due such knowledge of 
 war as we possess. In the British army the last of 
 our victorious generals, the last who planned and 
 executed successful campaigns and won battles in 
 the field, were Lord Wolseley, who gained his first 
 experience of the high parts of war as Quartermaster- 
 General to Sir Hope Grant in the Oudh campaign 
 of 1858-9, and Lord Roberts, who served in the 
 Quartermaster-General's department from 1856 until 
 in 1878 he left it as Quartermaster-General, and 
 who used to say that to his employment in this 
 capacity he owed his insight into military opera- 
 tions. 
 
 I have called this great cloud of witnesses because 
 I want to convince you beyond the possibility of doubt 
 that a government in search of a man likely to see war 
 as it is and likely to be able to direct it well would 
 look for one who had been trained in the particular 
 business which has produced almost all the men who 
 for two centuries have made their mark as directors 
 of armies in the &eld, and almost all the men whose 
 writings have thrown light on the art of command. 
 For there is an art of command, which is something 
 more than science "or insight into the nature of war, 
 and consists of the application of the science or insight 
 to the infinite variety of situations that arise in the 
 field. This application is best learned in the office 
 which prepares plans of operations. In order that 
 you may grasp the importance of this practical appli- 
 cation of the theory I must propound to you the 
 
172 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 paradox of strategy and clear up its apparent contra- 
 diction. 
 
 The first and last word of Napoleon was 'Prin- 
 ciples.' In 1794, during the brief campaign of 
 Oneglia, he wrote a letter to Massena telling that 
 general that 'according to all the principles of war' 
 he ought never to have left one of his columns with 
 no communication with the rest of the army. I have 
 already reminded you how in his notes dictated at 
 St. Helena he dwells on the 'principles! that guided 
 the great commanders. But in the very next sentence 
 he says : ' There are no precise definite rules ; every- 
 thing depends upon ... a thousand circumstances 
 which are never in two cases alike.' 
 
 Few generals have more profoundly studied the 
 theory of war than the victor of Koniggratz and 
 Sedan. In his brief paper on strategy Moltke says : 
 
 ' If in war, from the beginning of the operations, 
 everything is uncertain except such will and energy 
 as the commander carries in himself, there cannot 
 possibly be practical value for strategy in general 
 principles, rules derived from them and systems built 
 up upon the rules. . . . Strategy is a system of 
 expedients. It is more than science, it is the transla- 
 tion of science into practical life, the development of 
 an original leading thought in accordance with the 
 ever-changing circumstances.' 
 
 What is the explanation of this seeming contradic- 
 tion, of the stress laid on the mastery of principles and 
 at the same time the emphatic statement that principles, 
 rules, and systems are not sufficient guides ? 
 
THE THEORY OF WAR 173 
 
 It is that the value of the theory of war lies in the 
 insight which it gives into war's true nature, the know- 
 ledge to which it leads of the strong and weak points 
 of armies, of what can be done with them and what 
 cannot, of all the problems offered by a campaign, 
 and of the various solutions possible for each of them. 
 Above all, the effort to look at war and to think of war 
 in the right way becomes in time a habit of right think- 
 ing so that to the trained strategist we may iapply a 
 Roman's ideal of the man whom ' habit has brought to 
 a point at which he will not only act righdy, but is 
 incapable of acting except rightly.' In short, the 
 value of the study of war lies in the last analysis in 
 die judgment which it confers upon its devotees. It 
 produces men fit to direct a war. 
 
 I have given you a bird's-eye view of the science 
 and art of war, and have shown you what a great war 
 is and how it must be directed. I have done my 
 best to make myself the mouthpiece of the theory or 
 of history, and any imperfection of the message has 
 been due to the defects of the transmitting instrument. 
 In the attempt, which I shall now make, to apply the 
 theory to a concrete case, there is, of course, an element 
 of personal judgment, which can never be eliminated, 
 though I shall not leave you without the means of 
 estimating the probable margin of error. 
 
 What is the question that millions of Englishmen, 
 in five continents, are now asking themselves? Is it 
 not how are we to be led to victory ? I have tried to make 
 the answer to that question self-evident. We shall 
 remember, of course, that victory does not d^end 
 
174 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 upon ourselves alone, or upon ourselves and our allies. 
 Combatants, I need not remind you, are not umpires. 
 But we can and must make sure that the resources of 
 England and the Empire, their intelligence, their men 
 and their money shall be employed in accordance with 
 the inherent nature of forces, with the laws which deter- 
 mine the results of their collision, with the principles 
 of the science and art of war. To that end they must be 
 directed by a mind formed in the theory of war, that 
 is in a life of attention to its sublime parts. 
 
 That does not mean that we are to look for a great 
 man. A man is recognized as great after he has done 
 his work, not before. What is wanted is simply a 
 man who has learned the craft of a strategist and is 
 competent in it. When he has been found what use 
 is to be made of him ? Evidently his insight and 
 skill must be employed to give the general direction 
 to the armies. But that, we have seen, is the function 
 of the Government. Are we then to take a competent 
 . strategist and make him Prime Minister ? No doubt 
 we should be tempted to do so if a victorious general 
 revealed himself. Yet it would be a mistake, because 
 after victory comes peace, and then strategy ceases to 
 be the dominant business of government. 
 
 How, then, are we to insert a strategist as the inner 
 spring into the government machine ? Consider the 
 machine. In the British system, the King's executive 
 power is wielded by the Cabinet, a committee of 
 members of Parliament chosen by the Prime Minister, 
 who assigns to each one of them the headship of a 
 Department. The Prime Minister is the head of the 
 
THE THEORY OF WAR 175 
 
 Government, the chairman of the committee. As long 
 as there is a Prime Minister, he will be the director of 
 England's action in the war. Our view of war shows 
 us that the only way to get the most out of the nation's 
 forces is to arrange that the director shall see war 
 just as it is, and shall be inspired by the theory. 
 Common sense suggests, therefore, that the strategist 
 should be brought into direct personal contact with 
 the Prime Minister. The object is that the Prime 
 Minister should see with the strategist's eye, think his 
 thoughts, and make his resolves his own. If the 
 Prime Minister must communicate with the chosen 
 strategist through any other person, that third person 
 will necessarily be a non-conducting medium, and the 
 purpose will not be fulfilled. The arrangement pro- 
 posed, the only one possible except a military dictator- 
 ship, which would be madness before victory has 
 revealed a great man, involves a slight change in the 
 composition of the Cabinet. The Secretary of State 
 for War would become a minister for the administra- 
 tion of the army and the Prime Minister would under- 
 take the general management of the war; directing the 
 navy through a naval strategist and the army through 
 a military strategist. What the two strategists should 
 be called matters nothing. They would perhaps be 
 best secured from disturbance if they were simply the 
 Prime Minister's private secretaries; it is not certain 
 that their influence would be greater if they were 
 members of the Cabinet, the executive committee of 
 the nation. The real function of the members of the 
 Cabinet is to explain the actions of the Government 
 
176 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 to the House of Commons, and so to keep the 
 nation content with its rulers. But the nation will be 
 content with them if it sees itself on the road to victory. 
 During the conflict the less talking the better, and 
 explanations are as needless after victory as they are 
 useless after defeat. 
 
 The theory has told you that in proportion as a 
 nation throws its whole being into a war the conduct 
 of its war rises to the grandeur of design required — in 
 short, that where there is a will there is a way. Now, 
 see how true the theory is. When I planned this 
 lecture, my one purpose was to tell my countrymen : 
 If you want to have a chance to win, you must have 
 strategy inside the Government, must get a true view 
 of war into the Prime Minister's mind. The theory 
 has shown you how that must be done, you must bring 
 into touch with, the Prime Minister an officer trained 
 in what Wellington would have called the Quarter- 
 master-General's department, and what is now called 
 the Imperial General Staff. While I have been prepar- 
 ing my address, the Government has begun to move in 
 the direction in which the theory points. The Prime 
 Minister has looked for a strategist in the right place, 
 among the officers trained in the General Staff or plan 
 of campaign office, and has decided that he shall be 
 the officer issuing the orders of the Government con- 
 cerning the military operations. You will find the 
 decision in the Order in Council of January 27, which 
 states that : ' The Chief of the Imperial General Staff 
 shall be responsible for issuing the orders of the 
 Government in regard to military operations.' Thus the 
 
THE THEORY OF WAR 177 
 
 person has been rightly chosen according to the theory. 
 But he is not by the Order in Council brought into 
 direct contact with the Prime Minister. Reference is 
 made in the Order in Council to one of earlier date, 
 which makes the Chief of the Imperial General Staff 
 the subordinate of the Secretary of State for War, 
 who still remains the Parliamentary exponent of the 
 strategical decisions of the Government. Thus, there 
 is still, contrary, as I cannot but think, to the indica- 
 tions of the theory, an intermediary between the 
 representative of strategy and the head of the Govern- 
 ment. 
 
 The theory of war and the practice of other nations 
 point to further changes that must be made if the 
 object is victory. The Chief of the Imperial General 
 Staff must be relieved from the administrative duties 
 which hinder the concentration of his energies on the 
 direction of the military operations. For that purpose 
 it is necessary to separate the General Staff from the 
 office which administers the army and to set over the 
 administrative departments an officer chosen for his 
 insight into the machinery of modem armies, for hi= 
 intimacy with the inner working of the British system 
 and for his knowledge of the people of Great Britain 
 who fill all ranks of the army. This division of the 
 present War Office into two, the General Staff and the 
 office for the Administration, will leave two officers — 
 the minister of operations and the minister of army 
 administration — in direct communication with the 
 Prime Minister, who will, with and through them, him- 
 self take charge of the general direction of the war. 
 
178 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 from which no system and no device can possibly 
 relieve him. 
 
 This distribution of business was adopted by 
 Napoleon in 1805 when he undertook his first great 
 war as Emperor. For side by side with Berthier, 
 Minister for War, who was the channel of his orders, was 
 a Minister of the Administration of War. It has since 
 been adopted by every one of the European Powers 
 in turn and was the system of the Indian army in 
 the days of its best commander-in-chief, Lord Roberts, 
 and of its best administrators, Sir George Chesney and 
 Sir Henry Brackenbury. 
 
 These changes cannot produce their full effect unless 
 they are accompanied by a decentralization which 
 would transfer from the central administration to the 
 Generals commanding Army Corps the care for the 
 spiritual and material needs of the troops, both of 
 officers and men. Every commander of an Army 
 Corps should have authority over all its business and 
 the duty of training his own officers and troops. He 
 should have as little to do with the War Office as 
 possible and the War Office should not be allowed to 
 meddle with the details of his work. Time forbids 
 me to enlarge on matters of military administration. 
 I must be content with having pointed out the first 
 steps indicated by the theory as indispensable for 
 the management of war. You may be tempted to 
 think that the Prime Minister ought to attend to 
 other things and leave the management of the war to 
 one or more of his colleagues. But the war while it 
 lasts is the chief thing, and until victory has been 
 
THE THEORY OF WAR 179 
 
 obtained the other things matter nothing except in 
 so far as they may be helpful towards victory. It is 
 the other things that the Prime Minister inust leave to 
 his colleagues. 
 
 We have looked closely at a particular function 
 of government, and for that partiqular work we have 
 found our Government a little shortsighted. We have 
 examined its eyes and ascertained the precise nature 
 of the lens which will correct its vision. Has not our 
 search incidentally revealed to us the general nature 
 of the malady from which our nation is suffering and 
 does not the diagnosis broadly indicate the remedy ? 
 Is there any department in our Government in which 
 the minister, through whom the King's authority is 
 exercised, can look at the business of which he bas 
 charge with the clear vision given by full knowledge ? 
 Have we not as a people been so much absorbed in 
 what we thought the necessary business of getting our 
 living or of getting on that we have had no time for 
 what was after all of far greater moment, the effort 
 to see the world as it is ? 
 
 I have put before you to-day a specimen of that 
 effort, the theory of war. Shall I be wrong in con- 
 cluding that the theory of a subject means obedience 
 to the first word of command, ' Attention,' and that its 
 spirit is expressed in the words : ' If thine eye be single 
 thy whole body shall be full of light ' ? 
 
VIII 
 
 THE DARDANELLES COMMISSION* 
 
 There have been of late discussions on the subject 
 of the proper use to be made of the Fleet, discussions 
 which reveal uncertainty about the aim and scope of 
 naval warfare. The report of the Dardoinelles Com- 
 mission disclosed uncertainty of this kind among 
 those who, during the term of the late Government, 
 had authority over the conduct of the war. That 
 the functions of the fleet should be a matter of doubt, 
 especially in high quarters, is nothing less than a 
 national danger, for a mistaken employment of this 
 powerful and costly force might lead to defeat and 
 even to the collapse of the cause of the AUies and 
 of the British Empire. 
 
 The objective of a navy is the enemy's navy. This 
 fundamental principle was laid down independently 
 of each other by the two clearest thinkers who have 
 written systematically about naval warfare, by 
 Admiral Philip Colomb in his 'Naval Warfare, and 
 by Captain Mahan in his Influence of Sea Power 
 upon History. In the judgment of these two writers, 
 so long as a hostile navy exists, no objective other 
 than that navy can be pursued, except at a hazard 
 which ought not to be run. What does a man mean 
 when, speaking of war, he refers to risks that ought 
 
 * September, 191 7. 
 180 
 
THE DARDANELLES COMMISSION i8i 
 
 not to be run ? Is not war made up of danger, of 
 risk, of hazard ? How are we to know what risks 
 are to be taken, and what not ? That there is a line 
 to be drawn is shown by the opinion of the masters 
 of the business. 'Do not imagine,' wrote Nelson, on 
 the 2nd of July, 1804, 'I am one of those hot-brained 
 people who fight at an immense disadvantage with- 
 out an adequate object.' ' Battles ought not to be 
 given,' wrote Napoleon on the 21st of August, 1809, 
 ' unless one can reckon in one's favour seventy chances 
 of success out of a hundred.' In other words, the 
 general or the admiral who of his own accord engages 
 in battle without a reasonable certainty of success 
 does not know his business. An attack of ships 
 upon forts is an operation which naval writers regard 
 as tabooed. It is an improper use of tools. It is 
 employing ^ips for a purpose for which they are 
 not suited. A ship is like an eggshell fuU of men 
 and machinery; a comparatively small number of 
 hits by great projectiles will sink it, a sufficient num- 
 ber of explosions of smaller projectiles will cripple 
 the machinery and disable the greater part of the 
 crew. A ship offers a large, visible and vulnerable 
 target. Fortifications on land are made to stand a 
 great deal of pounding, even by heavy projectiles. 
 A land battery offers a target only a few feet high, 
 difficult to distinguish and very hard to hit. It may 
 be hit a great many times without damage to the 
 guns, which will probably be invisible and almost 
 impossible to locate. Accordingly, the damage 
 which may be inflicted on the fort is quite incom- 
 
1 82 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 mensurate with the loss which will probably be 
 suffered by the ships. Common sense, therefore, 
 suggests that the experiment should not be under- 
 taken. Its most probable result is that a number of 
 ships and men will be lost for nothing, and the con- 
 sequence is likely to be not only defeat in the engage- 
 ment but the loss of forces which might, had they 
 been preserved, have turned the balance in some sea 
 £ght upon which the issue of the war possibly 
 depends. The risk which ought not to be run is that 
 of losing not only the battle but the war. 
 
 The attack by ships upon forts being forbidden by 
 common sense, it seems incredible that any Govern- 
 ment should order such an operation. Yet this 
 tabooed experiment was three times undertaken by 
 the late Government. The result of these and of 
 subsequent operations was so disastrous that Par- 
 liament took the extraordinary step of passing an 
 Act which ordered a Commission to inquire into the 
 origin, inception and conduct of the operations in 
 and about the Dardanelles, and which enjoined the 
 publication of the Commission's report. The first 
 instalment of the report had the effect of emphasizing 
 the doubt in the public mind concerning the fitness 
 of the organization of the Government for the con- 
 duct of the War. But it did not relieve the doubt 
 by the suggestion of a better system, so that the 
 problem was not solved. The Commissioners began 
 their report by pointing out that they would exceed 
 the scope of their functions if they were to examine 
 the measures necessary to remedy the administrative 
 
THE DARDANELLES COMMISSION 183 
 
 defects revealed by their inquiry. They ended it 
 by the suggestion that any member of the public who 
 fnight read the report should draw his own eonclu- 
 sions. This was probably the right course for a 
 Commission, which has neither the machinery of 
 judicial procedure, inasmuch as those whose conduct 
 is the subject of the inquiry are not represented by 
 advocates, nor the peculiar kind of skill which is the 
 quali&cation for scientii^c investigation. Moreover, 
 the Commission is still at work, and its report is far 
 from complete. Yet what the nation needed and 
 desired was to discover the defects in its system of 
 government for the purpose of carrying on the war, 
 and the remedy for those defects. I venture then to 
 ask the reader to accompany me in accepting the 
 Commission's invitation to use the materials supplied 
 in its report in an attempt to £nd out how the mis- 
 take came to be made, and how such mistakes can 
 be prevented. 
 
 ' In every war all the important decisions are made 
 by the supreme executive authority, which is respon- 
 sible to the nation for them. It stands or falls by 
 success or failure in war, naturally enough, for the 
 nation stands or falls by the issue of a war, an issue 
 for which it always holds its Government responsible. 
 Everyone else simply obeys the Government. In 
 our Constitution the executive power, vested in the 
 Kin|r, is exercised according to the advice of the 
 Cabmet, and for that advice, which means for every 
 act of each member and of all his subordinates, the 
 Cabinet is responsible to Parliament. There are 
 thus only two responsibilities, that of the Cabinet tp 
 
1 84 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 Parliament, and of every official, including every 
 single Minister, to the Cabinet. The decisions that 
 fix the size of the army and navy, that determine 
 how much of the army or navy shall be used in 
 each theatre of war, who shall command each por- 
 tion, and what mission he is to fulfil, are decisions of 
 the Cabinet as a body. But these decisions, taken 
 together, constitute the conduct of the war. None 
 of them is ever taken except with the sanction of the 
 Cabinet, and if any of them were challenged in the 
 House of Commons and condemned by that body 
 the Cabinet would fall. 
 
 'How, then, can a Cabinet rightly decide such 
 technical questions as the number of battleships, or 
 of divisions, to be kept, the choice of theatres of war, 
 of objectives and of commanders, and the force to 
 be placed under the orders of each of them? Just 
 in the same way as a man decides his own affairs 
 when they involve professional skill. He chooses a 
 doctor, a surgeon, or a lawyer; listens to what the 
 professional man proposes, and then decides to the 
 best of his common sense whether he will take the 
 medicine, consent to the operation on his child, or 
 proceed with the action in chancery. The Cabinet 
 in the same way considers the suggestions made by 
 its generals or admirals, and decides to adopt, to 
 reject, or to modify them. The members of the 
 Cabinet have to make up their minds as best they 
 can as to the skill of their naval and military officers, 
 and to back their judgment about them and their 
 ideas "by staking the national existence on the issue.'* 
 
 The usual practice of a large committee is to have 
 any important branch of its work prepared by a 
 special sub-committee. When war broke out in 
 
 * Westminster Gazette, May 28, 1915. 
 
THE DARDANELLES COMMISSION 185 
 
 August, 1 91 4, the pre-existing arrangements had 
 been thrown out of gear, partly by troubles arising 
 out of Irish affairs, and partly because the principal 
 military oflicers were told off to the Expeditionary 
 Force which was sent to France. But new arrange- 
 ments were quickly improvised, by which business 
 cormected with the conduct of the war was entrusted 
 to two sub-committees. One of these, called the War 
 Council, consisted of twelve members, of whom seven 
 were members of the Cabinet, and the 6thers were 
 Mr. Balfour; the First Sea Lord, Lord Fisher; 
 Admiral Sir Arthur Wilson ; the Chief of the Imperial 
 General Staff, Sir James Wolfe Murray; and the 
 Secretary, Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Maurice Hankey. 
 This War Council is perhaps not quite accurately 
 described as a sub-committee of the Cabinet, because 
 a minority of its members were not Cabinet Ministers. 
 But for practical purposes the distinction does not 
 matter. For the War Council the business was pre- 
 pared by a small sub-committee, a triumvirate, com- 
 posed of the Prime Minister, Mr. Asquith ; the Secre- 
 tary of State for War, Lord Kitchener ; and the First 
 Lord of the Admiralty, Mr. Churchill. 
 
 This triumvirate was a close approximation to the 
 ideal arrangement for the management of a war. 
 In 1892 Sir Charles Dilke and I in an essay which 
 represented the results of our joint study of Imperial 
 Defence reached the conclusions that. 
 
 'the first requirement of a sound system is a general 
 who can be entrusted with the duty of advising the 
 Cabinet upon the conduct of war, and with the actual 
 
1 86 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 management of campaigns. To have such cin officer 
 is indispensable, for it is an elementary truth that 
 war can never be well conducted by a committee. . . . 
 Any satisfactory Admiralty system will provide a 
 competent naval adviser for the Cabinet. . . . We 
 attach the highest importance to the common action 
 of the military and of the naval authorities in the 
 consideration of Imperial defence. We doubt, how- 
 ever, whether it will be possible to secure unity of 
 design in defence so long as the War Of&ce and the 
 Admiralty are separately represented in the Cabinet.* 
 The difficulty would be overcome if it became the 
 practice for one Minister to hold both offices.' 
 
 Our great object was, if possible, to put before 
 those who had charge of the national affairs a con- 
 ception of defence which embodied views as to which 
 there was full agreement between those who had 
 devoted special attention to the subject. The pas- 
 sages just quoted proved to fulfil this condition, and 
 in February, 1894, ^ memorandum was sent to the 
 leading statesmen of all parties bearing the signa- 
 tures, not only of the authors of Imperial Defence, 
 but also of General Sir George Chesney and Mr. 
 Arnold-Forster, at that time the most eminent repre- 
 sentatives in Parliament of the effort to induce the 
 nation to make reasonable preparation for possible 
 conflict. The substance of that memorandum was 
 the following passage: 
 
 ' In order to secure the special consideration by the 
 Cabinet of national defence as distinct from and 
 
 * This refers not to the professional advisers, but to the 
 political heads of the two existing offices. 
 
THE DARDANELLES COMMISSION 187 
 
 superior to the administration either of the Navy or 
 of the Army we would suggest the appointment of 
 one and the same Minister to the two ofiices of 
 Secretary of St;ate for War and First Lord of the. 
 Admiralty, or the amalgamation, with the consent 
 of Parliament, of these two offices. 
 
 'We would further suggest that the Cabinet should 
 select for each Service an officer whose professional 
 judgment commands its confidence, to be at once 
 the responsible adviser of the Cabinet upon all ques- 
 tions regarding the conduct of war so far as his own 
 Service is concerned, and the principal executive 
 officer of that Service. 
 
 ' We understand by a responsible adviser one who 
 stands or falls by the advice which he gives. He 
 would, of course, have at his disposal, in the forma- 
 tion of his views, the best assistance which the pro- 
 fessional staff of the navy or of the army could 
 supply. But the opinion which, after mature con- 
 sideration, he would submit to the Cabinet and 
 formally record, would be his own, and would be 
 given in his own name.'* 
 
 The objects proposed by the authors of this paper 
 were, first, that the Prime Minister himself should 
 attend to the national business of the preparation 
 and conduct of war and, secondly, to find some 
 means of securing that the principles of war should 
 be constantly kept before him.t He was to have 
 
 * Imperial Defence. Second edition. .Appendix II. 
 
 + I use the phrase ' principles of war ' because it was a 
 favourite expression of Napoleon's throughout his career. 
 Sometimes he spoke of the ' high ' or ' sublime parts of war,' 
 and sometimes of ' my system.' Of all these terms the modern 
 name is the theory of war. 
 
1 88 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 the best professional advice, of which the only pos- 
 sible meaning is that his advisers should be expo- 
 nents of the principles or theory of war. Everything 
 depended, of course, upon the distinctness with which 
 each of these advisers should realize that his function 
 was to be the representg.tive of the theory, or, in other 
 words, of the knowledge and experience of which the 
 General Staff, in the one case of the Admiralty, and 
 in the other of the War Office, must needs be the 
 repository. 
 
 As a fact, the War Office and the Admiralty were 
 in full possession of the theory and of its application 
 to the problem of the Dardanelles, which was indeed 
 familiar to all persons who had paid any special 
 attention to the subject. The Dardanelles, the Bos- 
 phorus, and the Gallipoli Peninsula are among the 
 famous places of the world, familiar to readers of 
 history and travels. In 1 807 a British fleet made its 
 way through the Dardanelles, passed the forts, and 
 reached Constantinople. There the Admiral found 
 himself unable to do anything against the city, and 
 reluctantly made his way back througlj the Dar- 
 danelles, with heavy loss. In 1836 the Dardanelles 
 were surveyed for the Sultan by a Prussian captain, 
 von Moltke, who expressed the opinion that, if the 
 forts were properly armed, no fleet could ever pass 
 them, and that to land an army and take the forts in 
 rear would be far from easy. This opinion was well 
 known, for its author was afterwards the greatest 
 general of the nineteenth century, and his account of 
 the Dardanelles was published in a popular and 
 
THE DARDANELLES COMMISSION 189 
 
 widely read volume. In 1896 professional opinion 
 on the subject was summed up as follows : 
 
 ' It would not be difficult for a civilized power so to 
 fortify the Dardanelles that their passage by a hos- 
 tile fleet would be impracticable, and that the works 
 covering them would form a first-class fortress not 
 to be taken, except after a protracted siege.'* 
 
 In 1 91 4 there was every probability that these fortifi- 
 cations had been put in order during one of the 
 periods when the late Field-Marshal von der Goltz 
 was a pasha supervising tlie Turkish army. At the 
 end of 19 1 4 there was a further probability that the 
 attention of the Turkish Government n had been 
 specially directed to these forts by the brief bom- 
 bardment of the outer forts carried out on the 3rd of 
 November under orders from the Admiralty given 
 without the knowledge of the War Council. 
 
 In quite recent times the War Office and the 
 Admiralty had more than once caused the problem 
 of forcing the passage of the Dardanelles to be care- 
 fully studied. In 1904 Lord Fisher satisfied him- 
 self 'that even with military co-operation the opera- 
 tion was mightily hazardous.' In 1906 the General 
 Staff at the War Office reported that 'military 
 opinion, looking at the question from the point of 
 view of coast defence, will be in entire agreement 
 with the naval view that unaided action by the 
 Fleet, bearing in mind the risks involved, is much 
 
 ♦ National Review, November, 1896. 
 
I90 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 to be deprecated.' In September, 191 4, Mr. Churchill, 
 as First Lord of the Admiralty, ordered, with Lord 
 Kitchener, that two naval and two military officers 
 should work out a plan for seizing the Gallipoli 
 Peninsula (with a Greek army) in order to admit a 
 British Fleet into the Sea of Marmora. A day or 
 two later he received a military memorandum say- 
 ing, 'An attack upon the Gallipoli Peninsula from 
 the sea side (outside the Straits) is likely to prove 
 an extremely difficult operation.' 
 
 Thus, the two offices concerned had fulfilled their 
 function of applying the theory of war to the par- 
 ticular problem with which we are concerned. The 
 War Council appears to have been not quite so 
 happy. In December, 1914, its Secretary circulated 
 to the members of the War Council a memorandum, 
 in which it was suggested that there was a deadlock 
 in the Western theatre of war, and that Germany 
 could best be struck by a blow directed in the first 
 instance against Turkey. The report of the Com- 
 mission tells us that at this time the members of the 
 War Council, apparently the professional members, 
 were divided into two schools, one of whidi held that 
 all efforts should be concentrated in the Western 
 theatre of war, at any rate until it was proved beyond 
 doubt that there was there no possibility of success, 
 while the other held that a fresh campaign should be 
 opened against Turkey and Austria. There can 
 hardly be a doubt as to which of these two schools 
 was inspired by the theory of war. Napoleon, writ- 
 ing at St. Helena about the campaign of 1800, said : 
 
THE DARDANELLES COMMISSION 191 
 
 'A plan of campaign ought to have foreseen aU 
 that the enemy can do and contain the means of 
 frustrating it. In this campaign the frontier of Ger- 
 many was the predominant frontier; the frontier of 
 the Riviera of Genoa was the secondary frontier. 
 The events which might happen in Italy would have 
 no direct, immediate, and necessary action upon the 
 affairs of the Rhine, while the events that might 
 happen in Germany would have a necessary and 
 immediate action upon Italy. Consequently, the 
 First Consul united all the forces of the Republic 
 on the predominant frontier.' 
 
 In January, 191 5, not only was the Western Front 
 the predominant frontier, but it was the only frontier 
 upon which all the forces of France and England 
 could be united. The proposal for operations on a 
 large scale through Turkey, attributed by Lord 
 Fisher to Sir Maurice Hankey, and, apparently, 
 favoured by Lord Fisher himself, violated the first 
 principle of war, which is to concentrate all efforts 
 both in time and place. . 
 
 At the beginning of 191 5 the German assaults in 
 the West had been checked. Their great attacks on 
 Ypres had failed. But the new armies which were 
 forming in England had not yet taken the field. In 
 the East the Russians had the better of the Aus- 
 trians, but were not doing well on the Asiatic frontier 
 of Turkey. Bulgaria was neutral, and there was 
 reasonable uneasiness about her possible attitude. 
 
 The bombardment of the forts of the Dardanelles 
 was begun on the 19th of February. It was author- 
 ized by the Cabinet on the 17th or i8th of February, 
 
192 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 when 'the Prime Minister conveyed to the Cabinet 
 the unanimous decision of the War Council. It was 
 accepted by them without question, criticism, or dis- 
 cussion of any kind.' The decision of the War 
 Council which the Cabinet thus endorsed without 
 question was formed at two meetings. The first was 
 held on the 13th of January. On this occasion 
 
 'Mr. Churchill said that he had exchanged tele- 
 grams with Vice-Admiral Garden, the Commander- 
 in-Chief in the Mediterranean, in regard to the pos- 
 sibilities of a naval attack on the Dardanelles. The 
 sense of Admiral Garden's reply was that it was 
 impossible to rush the Dardanelles, but that in his 
 opinion it might be possible to demolish the forts 
 one by one. His proposal was first to concentrate 
 his fire on the entrance forts. After they were 
 demolished he would proceed to deal with the inner 
 forts, then attack from the Straits and from the sea 
 side of the GaUipoli Peninsula. The plan was based 
 on the fact that the Dardanelles forts are armed 
 mainly with old guns of only 35 calibre. These 
 would be outranged by the guns of the ships, which 
 would effect their object without going into range.' 
 
 Mr. Churchill gave details of the force to be em- 
 ployed, and went on : 
 
 'The Admiralty were studying the question, and 
 believed that a plan could be made for systematically 
 reducing all the forts within a few weeks. Once 
 the forts were reduced the minefields would be 
 cleared, and the fleet would proceed up to Constanti- 
 nople and destroy the Goeben. 
 
THE DARDANELLES COMMISSION 193 
 
 'Lord Kitchener thought the plan was worth try- 
 ing. We could leave off the bombardment if it did 
 not prove effective.' 
 
 There was, apparently, no other speech. Lord 
 Fisher, Sir Arthur Wilson, and Sir James Murray 
 remained silent, and the decision was taken in the 
 following terms : ' The Admiralty should prepare 
 for a naval expedition in February to bombard and 
 take the Gallipoli Peninsula, with Constantinople as 
 its objective.' 
 
 The second meeting of the War Council was held 
 on the 28th of January. The decision taken was 
 identical with that adopted at the first meeting. So 
 far as can be gathered from Sir Maurice Hankey's 
 note, of which one version appears in the Commis- 
 sion's report, and further details in that of Mr. Roch, 
 Mr. Churchill advocated and Lord Kitchener sup- 
 ported the measure proposed. The arguments used 
 are recorded as follows : 
 
 'Among the advantages claimed for it were that 
 
 '(i) It would cut the Turkish army in two. 
 
 '(2) It would put Constantinople under our con- 
 trol. 
 
 ' (3) It would finally settle the attitude of Bulgaria 
 and the whole of the Balkans. (This appears to have 
 been said by Lord Grey.) 
 
 ' (4) It would give us the advantage of having the 
 Russian wheat, enabling Russia to resume exports 
 (this would restore Russian exchanges, which were 
 falling owing to her inability to export, and causing 
 great embarrassment). 
 
 13 
 
194 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 '(5) It would open a passage to the Danube. 
 
 '(6) If successful, its effect would be equivalent to 
 that of a successful campaign fought with the new 
 armies. 
 
 '(7) One merit of the scheme was that if satisfac- 
 tory progress was not made the attack could be 
 broken off.' 
 
 Mr. Balfour, in dwelling upon the advantages 
 which would accrue from a successful attack on the 
 Dardanelles, concluded by saying that 'it was diffi- 
 cult to imagine a more helpful operation.' Mr. 
 Churchill then said that the naval Commander-in- 
 Chief in the Mediterranean had expressed his belief 
 that it could be done. He required from three weeks 
 to a month to accomplish it. The necessary ships 
 were already on their way to the Dardanelles. The 
 real difficulties would begin when the outer forts had 
 been silenced, and it became necessary to attack the 
 Narrows. . . . He explained the plan of attack on 
 a map. 
 
 Nothing more was said relevant to the operation. 
 The project was not criticized, and all the naval 
 officers were silent. 
 
 It is quite intelligible that those members of the 
 Council who had had no training in the science and 
 art of war should be impressed with what was said 
 at these meetings. Mr. Churchill's speech on the 
 13th giving the vieWS of Vice- Admiral Carden must 
 have seemed, in the silence of the Admirals present, 
 to represent the professional opinion of the Navy. 
 There was no one to tell the Council that the notion 
 
THE DARDANELLES COMMISSION 195 
 
 of the naval guns demolishing' the forts while out of 
 range of them was in flat contradiction to the views 
 of coast defence officers, which seem to have be6n 
 represented in the War Office paper of 1906. The 
 silence of the Admirals was taken to imply appi'oval, 
 and rightly so, for all the non-professional members 
 had been members of the Committee of Imperial 
 Defence, where it was well understood that 'the 
 silence of a naval or military officer implied concur- 
 rence with the view expressed by his political chief. 
 The political members might perhaps discount Mr. 
 Churchill as one of their own class. But he kppeared 
 to be speaking for the Admii'alty and to represent 
 the naval judgment ; above all he was warinl)^ sup- 
 ported Iby Lord Kitchener, whose force of character 
 and great reputation lent immense weight to what- 
 ever he said. Thus the plan was cairried withoiit 
 criticism and no one seems to'haVe noticed that of 
 the sevien advantages claimed the seventh was not 
 very promising, and the other six were chickens that 
 could hardly be hatched before the taking of Con- 
 stantinople,' a feat that no one can have thought 
 likely to be accomplished without an army. The' 
 naval' officers who were present have subsequently 
 been exiamined by the Commissioii and have excijsed 
 their silence on the ground that it was not their duty 
 to express disagreement with the' First Lord of the 
 Admiralty. But in that case what was the use of 
 their presence ? What was its object if not to insure 
 that the theory of naval war in its application to the 
 plan proposed should be brought home to the political 
 
196 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 members ? What escape have they from the dilemma 
 that either they had not mastered the subject, or if 
 they had, had sat silent while a wrong decision was 
 made? 
 
 The moral to be drawn from these two meetings is 
 that the direction of the naval and military forces of 
 the Crown cannot safely be left to a committee of 
 political leaders, however distinguished, without an 
 adequate guarantee that before they make a decision 
 they will have had before them an analysis based 
 upon a sound theory of war, naval or military. 
 
 It remains to examine the working of the trium- 
 virate, in which the Prime Minister's function was to 
 keep his mind open to the military and the naval 
 judgment of which the Secretary of State for War 
 and the First Lord of the Admiralty were the official 
 exponents. The cases of these two officers were not 
 identical Mr. Churchill, not being a naval officer, 
 could have no judgment of his own on naval matters 
 entitling him to a voice in the Council His proper 
 function was to be the mouthpiece of the Admiralty. 
 The organization of the Admiralty had since 1894 
 been modified for the purpose of securing sound 
 strategical advice to the Government, and the Order 
 in Council regulating its business had added to the 
 other duties of the First Sea Lord the function of 
 strategical adviser to the Government. He had sub- 
 sequently been provided with a special Staff to assist 
 him in the performance of this function. These 
 arrangements imply a specific and formal mode of 
 procedure. If they meant anything it was that naval 
 
THE DARDANELLES COMMISSION 197 
 
 opinion should be ascertained, formulated and trans- 
 mitted to the First Lord by the First Sea Lord and 
 by no one else. He might ask for or receive help 
 from his subordinates and call upon them for infor- 
 mation or opinions. But every paper would pass 
 through his hands, and if forwarded by him to the 
 First Lord would bear his endorsement. For the 
 purpose of the War the Board of Admiralty was 
 superseded by a 'War Staff group' of which the 
 First Sea Lord was the professional head. Indeed, 
 Lord Fisher's authority at the Admiralty was so 
 strong as to amount to a dictatorship against which 
 a protest was afterwards made by the other Sea 
 Lords. 
 
 Yet the Commission's report reveals Mr. Churchill 
 directly obtaining opinions from a number of Lord 
 Fisher's subordinates and taking just so much of 
 them as suited his own views. No one who reads 
 the Commission's report can doubt that, so far from 
 trying to ascertain what the best naval opinion was, 
 Mr. Churchill exerted himself to obtain opinions 
 favourable to his plan and to maJce the most of 
 them. Sir Henry Jackson, for exampl^, agreed with 
 the proposal for an experimental bombardment of 
 the outer forts, but did not wish to go further until 
 the results of this attempt were seen. He deprecated 
 any attack on Constantinople by the Fleet. His was 
 one of the judgments considered by Mr. Churchill as 
 favourable to the project, but it certainly did not 
 justify an operation 'with Constantinople for its 
 objective.' 
 
198 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 It is weU within the mark to say that Mr. Churchill 
 was not a channel through which the naval judgment 
 could reach the Prime Minister undistorted. 
 
 The .official position of the Secretary of State for 
 War had long been that of a channel between the 
 military judgment of the War Office and the Cabinet. 
 For n^any , decades the Secretary of State had been 
 a purely political personage, and the War Office was 
 reorganized in 1904 in order to provide him with a 
 strEiltegical adviser, the Chief ^ of the Imperial .General 
 Staff, assisted by a special subordinate, the Director of 
 Operations. But the appointment of Lord Kitchener 
 .made an end of this system. Lord Kitchener had 
 the rare distinction of 'being himself, alone.' The 
 opinions he expressed were his own; they were not 
 representative. During an active career he had been 
 occupied chiefly in administration, for the most part 
 in the East, so that he was unfamiliar with British 
 . institutions at home, with the modern organization 
 of , the War Office and the Army and with the Terri- 
 torial Force, which he mistakenly treated as inferior 
 to levies which were raised under the name of 'new 
 regulars,' so that the unique opportunity of embody- 
 ing all thcjEorces into a homogeneous army was lost. 
 .He had never been a great student of war, and his 
 experience in the field was confined to the African 
 campaigns in, which he made his name. His views 
 were those of a shrewd good sense little tinged by 
 science, theory or system. The Commission was told 
 that he 'acted, as his own Chief pf Staff'; in other 
 words, he ignored the War Office except as the instru- 
 
THE DARDANELLES COMMISSION 199 
 
 ment of his wishes. Thus he was the last man to 
 convey to the Prime Minister the information or the 
 military opinions that had during ten years of 
 devoted work been accumulated by the General Staff 
 at the War Office. Sir James Wolfe Murray, in 
 January, 191 5, Chief of the General Staff, had held 
 that office for only a few months- and could not be 
 in a position to express opinions independently of 
 such a Secretary of State as Lord Kitchener. Lord 
 Kitchener's share in the purely naval attack on the 
 Dardanelles can be briefly told. On the 2nd of 
 January, 191 5, a telegram was received from Petro- 
 grad asking for a demonstration to draw off the 
 Turks from the Caucasus. Lord Kitchener saw Mr. 
 Churchill and sent him a note saying : 
 
 'I do not see that we can do, anything that will 
 seriously help the Russians in the Caucasus. . . . 
 We have no troops to land anywhere. . . . The only 
 place that a demonstration might have some effect 
 . . . would be the Dardanelles.' 
 
 Next day Lord Kitchener telegraphed through the 
 Foreign Office a reply to Petrograd promising that a 
 demonstration would be made. Lord Kitchener's 
 attitude at the War Council has been described and 
 it is evident that his opinion favourable to the plan 
 made a strong impression on the Prime Minister. 
 But light is thrown upon his position by a paper 
 which he read to the War Council in May. 191 5 : 
 
 ' When the Admiralty proposed to force the pas- 
 sage of the Dardanelles by means of the Fleet alone. 
 
200 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 I doubted whether the attempt would succeed, but 
 was led to believe it possible by the First Lord's 
 statements of the power of the Queen Elizabeth and 
 the Admiralty Staff papers showing how the opera- 
 tion was to be conducted. ... I regret that I was 
 led to agree to the enterprise by the statements made, 
 particularly as to the powers of the Queen Elizabeth, 
 of which I had no means of judging.' 
 
 But the Secretary of State for War had every 
 means of judging whether the Queen Elizabeths or 
 any other ship's guns could alter the conditions of 
 naval attack on forts especially in the narrow channel 
 of the Dardanelles. The papers existing in the War 
 Office, to which reference has already been made, 
 gave him all the means needed. 
 
 My endeavour has been to find out the exact 
 nature of a failure in the work of a government. 
 That has involved an examination of the action of 
 distinguished men. But it is not hostile criticism. 
 Each of us is trying to serve his country to the best of 
 his powers. The difficulty is that the ablest men 
 are the most overworked. While Lord Kitchener 
 and Mr. Churchill were advising the Prime Minister 
 about the operations of the War, each of them was 
 also general manager of one of the largest business 
 concerns in the world, which was expanding at an 
 unprecedented rate. Besides that, each of them was 
 a member of Parliament and of the Cabinet. Neither 
 could give more than a fraction of his time to the 
 close study of the operations of the War. Lord 
 Fisher, as First Sea Lord, had a responsibility for a 
 
THE DARDANELLES COMMISSION 201 
 
 large part of the business of the Admiralty. The 
 first condition of a clear strategical judgment is 
 that a man must concentrate himself upon the direc- 
 tion of the operations to the exclusion of everything 
 else. He must be free from other cares. Before we 
 censure the men who have had to take the respon- 
 sibility for ordering campaigns and battles by sea 
 or land, let each of us try to imagine himself in their 
 place. War cannot be conducted except by men of 
 strong will, nor without mistakes, and it has been 
 well said that those who are afraid of the mistakes 
 they may make never do anything. In the same 
 way, however, those who are afraid of criticizing 
 when the object is to find the truth may be diverted 
 from their path. So I return to my inquiry. 
 
 I have said that the attack of ships upon forts 
 is contrary to common sense. This statement per- 
 haps requires modification. What common sense 
 tells us is that the Government in directing the naval 
 and military operations must conform to, and not 
 violate, the principles of war. But common sense 
 unaided does not tell us what those principles are. 
 When a portion of the Fleet was ordered to bombard 
 the forts of the Dardanelles, Mr. Asquith did not 
 know, and Mr. Balfour did not know, that a principle 
 was being violated. No voice was raised in the War 
 Council to say, ' What you propose to do runs counter 
 to all the experience of wars, and everyone who 
 knows thoroughly what can be done with ships, guns 
 and earthworks, will tell you that ships are not made 
 to fight earthworks, and that you are making an 
 
202 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 experiment which is morally certain to end in 
 disaster.' The defect in the system was that, in the 
 various bodies which one after another discussed this 
 plan until it was finally adopted, there was no one 
 who possessed such a knowledge of what ships, guns, 
 earthworks and men can and cannot do, under given 
 conditions, and of the experience of pa,st wars, as 
 to be able to say, ' This operation is a wrong use of 
 forces, and the whole history of modern war is a 
 warning against it,' and who combined with his 
 knowledge and the judgment resulting from it, the 
 official and unmistakable duty of pressing that judg- 
 ment upon the committee of which he was a member. 
 If the country is to have any security that the best 
 use will be made of the forces which, at so much 
 sacrifice, have been placed at the disposal of the 
 Government, if it is to have a guarantee that its men, 
 its money, and its ships will not again be thrown 
 away in vain, either in parts or entirely, means must 
 be taken to insure that, before the Government issues 
 instructions either to the Army or the Navy, the 
 orders proposed shall have been submitted to the 
 scrutiny and shall have obtained the approval of 
 someone who is master of the principles of war. 
 
 The remedial measure by which the required guar- 
 antee can be secured is not far to seek. It has been 
 set forth in the course of my argument and consists 
 in adopting the principles about which there was 
 agreement in 1894 between those who had then long 
 examined this problem as the vital part of any 
 national organization for war. Sir Charles Dilke, 
 
THE DARDANELLES COMMISSION 203 
 
 Sir George Chesney and Mr. Arnold-Forster have 
 long been dead, as have most of those eminent naval 
 and military officers, such as Admiral Hornby, Lord 
 Wolseley, Lord Roberts, Colonel Charles Bracken- 
 bury, General Sir Henry , Brackenbury, a,nd General 
 Sir Frederick Maurice, with whom we repeatedly dis- 
 cussed these subjects, and vyho, we believedj were in 
 substantial agreement with us regarding the matters 
 now in question, though we did not think that it 
 accorded with the best traditions of the discipline of 
 the Services that we should seek the signature to our 
 manifesto of any officers on the active list. It seems 
 to-rroe a duty not only to those who are now fighting 
 for the country, but also especially to those with 
 whom for many years I was closely associated in the 
 effort to induce our statesmen to set in order the 
 machinery of government for the conduct of war, to 
 recall and to apply to that momentous business 
 principles which we were agreed in recognizing as 
 sound, and which, so far as I am aware, have never 
 been questioned by those whose knowledge and 
 experience gave weight to their opinion. Many years 
 ago I endeavoured to work out with as much exacti- 
 tude as possible the application of these principles, 
 first to the Army, and afterwards to the Navy.* 
 
 More than one step since then taken by successive 
 Governments was in the right direction. The creation 
 at the War Office of a General Staff, whose chief 
 was to be the strategical adviser of the Government, 
 
 * The Brain of an Army, 1890 ; The Brain of the Navy, 
 1894. 
 
204 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 and the modification of the Order in Council regulat- 
 ing the duties of the Board of Admiralty, by which 
 the First Sea Lord was given the duty of naval 
 strategical adviser, were approximations towards a 
 sound method. But in each case a serious error was 
 committed, of which it is indispensable to point out 
 the nature. The essence of great achievement in all 
 the higher branches of action, especially of intellectual 
 action, is division of labour, with a view to concentra- 
 tion of effort. This is the basis of all good organiza- 
 tion, both of knowledge or thought, and of action. 
 The theory, art or science of the general direction of 
 armies or navies in war, the science or art which is 
 called strategy, is in its practical application one of 
 the most difficult in the world. To master it is a life's 
 effort, to apply it an all-absorbing occupation, requir- 
 ing a mind as far as possible freed from other pre- 
 occupations. The man who undertakes it must be 
 wholly devoted to it, so as to have leisure to throw 
 his whole soul into it. He must be free from the 
 distracting influence of irrelevant interruptions. 
 Strategy must be his profession, for it is not a mere 
 abstract science, it involves the application of the 
 practical judgment, of faculties of which the full 
 development requires action. For the fundamental 
 impulse of the strategist is to design operations and 
 to direct them. His mission is not administrative 
 but executive, and in order that his execution may be 
 as perfect as possible, he must be free from the absorb- 
 ing and distracting cares of administration. The 
 military and naval life of ninety-nine officers out of 
 
THE DARDANELLES COMMISSION 205 
 
 a hundred gives them neither the opportunity of 
 practising strategy nor the leisure to study it. The 
 man who gives words of command to a battalion or 
 to the officers of a ship is not practising strategy, and 
 as a rule has nothing to do with it. It is the constant 
 experience of military historians and of governments 
 that an officer who is a brilliant leader of a brigade 
 or of a division may prove utterly incapable of the 
 responsibility .of command-in-chief, and of the two 
 greatest generals of modern times, Napoleon and 
 Moltke, it is almost literally true to say that neither 
 of them ever gave a word of command in his life. 
 When the office of Chief of the General Staff was 
 created, its holder was made First Military Member 
 of the Army Council, and was thus the professional 
 head of the board which administers the army. In 
 this way he was placed at the same time at the head 
 of two distinct professions, that of the strategist and 
 that of the military administrator. But no man can 
 serve two masters, and there is no escape from the 
 dilemma that the Chief of the General Staff may be 
 either a first-rate administrator or a first-rate 
 strategist, but that it is hardly possible that he can 
 be both at once. 
 
 When the duty of strategical advice was given to 
 the First Sea Lord, that officer was the professional 
 head of the whole naval adtainistration. He was the 
 senior member of the Board of Admiralty, and all 
 important questions arising in the departments of his 
 colleagues were submitted to him. Upon this more 
 than sufficient mass of business was superimposed the 
 
2o6 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 function of the strategist. The dilemma in which 
 the Chief of the General Staff is fixed is imposed also 
 upon the First Sea Lord. Moreover, the fact that 
 in each case two activities of a totally distinct nature 
 are required from a single officer makes it difficult 
 rightly to select an officer for the post. Is he to be 
 chosen for administrative gifts or for strategic judg- 
 ment? In the one case, naval or military adminis- 
 tration, in the other the direction of the army or 
 navy in war will suffer. In peace, every Government 
 regards the administration as of primary importance, 
 because the first care of a Government in peace is 
 apt to be to satisfy the House of Commons that there 
 is iio extravag^ance in expenditure. But in war, a 
 nation's first need is victory, and both the design of 
 victory and the supervision of the execution of that 
 design are functions not of the administrator but of 
 the strategist.' 
 
 What is required is the selection for each Service 
 of an officer whose duties would be, subject to the 
 higher authority of the Prime Minister, to draft and 
 to issue the ordeirs of the Government to all the gen- 
 erals or to all the admirals entrusted with the com- 
 mand of fleets or armies. His duty would be to 
 submit his plans to the Prime Minister, and through 
 him to the, Cabinet, to translate them mto orders and 
 to issue those orders. His title matters little. I think 
 the sinlplest would be that of Director-Gehei'al of 
 Military or of Naval Opefatibhs. He would be chosen 
 for his strategical judgmeriti his mastery of the theory 
 and. practice of naval or of military operations. His 
 
THE DARDANELLES COMMISSION 207 
 
 occupation would be with those operations and 
 nothing else; with the naval or military administra- 
 tion he would have no direct concern. He should 
 have his own office, into which he should remove those 
 branches of the existing War Office or Admiralty 
 which, under the name of General Staff, have to do 
 with the operations of the navy or of the army. He 
 should be subject to no First Lord of the Admiralty 
 or Minister of War but should be in direct relation 
 with the Prime Minister and the Cabinet. Th6 
 administration of the two Services would be left to 
 the Admiralty and the War Office, each of them 
 under an adiiiinistrative officer or board, and if need 
 be under a Cabinet Minister, as at present. The two 
 Directors-General should have their offices near to 
 one another, so that they could readily communicate 
 with each other. 
 
 Ther^'shbtild be'no intermediaiy between them and 
 the Prime Ministei". The secretariat of the Com- 
 mittee of Imperial Defence was instituted in 1904, 
 with the idea that the Secretary should consider all 
 questions of defence and furnish advice. That is the 
 attempt to create a hybrid, a strategist who shall be 
 at the same time a master of land and sea warfare. 
 It is a dangerous and doubtful experiment, of which 
 the result can only be a new dilemma. The Secre- 
 tary will either be a mere clerk, or he will dominate 
 both the Services, conducting the war and governing 
 the country. In the second case it would be better 
 that he should at once be appointed Prime Minister. 
 
 I am well aware that the objection will be raised 
 
2o8 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 that it is difficult to find men of the character and 
 qualifications required for the direction of the naval 
 and military operations. If that were true, the 
 British Empire would be in a bad way. My answer 
 to it is : ' Seek and ye shall find,' and that if in the 
 past mistakes in the choice of men have been made, 
 the explanation may be that those with whom the 
 choice lay were not quite clear as to the exact nature 
 of the qualifications needed. 
 
 The question as to the precise relations of the 
 directors of naval and military operations to the 
 supreme political authority of the Cabinet is perhaps 
 delicate. On that point I am not acquainted with 
 any discussion in the English literature of war. My 
 own view that the military strategist should himself 
 be a member of the Government was expressed in 
 December, 1 899, on the eve of those disasters in South 
 Africa which so startled the nation as to gain for the 
 period when they happened the name of the Black 
 Week. On the 14th of December I wrote : * 
 
 ' A nation that is liable to war requires men of war 
 in its Government, and, in the case of Great Britain, 
 the place for them is in the Cabinet. The traditional ■ 
 practice of having a civilian Minister inside the 
 Cabinet with all the authority, and a soldier with all 
 the knowledge outside the Cabinet, was devised for 
 electioneering purposes, and not for war. The plan 
 has answered its object very well for many years, 
 having secured Cabinets against any intrusion of 
 military wisdom upon their domestic party felicity. 
 But now that the times have changed, and that the 
 
 * Lessons of the War (Constable, 1900), p. 93. 
 
THE DARDANELLES COMMISSION 209 
 
 chief business of a Cabinet is to manage a war, it 
 seems unwise to keep the military judgment locked 
 out. Party felicity was valuable some years ago, 
 when there was a demand for it; but the fashions 
 have changed. . To-day the article in demand is not 
 eloquence nor the infallibility of "our side," which- 
 ever that may be ; the article in demand to-day is the 
 organization of victory. That is not to be had at all 
 the shops. Those who can supply it are very special 
 men, who must be found and their price paid. The 
 nation has given bail for the production of this par- 
 ticular article, and if it is not forthcoming in time 
 the forfeit must be paid. The bail is the British 
 Empire.' 
 
IX 
 
 NEGLECTED ASPECTS OF THE WAR* 
 
 Nothing brings men together like a common pur- 
 pose. It is a stronger tie than most, and it abides. 
 While J have been trying to order my thoughts that 
 I might put them before you to-day, I seem to have 
 been in the company of those with whom in the course 
 of forty years I have been associated in the study of 
 war and in the attempt to persuade our countrymen 
 to attend, while there was time, to the conditions of 
 national strength and security. 
 
 Those who thus visit me are my friends of the first 
 days of the Oxford Kriegsspiel Club, before 1877, 
 one of whom was Arthur Napier, whom you after- 
 wards knew as Professor of English; my old regi- 
 mental comrades, seven of whom in 1881 formed with 
 me the Manchester Tactical Society (the three sur- 
 vivors are still members); General Sir William Gor- 
 don Cameron, the best instructor the Volunteers ever 
 had, a great tactician; Colonel Charles Brackenbury, 
 ©ne of the first artillery officers of his day; Colond 
 Cooper King, the teacher of a generation of staff 
 officers; Sir Frederick Maurice, the brilliant writer 
 and advocate of the navy as well as of the army; 
 • October 27, 1917. 
 
 2IO 
 
NEGLECTED ASPECTS OF THE WAR 211 
 
 Lord Roberts, whose companionship was an educa- 
 tion; Sir Charles Dilke, the statesman of imperial 
 defence, had he but had his opportunity ; Sir George 
 Chesney, the most clear-sighted and large-minded 
 of military administrators — all these passed away 
 when their work was done. One companion of later 
 years, Sir Foster Cunliffe, seems to have gone too 
 soon, and hisi death has left, me lonely. Many years 
 ago it was my good fortune to be able in slight 
 measure to help and encourage his early study of 
 war; in after years I had the delight of seeing his 
 extraordinary growth in power and in command of 
 his subject. From the day I came to All Souls Col- 
 lege his judgment was my stay, his frienship my 
 support. I have recently been permitted to read the 
 manuscript of the lectures which he gave in the Uni- 
 versity; lectures in which, if it should prove possible 
 to publish them, you will find a breadth of view, a 
 grasp of the nature of war, and an insight into the 
 mainsprings of action, unsurpassed — perhaps un- 
 equalled — in English military literature. By natural 
 gifts and educational opportunities Cunliffe was on 
 a higher intellectual plane than all but a very few 
 officers of the army. His study of modern war was 
 unusually wide and deep. He seelned marked out 
 by his qualifications for counsel and command. Yet 
 he fell in the discharge of his duty as a regimental 
 officer. On June 2 I stood by his grave in a little 
 roadside cemetery in front of Albert. Surely, I felt, 
 
 ' This is the happy Warrior ; this is He 
 That every man in arms should wish to be.' 
 
212 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 Will you not to-day for a time make yourselves the 
 companions of these men and of the purpose by 
 whidi they were inspired? Their inspiration was 
 England, their purpose Victory. 
 
 You may rightly say that Victory is the object of 
 our admirals and sailors, of our generals and soldiers. 
 But they require to be sustained by the courage and 
 faith of those of us who are at home. And from the 
 Government at home, which depends upon our sup- 
 port, must come their guidance and direction. The 
 'advised head' at home is as necessary as 'the 
 armed hand' abroad, and we must do all that we 
 can to support the Government in its duty of think- 
 ing out the War, of seeing it steadfastly as a whole, 
 and of standing in good and bad times by the 
 resolves it has made. There is no finer quality of a 
 leader than steadfastness, the strength to abide by 
 his idea. That is a nation's quality also. But to be 
 able to abide by our idea we must have a true idea 
 to start with. 
 
 In war there is always a danger from untrue ideas. 
 A war is like a great upheaval of nature, a tremen- 
 dous disturbance, and the awe of great events not 
 only stirs us to the depth of our being, but renders 
 us liable to be carried away by impulses, rumours, 
 opinions, and guesses. Especially men's finer feelings 
 often lead them astray. A great deal has been said 
 about the cause for which we are fighting. A good 
 cause is something to fight for, but it is not the cause 
 that can give us the victory ; on the contrary, it is we 
 who must fight to gain victory for the cause. 
 
NEGLECTED ASPECTS OF THE WAR 213 
 
 I have heard men, considered to be wise, declare 
 that this is a war for democracy — ^for a form of govern- 
 ment. I think it nearer the truth to say that war is 
 a test of government, and that this war is the test of 
 democratic governments, a trial of their efficiency. 
 Meanwhile the ftrst effect of the war in England has 
 hardly been to make our mode of government more 
 democratic, for we have set up a Long Parliament, a 
 Committee of Public Safety, and something very like 
 a dictatorship, and all these things men gladly accept 
 because we hope they will give us leadership and 
 strength for the fight. 
 
 Again, it has been said that we have no quarrel 
 with the German people, but only with the Emperor 
 and the military caste. But the German people is 
 heart and soul in this war along with the Emperor 
 and the military caste. It is a war of nations, and 
 nations that are to win must have governments that 
 understand the conditions of victory. 
 
 So much by way of protest against misleading 
 words and phrases. 
 
 Now let me put before you the picture of this war 
 as it was sketched nearly a century ago by the critical 
 effort made to understand the last great European 
 War. A war, said these thinkers, is a conflict of 
 purposes between two States or groups of States, 
 taking the shape of a clash of forces that work by 
 mutual destruction until one side has overthrown the 
 other, or until in the exhaustion of both a coinpromise 
 is reached and the issue postponed. Yet there was a 
 contrast between the older wars and the great war 
 
214 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 they had passed through. What accounted fojr th^ 
 difference ? Why was "the play of force in the earlier 
 wars so capricious, so little like the conflicts of the 
 elements of nature, and why had it been so terrific 
 in the later age ? 
 
 Because in the earlier wars the State had been the 
 affair of a class; the mass of the people were little 
 interested in it or in them. The danger was limited, 
 the issues were small, and kings and governments 
 could venture to play with the fire. A command 
 might be given to a great lady's favourite, to a 
 popular pet, to a politician who had a fancy for 
 adventure. An army might be ordered to move for 
 reasons of domestic policy. There was no supreme 
 risk incurred ; no one thought of overthrowing States. 
 It was only a half-serious business. But the French 
 Revolution nationalized the State, and the nation 
 made war in earnest. The other States were com- 
 pelled to follow suit, and the collision of forces ceased 
 to be governed by whims; the forces were directed 
 according to the laws of force. 
 
 The inference was that when the issue should 
 appeal to the mass of a people, should come home to 
 every man as something nearly touching himself, a 
 I nation would turn its men into soldiers and its wealth 
 into weapons and would fight with all its might, 
 reckless of suffering endured or inflicted. This 
 energy of one side would arouse a similar energy on 
 the other, and the war would become a terrific explo- 
 sion of contending forces. Each side would aim at 
 the overthrow of its adversary, and the triumph of 
 
NEGLECTED ASPECTS OF THE WAR 215 
 
 one would be the ruin of the other. In such a war 
 the play of chance would be small; the connexion 
 between cause and effect would be close and con- 
 sistent, and the governing laws would be those of 
 dynamics, of which the first is the concentration of 
 effort in time and space. In such a war it would be 
 wise not to take the first step without having weighed 
 all the possible consequences. 
 
 In this account you wiU recognize a true forecast 
 of the war of to-day. At first sight it may not seem 
 encouraging. For our statesmen and those of our 
 Allies hardly foresaw this war and were not ready 
 for it; they allowed themselves to be surprised. We 
 were suffering from some of the weakness inherent in 
 the democratic form of government. 
 
 You remember Plato's picture of the ship of State, 
 in which the crew, the politicians, were quarrelling 
 over the right to steer the ship, although none of them 
 had learned navigation or believed that the art could 
 be acquired; each gang of them was trying to per- 
 suade the easy-going owner, the people, that no 
 trained helmsman was necessary, that anyone could 
 steer a ship, and that their own particular set had the 
 best claim to the tiller. Well, England was not quite 
 in as bad a condition as that, for her political leaders 
 were sincerely devoted to her. So soon as the storm 
 came the crew let drop their squabbles and worked 
 manfully together. But there was still a mistrust of 
 knowledge, a belief that it was not required for guid- 
 ing the helm of State. None of the men who had 
 mastered the higher parts of war were taken into the 
 
2i6 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 counsels of the Government. An army was, as we 
 now know, thrown away, without regard to the care- 
 fully prepared and competent adverse opinions which 
 were on record at the War Office, but were ignored. 
 
 That is the dark side of the picture. , But there is 
 a bright side. The thinkers whom I have already 
 quoted held that when a nation at war is in earnest, 
 when the motives appeal to the mass of the people, 
 not only will the national resources be freely thrown 
 into the war, but sooner or later leadership adequate 
 for the occasion will be evolved and means will be 
 found for bringing the design and conduct of the 
 operations into accord with the needs. The grandeur 
 and scope of the plans will be equal to the magni- 
 tude of the crisis. 
 
 This is precisely what has been happening. 
 
 Early last year I ventured to tell you that. while a 
 war is always conducted by the Government, a 
 government requires to be provided with a strategical 
 conscience, a representative of the history, the theory, 
 or the science of war, seated in its council chamber, 
 and to point out that an arrangement had just been 
 made which promised to meet that need. It was on 
 January 27, 1916, that the Order in Council was 
 issued by which the Chief of the Imperial General 
 Staff was made responsible for the issue of the orders 
 of the Government in regard to the military opera- 
 tions. 
 
 You will have observed that from that time on the 
 operations of the army have had a new character. Its 
 objectives have been systematically chosen and every 
 
NEGLECTED ASPECTS OF THE WAR 217 
 
 objective aimed at has been attained. Every wit- 
 ness tells us that the improvement of the army in 
 every respect has been little short of wonderful. That 
 was the impression left upon my own mind by the 
 visit in \<^ich in the spring I had the honour of 
 being a guest of the Headquarters Staff in France. 
 
 But it is not only in the military direction and 
 management that the nation is showing itself in 
 earnest. The mistrust of the competent man, the 
 man who is the master of his branch of work, is giving 
 way : we are beginning to have faith in knowledge 
 and think of putting the right man in the right place. 
 Whereas the orthodox doctrine of the politicians for 
 a whole century has been that any member of Parlia- 
 ment was fit to become the head of any department 
 of Government without any previous training or any 
 acquaintance with the business done in the depart- 
 ment, we have lately seen the appointment of two 
 ministers on grounds that were thought absurd and 
 impossible by the statesmen of twenty years ago. 
 One man has been made Minister of Agriculture 
 because he was believed to understand agriculture; 
 another, for whose case there is some precedent, was 
 made Minister of Education because he was believed 
 to understand education. A few more appointments 
 like that and we shall be on the high road to 
 efficiency, which is the way to victory. 
 
 In view of the principles which I have cited as to 
 the nature and conditions of national war, and the 
 improvements in our methods, of which I have given 
 instances^ may we not infer that the teaching of the 
 
2i8 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 history and of the theory of war accords with that of 
 common sense to the effect that in war where there 
 is a will there is a way ? Perhaps if we turn to the 
 naval war we shall find the strongest reasons for 
 determination to win and abundant scope for the 
 resolve to put knowledge in power. The object of 
 naval warfare is to obtain what is called the Com- 
 mand of the Sea. That is strictly a technical term. 
 It describes the state of things that would exist in a 
 war between two Powers, of which one had a navy 
 and the other had none. In that case the Power with 
 a navy could do what it pleased at sea; its mer- 
 chant ships and transports would be unhindered : 
 while the Power without a navy would at sea be 
 helpless ; the sea would be closed for it. 
 
 In a war between two Powers, each of which has 
 a navy, the object of either navy is to destroy the 
 other in order to have the command of the sea. In 
 such a war until there has been a decisive battle — a 
 battle in which one of the two navies is crippled — 
 there is no command of the sea, and though the 
 stronger navy may act as though it had command, 
 it does so subject to the probability that the enemy 
 may at any moment challenge that position and offer 
 decisive battle. 
 
 A small island forming an independent State can 
 best defend itself in war by the destruction of the 
 enemy's navy, for then no form of attack upon it is 
 possible. But an insular State unable in war to 
 gain command of the sea, or at any rate such a State 
 in case an adversary should gain that command, 
 
NEGLECTED ASPECTS OF THE WAR 219 
 
 would be unable to maintain its independence, unless 
 it were entirely self-supporting. It could at any 
 time be reduced by invasion or by blockade or by 
 both together. 
 
 These considerations led me many years ago to 
 some conclusions about British policy, which I submit 
 to you because, as it happens, they had an influence 
 on the policy of Germany. With your indulgence I 
 will read passages from an essay which was published 
 in 1894: 
 
 ' The first consequence of the oneness of the sea is 
 to give to the victor in naval warfare a power of 
 universal extent without territorial limits. In other 
 words, there is only one command of the sea. This 
 power Great Britain by her insular nature and her 
 proximity to Europe has been compelled to acquire. 
 Without it she would always be liable to invasion by 
 the cirmy of whichever of her neighbours possessed it. 
 She is so, much smaller in area cind population than 
 the neighbouring European Powers that she would, 
 in the absence of the command of the sea, be unable 
 to secure her independence ; for her army is limited in 
 numbers, and a small country without great physical 
 obstacles offers comparatively little help by which 
 an inferior force can resist or delay its conquest. . . . 
 
 ' England's command of the sea is not the result of 
 her own unaided exertions nor of victories won by 
 her in opposition to Europe. It is the outcome of a 
 partnership between England on the one side and a 
 combination of continental Powers, in which the mem- 
 bership has been changed from time to time, but of 
 which the objects have always been the same — the 
 maintenance of the independence of States against 
 some attempt at dominion. This seems to me the 
 
220 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 true interpretation of the balance of power, which in 
 this sense is the most European of all European 
 causes. 
 
 ' There must be a command of the sea ; and it is a 
 prize that every nation covets. But every nation in 
 Europe prefers that it should be held by England, 
 rather than by any other Power except herself. For 
 England is hardly a great military Power; she is 
 unlikely alone to possess armies that would endanger 
 the existence of her neighbours; whilst if any con- 
 tinental Power acquired the command of the sesi the 
 others would be obliged to combine to wrest it from 
 hands in which it could not but be a danger to each 
 one of them. 
 
 ' Thus in a general view England's command of the 
 sea serves two purposes whi(^ are inseparable from 
 and complementary to one another : it means at once 
 the independence of England, and that independence 
 among continental nations which has been called the 
 balance of power. . . . 
 
 ' The purpose of national life, the scope of national 
 policy, cannot be deduced merely from the circum- 
 stances of the moment. It must flow of necessity 
 from the nation's position in the world. 
 
 ' The mark of a nation is independence,- the power 
 to determine its own fate within the bounds of nature. 
 A great nation must be able, upon occasion, if need 
 be, to face the world in arms. This means for Eng- 
 land that her national existence is bound up with the 
 mastery of the sea. 
 
 'What, then, are the conditions upon which Eng- 
 land can command the sea? 
 
 'It is evident that she must maintain and cherish 
 the elements of a great naval force, a school of great 
 sea captains, a hardy breed of sailors, and the ships 
 and .weapons of a powerful fleet. But what is to be 
 the measure of this force ? Must it be the equal of 
 
NEGLECTED ASPECTS OF THE WAR 221 
 
 all other navies together, or of a combination of some 
 of them? Is there a limit to the naval force that 
 may be required, or does tl^e national policy involve 
 the maintenance of an Invincible Armada? 
 " * In past times it has been sufficient to keep a fleet 
 superior to any other in the quality of its leaders and 
 in the skill of its crews, but not so overwhelmingly 
 strong in numbers as to exceed all other navies. 
 
 'For the same conditions that compel England to 
 assert the command of the sea make her a member 
 of the European commimity, which is a combination 
 of independencies. The self-defence of England has 
 almost always helped the self-defence of some other 
 Power or Powers. The British navy has been at the 
 same time the guardian of England's independence 
 and the preserver of the equipoise between the States 
 of Europe or between the groups into which they 
 have been ranged. This dual character of England's 
 action is founded in her geographical situation. The 
 command of the sea exerted by England and the 
 balcince of power in Europe are two names for the 
 same thing, two aspects of one activity, like the two 
 faces of a coin. 
 
 ' Upon the command of the sea, of which the main- 
 tenance of the balance of power is the condition, rests 
 the British Empire, the action of England in coun- 
 tries beyond the pale of European law and life, where 
 an indigenous civilization has never developed, or 
 has fallen into decay. In all such regipns, wherever 
 they border the sea, British influence during the 
 greater part of the nineteenth century has been 
 supreme. To some places English settlers have gone 
 in such numbers as to create new colonies. Where 
 there has been the need for defence against attacks 
 by land, as in India and at the Cape, the British 
 Government has been forced to extend its borders. 
 But the possession of territory has not been sought. 
 
222 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 The British sea power has been used as the servant 
 of mankind. The slave trade has been destroyed; 
 piracy has been cleared off the sea; order has been 
 kept on every shore, and the traders of all nations 
 have enjoyed the equal protection of the British flag. 
 Englishmen have had no monopoly, no special privi- 
 lege. Where the British Government has been estab- 
 lished, the native has been an object of as much 
 solicitude zis the European. . . . 
 
 ' The two functions of the navy, to command the 
 sea and to maintain the equilibrium of Europe, are 
 the two pillars of an arch, of which the crown is the 
 imperial task of bringing into the community of 
 civilization races that have hitherto been strangers to 
 its laws. Each part of this threefold mission is vital, 
 and the bond between them cannot be severed.'* 
 
 For our present purpose, the passages I have read 
 to you have this importance. They attracted the 
 attention of the great General Staff of the Prussian 
 army. A member of that staff, an officer of high 
 rank and attainments, reviewed my essay in the 
 organ which was read by the army. He called atten- 
 tion to my theory and said — in substance, his exact 
 words are not at this moment accessible — 'This is 
 the policy of England; this is the policy with which 
 her friends and her enemies must reckon.' 
 
 I followed up my essay with another, of which the 
 outcome was the Navy League, with a programme 
 having as its fi.rst item to make the command of the 
 sea the prime object of British policy and its second 
 to insist upon the appointment of a naval strategist 
 as First Sea Lord. 
 
 * The. Great Alternative, pp. 146, 148, 149, 297-300. 
 
NEGLECTED ASPECTS OF THE WAR 223 
 
 The Germans replied with a Navy League under 
 Government auspices, which very soon counted its 
 members by the hundred thousand. 
 
 Now let me read to you the language in which the 
 German Government, through an inspired press, is 
 appealing to its people for money to prosecute the) 
 war. Here is a translation of an article by Herr 
 Lehmann of Bremen, published three weeks ago 
 (October 5, 1917) in the Hamburgischer Korres- 
 fondent: 
 
 ' Until the outbreak of war the German was un- 
 conscious of the strength which was latent in the 
 united German Empire. He was like Parzival. Our 
 enemies, especially England, perceived this dormant 
 power sooner than Germany. England expected, by 
 driving into the war the continental Powers which 
 were Germany's neighbours, to break the economic 
 strength of Germany and her Allies, and at the same 
 time to weaken Russia and France sufficiently so 
 that then, as Tertius Gaudens, she might draw the 
 usual benefit from this struggle as she has always 
 done since the Middle Ages, when she was fighting 
 her next strongest rival. England as an island State 
 has always held in her hand the balance of power v\ 
 Europe, thanks to the folly of the continental Powers. 
 
 ' Since the Middle Ages, England's fleet, after over- 
 throwing those of Spain, Holland, and France, and 
 after stealing the Danish fleet in the middle of peace, 
 controls the sea, and these ages stand under the sign 
 of " Britannia rules the waves." 
 
 'The appearance of the submarine, the weapon 
 beneath the waves, has doomed the sea power on the 
 surface of the water to inactivity, and England's 
 maritime intercourse with her Allies is more and more 
 
224 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 straitened from day to day. February i, 1917, on 
 which at last the unhmited submarine war was declared 
 against England by way of reply to her hunger war 
 against women and children, is a landmark in history 
 and will be written down as such for all eternity. 
 This has not yet been grasped in its full extent by 
 our ooatejoaporaries. Sinoe the birth of Christ, three 
 great events have been, the decisive points of the 
 world's history. The fi.rst age embraces the period 
 of the Roman Empire, ending with the destruction of 
 the Roman Empire by the Germans. The second 
 reached its turning-point with the discovery of America 
 and the begiiming of the English command of the sea, 
 so to say, the opening up of the whole world. The third 
 age lasted till February i, 1917, the day when Eng- 
 land's command of the sea lost its power through the 
 new technical means of the submarine. 
 
 'We Germans must keep this before our eyes, and 
 make clear to ourselves what an important task is laid 
 upon our people to-day in the shape of the world's 
 history. That task is to remove the evil which for 
 four hundred years has conjured up all the wars in 
 Europe, namely, England's command from her island 
 of continental Europe and her playing off one con- 
 tinental Power against the other. It is to overthrow 
 the power of England and theft to devise ways and 
 means of reconcJhng the peoples of the Continent and 
 removing their jealousy of one another. 
 
 ' Conditions like that before the war, in which 
 England coolly played with -the weal and woe of the 
 peoples of Europe, must cease. The sea power and 
 the pressure upon all nations, great and small, exer- 
 cised by this cold-hearted, selfish English Govern- 
 ment must be broken. Until then there can be no 
 peace ! Only the cessation of this lying, hypocritical, 
 though seemingly democratic, but thoroughly imperial- 
 istic, English domination can guarantee permanent 
 
NEGLECTED ASPECTS OF THE WAR 225 
 
 peace on the Continent. Let every man realize that 
 February i, 1917, is a turning-point in history. The 
 duty of Germany and her AlHes to themselves and 
 the whole world is shown in the brazen letters of the 
 world's history. It is to hold out and win, so 
 that the unendurable English hegemony of the last 
 himdred years and the unendurable English oppres- 
 sion of all nations may be broken. 
 
 ' But to gain the victory over England it is necessary 
 that in the Seventh War Loan every German should 
 do his duty.' 
 
 Observe the lies which Bremen and Hamburg utter. 
 The German Government in 1914 perfectly understood 
 the true role of Engleind in Europe, and that if Eng- 
 land played her part its plan for the conquest of 
 Europe would be difficult of execution. But it believed 
 that the British Government did not know its part and 
 would not play it. That was, perhaps, not so very 
 far from the truth But the nation knew its part by 
 instinct and meant that it should be played. There- 
 upon the German Government grew angry and lashed 
 to fury the hatred of this country which it had been 
 stirring up in its people ever since 1884. 
 
 England is represented not only as having conjured 
 up and begun the War, but also as having used her 
 navy as an instrument of oppression, especially to 
 Germany. 
 
 There was a time, however, before 1884, when 
 Bremen and Hamburg told the truth. 
 
 When, in 1883, the German Government asked the 
 Senates of Bremen and Hamburg to lay before it any 
 complaints or desires in regard to the trade of these 
 towns with West Africa, the Hamburg Senate reported 
 
 IS 
 
226 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 that England, in all the treaties which she had made 
 with the native chiefs for the suppression of the slave 
 trade, had stipulated for free and unhindered trade; 
 that this stipulation had never been framed for the 
 exclusive benefit of Englishmen, and that most of the 
 treaties expressly bargained that the privileges granted 
 should be given to the 'subjects of the Queen of 
 England and all European Powers friendly to her.' 
 ' The German firms,' the report goes on to say, ' especi- 
 ally those established at Cameroons, gratefully recog- 
 nize the ready goodwill with which the English consuls 
 and English ships of war have often protected their 
 interests with the same energy that they would have 
 employed in the case of English firms. This was 
 especially the case quite recently in regard to conflicts 
 with the chiefs at Cameroons.'* 
 
 I trust you will forgive me for these quotations. 
 They give the real clash of purposes between Germany 
 and England. You see that Germany aims at the 
 destruction of England's navy and of her maritime 
 power, and thereby at the end of Great Britain as an 
 independent State. If she were to succeed she would 
 be mistress of Europe and of the world — she aims at 
 nothing less. 
 
 You will judge for yourselves whether any other 
 course was or is open to us but to resist her at whatever 
 cost, and whether there can be any security or safety 
 for this country until Germany has been overpowered 
 and disarmed. 
 
 Perhaps I need labour that point no farther; but 
 * The Great Alternative, p. 206. 
 
NEGLECTED ASPECTS OF THE WAR 227 
 
 from the opposition of purposes I should like to draw 
 an inference. "For us the war is a matter of life or 
 death. For Germany defeat means disappointment, 
 perhaps for a time an economical collapse, but it would 
 not mean ruin, nor destruction. Germany can exist 
 very well without becoming mistress of Europe. But 
 for England the victory of Germany would be the end 
 of her existence as an independent Great Power and 
 the end of her Empire. The position of France is 
 analogous to our own. The victory of Germany means 
 the end of the independent States of Europe. Are not 
 these good reasons why our will should be stronger 
 than Germany's ? I believe that it is. 
 
 A second inference that you will draw is that any 
 man who talks of peace without victory is not the friend 
 but the enemy of England. The idea is possible only 
 to a man who believes that we cannot win, who despairs 
 of his country. The suggestion comes from the Pope, 
 from Austria, and perhaps from some of those in Eng- 
 land whose political thought comes from the Vatican. 
 Let us beware of them, and, above all, take care that 
 they shall not be found in the entourage of the British 
 Government. Men who despair of their country are 
 not the best qualified to serve her. 
 
 The navy, it seems to me, offers the best field for the 
 further development of the principle, on which efficiency 
 depends, of knowledge in power. Its task is of im- 
 measurable importance ; the fate not only of England 
 but of the world hangs upon its accomplishment. Yet 
 it is of infinite difficulty, for to-day the sea is not com- 
 manded by vessels running only on its surface; the 
 
228 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 depths too must be controlled, and probably the air 
 aJso. 
 
 In my judgment the War should be conducted as 
 a whole by a single minister, either the Prime Minister 
 or a minister acting under his immediate supervision, 
 chosen for his grasp of the nature and principles of 
 war. He should co-ordinate the operations by sea or 
 land and in the air. But the action of each service 
 should be directed by its own strategist. For the army 
 the strategist is the Chief of the Imperial General Staff. 
 For the navy the proper director would be the First 
 Sea Lord, who should be the best strategist the navy 
 can find, and should be not the subordinate but the 
 colleague of the naval administrator. I see no reason 
 for having a First Lord except as the administrative 
 head, and every reason for not giving him authority 
 over the strategist. He should work to the strategist's 
 requirements, and there should be no intermediary 
 between the strategist and the head of the Govern- 
 ment or general director of the war. With regard to 
 the direction of the armies I expressed my view, and 
 that I believe of all the strategists, when I addressed 
 you last year, and the principles, of which I then 
 gave a full account, apply equally to the management 
 of the navy. I believe that along these general lines, 
 as the nation's purpose grows, the process of organiza- 
 tion for the fight will go forward. 
 
 Much hcis been accomplished. Nothing could be 
 finer than the courage, the endurance, and the skill of 
 the officers and men of the navy. But our admiration 
 of them must not blind us to the skill and perseverance 
 
NEGLECTED ASPECTS OF THE WAlt 229 
 
 of the enemy. His use of the submarine has been 
 a surprise, of which the advantage has been gained not 
 by skill but by ruthlessness, for the Germans did not 
 invent the submarine; their discovery is only that diey 
 can use it against non-combatcints. By so doing they 
 throw down to us a twofold challenge : to our wits to 
 devise means of fighting these craft, and to our souls, 
 for we have to decide whether we will in return attack 
 their non-combatants. They proclaim that their 
 Germany is above all else, above even the ideal of a 
 common humanity. They say that their attack on 
 women and children constitutes reprisals for our 
 blockade, which threatens to starve their women and 
 children. These are questions which we have to answer. 
 They have come to me, as to you, as a surprise. 
 
 For myself I can only say in reply, that I despair 
 neither of our beating the submarines nor of England's 
 will to stand for the manliness of mankind. Do the 
 Germans by killing women and children of ours strike 
 terror into us ? They simply steel our hearts to fight 
 them. But if they destroyed our navy or our army 
 we should be helpless against them. We have but to 
 turn these propositions round to know what is the more 
 effectual form of warfare. We should so aim our blows 
 that if well delivered they will bring the adversary to 
 his knees. 
 
 I have suggested that the path to victory lies in the 
 unremitting effort to perfect our organization; to see 
 that our State develops hands for acting, eyes for 
 seeing, ears for hearing, and a brain for thinking-^that 
 is exactly what is taking place. For victory is not worn 
 
230 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 by army or navy alone; it must be the work of the 
 whole nation. What we are doing in this way is pre^ 
 cisely what the historical theory asserts that a nation 
 in earnest in a war will do. Yet in one respect I think 
 we might change our attitude with advantage. We 
 talk of reconstruction after the war ; I think we should 
 be wiser to talk and to think of reconstruction during 
 the war for the purpose of victory. Now is the time. 
 Unless we win there will be nothing for us to recon- 
 struct, and how can we count on success unless we set 
 our house in order for the effort ? 
 
 Should we not be wiser to assume a long-lasting war 
 and to work patiently, than to act hastily in the belief 
 that victory is near at hand ? 
 
 I have been content to-day to fall back upon some of 
 the lessons of the past. From what other source can 
 we learn? You have no doubt heard the opinion, 
 especially from regimental officers home from the front, 
 that this war is like no other war, and that nothing is 
 to be learned from earlier experience. There is ein 
 element of truth in that view, for what may be called 
 the mechanical part of war is ever changing. With 
 new weapons fresh tactics are required, and with better 
 means of communication generalship has to modify the 
 application of its principles. But, if the tools change, 
 the men who handle them and are hurt by them do 
 not, and the fight is a conflict not only of weapons but 
 of spirits. It is with men and their qualities that the 
 higher part of war has to deal ; the moral and intel- 
 lectual elements are those that most concern the states- 
 man and the nation which he must lead. A war 
 
NEGLECTED ASPECTS OF THE WAR 231 
 
 is a clash of wills and purposes before a bullet is 
 fired. 
 
 This distinction between the two aspects of war was 
 drawn by Napoleon, whose words cannot be too often 
 repeated : 
 
 ' Tactics, evolutions, the science of the engineer and 
 of artillery can be learned from treatises pretty much 
 as geometry.' 
 
 That is the changing part, of which the history has 
 only an antiquarian and technical interest. 
 
 ' But,' he went on, ' a knowledge of the high parts 
 erf war can be acquired only from the study of the 
 history of the wars and battles of the great captains 
 and from experience.' 
 
 That is the part with which the University is con- 
 cerned, because the study belongs to the study of 
 human life. 
 
 I have tried to put before you a glimpse of some of 
 what Napoleon called the 'higher part' of war. I 
 have thought that it would help and strengthen you 
 to be reminded that the highest theory of war and the 
 l^argest experience know of no motive power so strong 
 as a nation's will to win or to perish. Before the war 
 England was told, and half believed, that she was 
 degenerate. The war has shown her that she is, as of 
 old, the mother of heroes. Will she not prove worthy 
 of them ? 
 
THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION AND THE 
 CONDUCT OF WAR* 
 
 On the 30th of January, 1900, when the people of 
 England were still feeling the depression caused by 
 the three defeats of Magersfontein, Stormberg, and 
 Colenso, the Prime Minister (the late Marquis of Salis- 
 bury), speaking in the House of Lords, made a remark- 
 able speech. 
 
 ' If you will look back over the present century, he 
 said [the nineteenth century] you will see there have 
 been four occasions on which the British Government 
 has engaged in war. On each occasion the opening 
 of these wars was not prosperous. These were the 
 Walcheren Expedition, the Peninsular War, the 
 Crimean Expedition, and now the South African 
 War. In all these cases at first — in the case of 
 Walcheren not only at first — there were lamentable 
 losses. . . . We cannot have been so unlucky as to 
 have fought four times and to have lighted upon the 
 most incompetent and worthless ministers that the 
 world has ever produced. It is evident that thtre is 
 something in your machinery that is wrong. ... I do 
 not think that the British Constitution as at present 
 worked is a good fighting machine. ... It is un- 
 equalled for producing happiness, prosperity and 
 
 ♦ January, 1917. 
 232 
 
BRITISH CONSTITUTION AND WAR 233 
 
 liberty in time of peace; but now in time of war, when 
 Great Powers with enormous forces are looking at us 
 with no gentle or kindly eye, it becomes us to think 
 whether we must not in some degree modify our 
 arrangements in order to enable ourselves to meet the 
 dangers that at any moment may arise.' 
 
 I propose to consider the question raised in 1900 
 by Lord Salisbury as to the fitness of the British 
 system of government for the conduct of war. The 
 inquiry may perhaps throw a reflected light on some 
 other problems with which we are all just now much 
 concerned — ^those that are expected to need solution 
 after the war. 
 
 The earliest form of government is one man, a king ; 
 and one of its later developments is also one man, an 
 emperor. The primitive king does aU the work of 
 government himself, being at one time administrator, 
 at another time judge and again at another time 
 director of war. He performs these several functions 
 by throwing himself for the time wholly into that one 
 which at the moment is most urgent. You find 
 Napoleon for part of his day wholly absorbed in the 
 movements of his armies ; at another entirely immersed 
 in diplomacy, and next morning fully concentrated 
 upon the business of legislation. Whatever he is doing, 
 all of him is plunged into it. 
 
 At an early stage, however, the king found that his 
 time and attention were more than absorbed by his 
 work and he had to seek the assistance of his servants 
 (called in the Latin of the Middle Ages ministers), 
 chosen presumably each for his skill and knowledge 
 
234 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 in the branch assigned to him. On special occasions the 
 king would, assemble his ministers, the heads of the 
 great branches of State business, and hold a council 
 or committee meeting, at which he would presidfe and 
 at which important matters transcending any single 
 department would be considered. 
 
 In practice every Government consists of such a 
 committee; of which the chairman is a Monarch, a 
 President, or a Prime Minister, and the other members 
 the chief executive officers or heads of the great govern- 
 ment offices or departments. The only difference 
 between various systems seems to be that in some cases 
 the whole committee meets to consider every im- 
 portant decision, while in others the chairman usually 
 confers only with the head of the department con- 
 cerned. 
 
 Broadly speaking this form of a chairman and com- 
 mittee is common to all Governments, whether monarch- 
 ical, aristocratic, or democratic. These three types 
 are distinguished not by the mode in which the busi- 
 ness of government is tremsacted but by the way in 
 which the chairman of the committee is appointed. As 
 a rule in a monarchy the position belongs to the King 
 and is hereditary ; in the United States the President 
 is elected by a popular vote ; in Great Britain the system 
 is for the king to appoint the leader of the party 
 which has a majority in the House of Commons. 
 Democratic systems give the power of selecting the 
 head of the ministry, the chairman of the governing 
 committee, to the popular vote, either directly or in- 
 directly through an elected chamber. 
 
BRITISH CONSTITUTION AND WAR 235 
 
 The efficiency of a Government composed of a set 
 of ministers and a chairman will depend upon several 
 factors, of which the first is the knowledge and skill 
 of each minister in the branch of business carried on 
 by his department; the second' a sound distribution 
 of business between the of&ces ; and the third the power 
 of the chairman to secure co-ordination between them. 
 The question is, What parts in a government so 
 . constituted are indispensable for the conduct of war ? 
 In aU matters a wise government will unload from its 
 own shoulders all that can safely be delegated to 
 subordinate or local authorities. It will decentralize 
 wherever possible in order to make its own central 
 action more effectual. Only a government can declare 
 a war, make an alliance, or conclude a treaty of peace. 
 Only a government can raise and maintain an army 
 and a navy. Only a government can select and 
 appoint the commanders of its fleets and armies and 
 give them their instructions. These are the three 
 indispensable functions in regard to war, and there 
 are no others. Between them they cover the whole of 
 the preparation for and conduct of a war. What 
 ministers or offices are required for them ? The rela- 
 tions with foreign Powers are always conducted 
 through a minister of foreign affairs. Every govern- 
 ment in every country has a minister charged with 
 raising and maintaining an army; and every mari- 
 time Power has also a minister charged with rais- 
 ing and maintaining a navy. These functions of 
 maintenance are performed in peace as in war. They 
 involve large expenditure, and the minister who dis- 
 
236 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 charges them usually has the duty of explaining his 
 estimates to the representative chamber. So far there 
 is no doubt or difficulty. But with regard to the third 
 set of functions — the choice and appointment of the 
 commanders of fleets and armies and the issue of 
 instructions to them — ^there has been and perhaps still 
 is some obscurity. In order to clear it up it may be 
 a good plan to examine the actual business of war. 
 In it the all-important work is that of the Commander 
 of the Fleet or the Army. So well is this understood 
 that in ordinary language a victory is always associ- 
 ated with the General or the Admiral who commanded 
 on the winning side ; and his army or fleet is hardly 
 thought of. We talk of Hannibal defeating the 
 Romans at Cannae and of Scipio defeating Hannibal 
 at Zama. The historians speak of Caesar, of Frederick, 
 of Napoleon and Wellington as though the armies they 
 commanded were of comparatively small importance 
 and acquired their powers from the leader. In dis- 
 cussing naval wars we think of Blake and Hawke, of 
 Suffren and of Nelson, and beside these personalities, 
 the whole apparatus of the fleets which they handled 
 sinks into insignificance. The usage of everyday 
 speech is a rough expression of the truth, for in reality 
 victory is the work of the commander, whose forces 
 are merely his instrument. He is the artist, and among 
 all the activities of war his is the master-art. But it 
 has little to do with raising and maintaining the army 
 or the navy. During war this cannot be the work of 
 the naval or military commander, who will probably 
 be at the headquarters of the army or on board the 
 
BRITISH CONSTITUTION AND WAR 237 
 
 flagship. Thus the work of the Minister of War or 
 of Marine, as the provider of the army or the navy, 
 is distinct in character and separated in place from 
 that of the commander of either. The one has to make 
 an army or a navy ; the others to handle it against an 
 enemy. Scarcely any great commander, except Crom- 
 well, raised his own army. 
 
 A Government will hardly enter into a war if it can 
 help it, unless it sees a prospect of success. The end 
 of a war is usually a treaty of peace. If the committee 
 entrusted with the nation's welfare is considering 
 whether or no it will take part in a war, it must examine 
 the terms of the treaty of peace by which it hopes or 
 expects that the war will be concluded. Evidently if 
 the adversary were willing to accept those terms there 
 would be no war. The necessity for a war arises from 
 the fact that the adversary's will is contrary to our 
 own; he wants a treaty which we are quite unable to 
 accept. How then is he to be persuaded to agree to 
 our terms ? By force. We must beat his army, and 
 his navy, and put him into such a position that he can 
 no longer resist our forces; he then will have the 
 prospect — if he still rejects our terms — of the destruc- 
 tion of his forces, the occupation of his territory and 
 possibly the overthrow of his whole system. To pre- 
 vent that he will accept terms which, while he thought 
 he was stronger than we, he regarded as out of the 
 question. Accordingly before we (the members of the 
 committee) decide to appeal to force, we shall do well 
 to ask ourselves what kind of blow would bring our 
 adversary to his knees ; and whether, with the forces we 
 
238 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 have or can produce, we are justified in expecting to 
 be able to strike such a blow. 
 
 The committee, then, when considering a possible 
 declaration of war will wish to hear certain of its 
 members. The Foreign Secretary will explain what 
 the foreign Government, whose action has caused us to 
 meet, is preparing to do and why we cannot agree to 
 this and must resist it. Next, the two Ministers of 
 War and Marine, who keep up our naval and military 
 forces, will set before us tables of our fleets and armies 
 and of those of the prospective enemy, and will explain 
 what further forces we and the enemy can expect to 
 raise. But that is not enough. We want to know 
 what probability there is that, with such forces as we 
 have or can raise in time, we shall be able to beat the 
 enemy's forces and so obtain the treaty we should 
 like. This is evidently a question of supreme moment 
 to which we need a trustworthy answer. We must 
 therefore have among us some man who knows all 
 about war, whose business in life is to understand the 
 use of force. He who can answer this question will be 
 the type of man upon whose judgment we should rely 
 for planning our action in case we decide to go to war, 
 and for supervising the execution of those plans if that 
 becomes necessary. 
 
 It might be thought enough for the committee to 
 consult a man of this type at the moment when they are 
 contemplating a war or are confronted with the neces- 
 sity of resisting an attack. But the possibility of a 
 dispute with another nation is contained in almost 
 every decision taken by a government in regard to its 
 
BRITISH CONSTITUTION AND WAR 239 
 
 external action, and the time to consider the possi- 
 bilities of conflict is the time when the possibility of 
 conflict arises — i.e., when a new step is taken in the 
 relations with other Powers. A thinker-out of wars 
 is therefore always required in order to explain to the 
 members of the government; at every stage of their 
 external action, what that action would involve if it 
 had to be translated into terms of force. 
 
 The most important member of the whole govern- 
 ment in relation to war is the designer of victory, the 
 exponent of the general's art, of which success in war 
 is the object. In many governments no such office 
 is found among the ministers because the task is re- 
 served for himself by the head of the government, the 
 king or emperor. Of some governments a Com- 
 mander-in-Chief is a member, and in the United States 
 the command of the forces is by the constitution vested 
 in the President. 
 
 Some representative of the art of war is always 
 necessary, for every question of policy is in the last 
 resort one of force, and the key, both to the avoidance 
 of war and to success in it when it becomes inevitable, 
 lies in the due co-ordination of policy and strategy. 
 The mode in which that co-ordination must be sought 
 is a conference between the Chairman of the Committee, 
 the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the strategist, on 
 each occasion when any new departure is taken in 
 external policy. At such a conference the Foreign 
 Minister would explain the course he had to propose, 
 the strategist would then say what it might involve 
 in case of conflict. 
 
240 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 Suppose the action contemplated involved a conflict 
 with another Power, a prudent chairman or committee, 
 on being convinced that it was right and just, would, 
 if it implied for its success an addition to the forces, 
 insist on that addition being made as a condition of 
 the adoption of the policy. 
 
 Throughout the course of a war the strategist is 
 required by the government; for once the appeal has 
 been made to force, by force the issue is decided. Yet 
 nothing is so common in war as for persons of great 
 influence to urge a government to scatter its forces for 
 purposes not directly conducive to victory though 
 thought in themselves desirable. Especially is thia 
 the case when the possession of particular places seems 
 advantageous or likely to influence opinion at home 
 or abroad. Few but trained strategists understand 
 that in war everything can be had by victory but noth- 
 ing without it ; and that victory requires the concentra- 
 tion of all possible forces to strike a blow at some one 
 point in order to destroy the enemy's fleet or his army. 
 There seems to be no limit to the errors in the direction 
 of fleets and armies that can be committed by govern- 
 ments in the deliberations of which the voice of strategy 
 is silent, divided or overruled. 
 
 The strategist is even more essential to a govern- 
 ment than the minister who maintains the naval or 
 military forces, for that minister must base his arrange- 
 ments on the requirements of the fighting, of which the 
 strategist alone can judge. The minister's presence 
 in the governing committee is needed mainly in order 
 that his financial proposals may be presented to 
 
BRITISH CONSTITUTION AND WAR 241 
 
 the representative chamber with all the authority of 
 goyerriment. 
 
 In the case of a maritime State and especially of an 
 insular Power there must of course be two strategists : 
 one for the navy and one for the army, for the mastery 
 of both sea and land warfare is rarely combined by 
 one man. If the two men are really masters of their 
 work they will not disagree, for the main principles 
 of the art are the same, whatever the element in which 
 they are applied. 
 
 The voice which is to be heard by a government in 
 council on the question of peace or war must carry the 
 weight of a master of his craft. He who can see in 
 advance the features of a coming war and can design 
 operations giving promise of success will be the proper 
 person to direct those operations. Upon him there- 
 fore the government will be wise to rely for the dis- 
 tribution of its forces in the several theatres of war, 
 for the choice of their leaders and for the instructions 
 to be given them. To him therefore should be given 
 authority in peace to regulate the training of the forces, 
 especially of the admirals or generals who will lead 
 them, and to watch over the discipline which it is the 
 purpose of military education to produce. He should 
 be the organ through which the army or navy, supplied 
 as regards men and equipment by the Minister of War, 
 is controlled in its action by the government. Custom 
 gives the name Minister of War to the member of the 
 government who supplies an army with men, weapons 
 and stores. It gives to the minister who controls the 
 army's action the title of Commander-in-Chief. The 
 
 16 
 
242 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 essence of his office is that in controlling the action of 
 the army he acts with the authority of the govern- 
 ment. It is vital to the success of the government 
 that he should have the mastery of the form of action 
 with which he deals and should be completely obeyed 
 by his subordinates. 
 
 It has been said that government started as king- 
 ship. There seeftis in the history of most nations to 
 be a time when kingship breaks down, either because 
 the king fails to obtain victory in war — ^his chief busi- 
 ness, the purpose for which men needed a king — or 
 because he mistakes his kingdom and people for a 
 private property which is to serve his pleasure or to 
 carry out purposes which his people do not share. 
 That is resented and a change takes place. The truth 
 is then proclaimed that a king is the servant or minister 
 of his people, and the idea dawns that the population 
 of the country is a community with a common life and 
 a common welfare. The State is held to be not the 
 king's possession but a Commonwealth; and govern- 
 ment is regarded as the management of the nation's 
 affairs carried on in trust for the whole people. 
 
 The British government of modern times is the 
 result of the assertion of this view. Little by little 
 during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the 
 power of the kingship was put into commission, and 
 entrusted to a committee called the Cabinet, which 
 reached its full development during the reign of Queen 
 Victoria. It is worth while examining the system as 
 it was worked during the half-century previous to the 
 War now going on. Its essential part was authorita- 
 
BRITISH CONSTITUTION AND WAR 243 
 
 tivdy described in 1889 by Mr. (now Viscount) Morley 
 in his Life of Walfole. The Cabinet is a committee 
 of which the members are chosen by the Prime Minister, 
 who assigns to each of them the headship of one of 
 the great offices or departments of government. Each 
 minister so long as he has the Prime Minister's support 
 has full authority over his own department; when- 
 ever the matter to be decided is of great importance 
 he confers with the Prime Minister, who, if need be, 
 consults the Cabinet. If the minister is overruled by 
 the Prime Minister or by the Cabinet, he is expected 
 to resign. Thus the several ministers are the organs 
 of the Cabinet for managing the various departments 
 of government, and the Prime Minister secures the 
 co-ordination of the work of them all. 
 
 The Cabinet is responsible to the House of Commons ; 
 that is to say, a vote of censure of the House of 
 Commons upon any action of government in any 
 department leads to the resignation of the whole 
 Cabinet. There is no other responsibility. There is 
 no such thing in practice as the responsibility of an 
 individual minister to Parliament. If he is censured 
 the whole government falls, and so long as the govern- 
 ment does not offend the House of Commons no single 
 minister can be upset except by his colleagues. The 
 first mark of the Cabinet, says Lord Morley, is collec- 
 tive, united, and indivisible responsibility. 
 
 This was, in form, at any rate, an admirable machine 
 for the work of government. For each great branch 
 of business it had a special organ — a minister, one of 
 its own body, the head of a great office with a large 
 
244 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 staff. It had a co-ordinating organ-^the Prime 
 Minister. So long as it had the confidence of the 
 House of Commons, it had the full and absolute 
 authority required. 
 
 For the management of a war it seemed satisfactory. 
 There was the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to 
 watch the world and to give warning of coming danger ; 
 there were the Secretary of State for War to raise and 
 maintain the Army; the First Lord of the Admiralty 
 to raise and maintain the Navy ; and the Prime Minister 
 to take care that they worked in harmony. Under 
 the Secretary of State for War was a Commander-in- 
 Chief of the Army, with his several great assistants — 
 Quartermaster-Gerieral, Adjutant -General, and the 
 rest, and by his side a colleague, the Surveyor-General 
 of the Ordnance, charged with the supply of munitions. 
 
 But the effectiveness of a form of government de- 
 pends (as Lord Salisbury in the speech which I 
 quoted at the outset plainly hinted) upon the manner 
 in which it is worked. The machinery of 1870-1888 
 produced results so unsatisfactory that long before it 
 was subjected to the strain of war it had to be recon- 
 structed. The cause of the failure lay in the choice of 
 the persons upon whom the working of the system de- 
 pended, the Secretary of State for War and the 
 Comm£inder-in-Chief. 
 
 The system had, indeed, one defect in form. The 
 Commander-in-Chief was not a member of the Cabinet 
 or governing committee. He could of course be con- 
 sulted by the Secretary of State for War as regards the 
 proper use of the army in case of action; he would 
 
BRITISH CONSTITUTION AND WAR 245 
 
 certainly not be present at the meetings when questions 
 of policy were discussed, so that he would have no 
 opportunity for pointing out at the inception of a new 
 policy what that new policy might involve by way of 
 preparation for possible conflict. The Secretary of 
 State for War had the duty of raising and maintain- 
 ing the Army and supplying it with all necessaries; 
 and along with it what was thought perhaps the still 
 more important duty of presenting the army accounts 
 to Parliament and there defending them. He was the 
 link between the Cabinet, the Treasury and the House 
 of Commons; he was also the only link between the 
 Cabinet and the Commander-in-Chief. 
 
 Under this system fit preparation for a war and 
 right conduct of the operations could be secured only 
 if the Secretary of State were himself a master of war ; 
 or if, not having that qualification, he made himself 
 in all that regarded war the mouthpiece of the Com- 
 mander-in-Chief. This would have involved of course 
 a Commander-in-Chief chosen for his mastery of 
 war. 
 
 The practice of the Constitution did not lead to the 
 selection of a Cabinet Minister for mastery of the art 
 or business carried on by the office over which he was 
 to preside. The Cabinet had grown up as the instru- 
 ment for obtaining possession of the supreme executive 
 power by one party in the State. Its one and indi- 
 visible unity was necessary to enable it to present a 
 single front either to the King or to Parliament. 
 Accordingly the sole criterion for the choice of a 
 minister was fidelity to the party, coupled of course 
 
246 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 with the qualities or advantages that make a man use- 
 ful to his party, oratorical power, the popularity which 
 it brings, and the influence of wealth or of a title. 
 
 Membership of a party is at the best a matter of 
 opinion, a very different thing from knowledge. A 
 man's opinion is his view in regard to a subject on 
 which there is no means of determining the truth, for 
 in matters of opinion two men, both of them well 
 educated and each of them of good sense, ability, 
 and honour, may hold opposite views. That is 
 certainly not the case in regard to some of the most 
 important things in life. The use of force, for instance, 
 is subject to the laws of dynamics, cind as to what 
 they are a difference of opinion does not exist among 
 those who are acquainted with the science. As regards 
 the policy of a foreign State a difference of opinion 
 between two observers would show merely that one at 
 least of the two had not observed with accuracy. 
 
 ' The Secretaries of State for War and First Lords 
 of the Admiralty, chosen as devotees 'of their party, 
 knew nothing of war and therefore could not devote 
 themselves to preparation for it, so that both Services 
 ceased to be organized or trained for the one function 
 for which they exist. 
 
 The Commander-in-Chief was not a master of war. 
 He was a royal Prince appointed on no ground of 
 military qualification. The cause of his selection is to be 
 found in Sir Theodore Martin's Life of the Prince 
 Consort. In 1850 the Duke of Wellington expressed 
 his wish that he should be succeeded as Cominander-in- 
 Chief by the Prince Consort. He thought that with the 
 
BRITISH CONSTITUTION AND WAR 247 
 
 daily growth of the democratic power the government 
 grew weaker and weaker, and that it was of the utmost 
 importance to the stability of the throne and constitu- 
 tion that the command of the army should remain in 
 the hands of the Sovereign, and not fall into those of 
 the House of Commons. The Prince Consort declined 
 the position and the Duke of Wellington was succeeded 
 by a competent soldier — Lord Hardinge. On Lord 
 Hardinge's death, however, in 1856 the Duke of 
 Wellington's theory prevailed, though instead of the 
 Prince Consort, another Prince — the Duke of Cam- 
 bridge, the Queen's cousin — ^was appointed Com- 
 mander-in-Chief.* The motive of the selection was not 
 any supposed fitness of the person appointed to win 
 victories in case of war, but a relationship to the Queen 
 which seemed to guarantee that, in case of attempted 
 revolution, the army would be used in defence of the 
 throne and not in obedience to the wishes of the 
 House of Commons. 
 
 The weakness of the machinery was not due to 
 the influence of the representative system. On the 
 contrary, the efforts at improvement were caused by 
 that public opinion or national will to which the repre- 
 sentative system aims at giving effect. The Crimean 
 War had revealed the lack of any effective arrange- 
 ments for war, and the historian Kinglake, in his 
 seventh volume, published in 1880, described the 
 symptoms and their cause. He answered Lord Salis- 
 bury's subsequent question as to the cause of failure in 
 the Walcheren Expedition. 
 
 * Life of the Prince Consort, vol. ii., p. 255 ; vol. iii., p. 501. 
 
248 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 ' The three more immediate causes [he wrote] which 
 thus brought grave misfortune to England were : 
 
 ' (l) Her want of apt knowledge. 
 
 ' (2) Her choice of an inefficient commander. 
 
 ' (3) Her want of power to keep a momentoiis war 
 secret.' 
 
 These were the symptoms. The malady lay in divided 
 authority. The Crown had still clung to its direct 
 authority over the army, while in regard to the navy 
 and all other national business its authority was exer- 
 cised through and by the Cabinet. The inquiries that 
 followed the Crimean War had led to the establish- 
 ment of the machinery existing between 1870 and 1888 
 already described, as well as to many improvements 
 within the army, especially the reforms of Lord Card- 
 well, entirely due to the pressure of public opinion. 
 
 At the close of this period began the attempt to put 
 life and vigour into the machine which had ceased to 
 do its work. The impulse came not from the Cabinet 
 but from the people — a sure sign that the leadership 
 had failed. The remarkable achievements of the 
 Prussian army in 1866 and 1870 had been perceived 
 and the demand was made that the Government should 
 bring the army and the navy to a condition of 
 efficiency. As a result of this popular observation, and 
 of various breakdowns during the expeditions to 
 Egypt and the Soudan, changes were made in the 
 Army system, all of which I pass over, except those 
 which concern the machinery of government for the 
 general management of the Services and for the pre- 
 paration and conduct of war. 
 
BRITISH CONSTITUTION AND WAR 249 
 
 The first results of the popular demand or agitation 
 for improvement were two Royal Commissions, known 
 by the names of their chairmen, #is that of Sir James 
 Stephen and that of the Marquis of Hartington. 
 
 Sir James Stephen's Commission made criticisms 
 and sound proposals. The criticisms were to the effect 
 that the Secretary of State could not possibly do his 
 work because he did not understand his business — 
 war; and that the minister charged with supoly, the 
 Surveyor-General of the Ordnance, was in a similar 
 position. The system, moreover, had no definite 
 object. The proposals were that a Commission of 
 competent persons ought to be formed to lay down a 
 standard of what was necessary ; and that a competent 
 head of the supply services, a soldier of the highest 
 eminence, should be appointed. This report was 
 treated as waste-paper. 
 
 The Hartington Commission concerned itself in the 
 first place with repudiating the idea of the Duke of 
 Wellington that the Sovereign should exercise some 
 direct control over the army. The Commission laid 
 down that the authority of the Sovereign over the 
 Army could be exercised only in the same way as any 
 other power of the Crown, through a responsible 
 minister. The leading idea was, therefore, to strengthen 
 the position of the Secretary of State for War. The 
 first principle laid down was ' the recognition of the 
 responsibility to Parliament which rests on the Secre- 
 tary of State.' The account which I have given of 
 the Cabinet will, I trust, have satisfied my readers that 
 the responsibility of any single minister to Parliament 
 
250 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 is a myth. What the Commission aimed at was to 
 assert the authority of the Cabinet over the army. 
 This was quite right, because no army and no branch 
 of government can be effectively controlled or can be 
 made efficient so long as there is a doubt as to who is 
 its master. In the early years of Queen Victoria's 
 reign the Duke of Wellington had thought that there 
 might be a quarrel between the Queen and the govern- 
 ment; he had tried to secure that the army should 
 be on the Queen's side. But after she had reigned 
 fifty years the possibility of such a division had ceased 
 to be worth thinking of. The power of the Sovereign 
 was exercised without question through the Cabinet. 
 The position of the Commander-in-Chief had become 
 a false one on account of the wrong principle which 
 had governed the appointment made in 1856. The 
 obvious remedy was to make a new appointment and 
 to choose a general for his mastery of war. But the 
 Hartington Commission was not thinking of war; the 
 only reference to war in its report was to point out that, 
 when the country was at war, the practice was to 
 appoint a Commander-in-Chief in the field, and to 
 ignore the nominal Commander-in-Chief of the army. 
 In other words, the Commanderrin-Chief devoid of 
 generalship was well understood to be a mere figure- 
 head. But instead of proposing to make the office a 
 reality, the Hartington Commission proposed to abolish 
 it; and the report alleged as the reason for wishing 
 to do so that the Commander-in-Chief was, on military 
 matters, the sole adviser of the Secretary of State — ' 
 in other words, that he held the precise position which 
 
BRITISH CONSTITUTION AND WAR 251 
 
 alone in case of war would give a prospect of success, 
 assuming that the holder of the office was competent 
 to perform its duties. 
 
 In 1895 the Duke of Cambridge resigned the office 
 of Commander-in-Chief; thereupon the government of 
 the day appointed Lord Wolseley to succeed him ; but 
 in making the appointment the Government changed 
 the nature of the office. All the principal assistants of 
 the Commander-in-Chief — the Quartermaster-General, 
 the Adjutant-General, the Directors of Fortifications 
 and of Artillery — ^were withdrawn from his authority 
 and made the direct subordinates of the Secretary of 
 State. In this way, at the moment when the govern- 
 ment had chosen a qualified general to be Commander- 
 in-Chief, and when they gave him that title, they at 
 the same time transferred the powers which that name 
 denotes from the officer so called to the Secretary of 
 State for War, who was not a soldier at all. This 
 change was defended by Mr. Balfour, basing his view 
 upon the Report of the Hartington Commission. 
 
 'If the Secretary of State [said Mr. Balfour] is to 
 take official advice from the Commander-in-Chief 
 alone, it is absolutely impossible that he should be 
 really responsible ; in this House he will be no more 
 than the mouthpiece of the Commander-in-Chief.' 
 
 But, as we have seen, the responsibility of any single 
 Cabinet Minister is a mere fiction. And it is difficult 
 to see how a Secretary of State for War, not himself 
 acquainted with that difficult business, and also com- 
 pletely sane, could wish to be anything else than the 
 mouthpiece of a soldier the master of his trade. Noth- 
 
252 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 ing could more conclusively prove that in 1895 the 
 Cabinet and the House of Commons did not regard 
 war as a serious matter with a view to which the 
 arrangements made in time of peace ought to be 
 framed. 
 
 If it were true that the Secretary of State and the 
 Commander-in-Chief were duplicates of one another, 
 no doubt one of them should have been abolished, but 
 the solution proper for war was to establish the true 
 distinction between them as concerned the one with 
 supply and the other with command, and to make the 
 Commander-in-Chief a member of the Cabinet. 
 
 Be that as it may, the results of the system adopted 
 were unfortunate, for in 1899, when the South African 
 War was impending, the Secretary of State and the 
 Cabinet failed to listen to the sound advice of the 
 Commander-in-Chief, with disastrous consequences. 
 When the war was over Lord Wolseley was succeeded 
 as Commander-in-Chief by Lord Roberts, with the 
 same restrictions on his scope as had been imposed 
 upon Lord Wolseley. The system gave satisfaction 
 neither to the Cabinet nor to Lord Roberts, and in 
 1904 a fresh change was made. 
 
 The office of Commander-in-Chief was abolished and 
 its authority and functions were transferred to the 
 Secretaryof State. Thevarious high officers at the War 
 Office who had been the assistants of the Commander- 
 in-Chief became the assistants of the Secretary of 
 State, the political officer unacquainted with war. 
 They were at the same time formed into a council (the 
 Army Council), of which the Secretary of State was 
 
BRITISH CONSTITUTION AND WAR 253 
 
 chairman, with one of the officers, called the First 
 Military Member of Council, as his deputy. The 
 Order in Council authorized the Secretary, of State to 
 reserve for his own decision any matter which he 
 thought fit — in other words, to overrule any or all of 
 the military members of his council. The opportunity 
 of the change was utilized to make an improvement in 
 the arrangements of the War Office. The business of 
 the design of operations and all that belongs to it, as 
 well as of military education, was concentrated in the 
 hands of the First Military Member of the Council, 
 entitled Chief of the General Staff of the Army. At 
 the same time was created the post of Inspector- 
 General of the Forces, with the duty of reporting to 
 the Army Council on the condition of the troops, their 
 training and fitness for war. The Inspector-General 
 had no authority over the generals commanding the 
 troops or over the Chief of the General Staff. 
 
 The essenticd point in these changes was the con- 
 stitution of a General Staff and the establishment of 
 its Chief in a position of primacy among the military 
 officers who formed the Army Council. This was a 
 reconstitution of an organ which every army requires ; 
 every commander divides up the multifarious business 
 which he has to transact into a number of departments, 
 each of whidi is managed for him by an officer who 
 has his confidence. The most important of them is 
 that in which his orders for the movement of his troops 
 are drafted, and in which also the reports, he receives 
 about the enemy are collected and sorted by a Scout- 
 master. The head of the whole department used to 
 
254 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 be called in the eighteenth century the Quartermaster- 
 General. He was the confidential assistant of the 
 commander in his work of generalship — in the use of 
 his army as a weapon for striking blows against the 
 enemy. The other departments were the commander's 
 agencies for the maintenance of discipline, for the dis- 
 tribution of the supplies received from home or col- 
 lected in the country, and for the rest of the many cares 
 which beset a commander in his work of moving a mass 
 of men as large as the population of a great city from 
 one end of a foreign country to the other. No com- 
 mander can dispense with a Quartermaster-General 
 and a Scoutmaster; and those who hold these posts 
 must be thoroughly instructed in all that concerns the 
 possibilities of the enemy's action — ^the nature of the 
 country through which the army moves, the methods 
 by which the various parts of an army can most 
 advantageously march, encamp, and &ght. In a word, 
 they must be adepts at generalship. Accordingly the 
 constitution of a General Staff combining these func- 
 tions was bound to give a fresh stimulus to the military 
 thought of the army, to set a number of officers think- 
 ing about the reality of war and to give them the 
 impulse to bring its training and organization into 
 line with its mission, which is, after all, to fight; So 
 important is the work of a Chief of the General Staff 
 that his office has been called in the eighteenth 
 century the soul, and in the nineteenth the brain, of an 
 army.* But these metaphors are not to be taken too 
 
 * See the author's essay entitled The Brain of an Army, 
 pp. 192-198. 
 
BRITISH CONSTITUTION AND WAR 255 
 
 literally. The Chief of the Staff is the commander's 
 principal private secretary, and the commander who 
 has to rely on him for his thought and for his inspirar 
 tion is hardly the man for his post. In any case a 
 brain without a will does hot make a satisfactory 
 man, for it is the will that is the real man, and it is 
 the commander who is the soul of an army. His func- 
 tion is to see the war as a whole with his mind's eye, 
 to grasp all the theatres of war in one comprehensive 
 view and to embrace in his vision the whole of the 
 operations from the first breach of the peace to the 
 treaty which is to restore peace. To realize this 
 vision, to make actual ' the potentialities which he 
 divines, is the commander's calling. It involves not 
 only knowledge but authority, and a commander must 
 unite both in his own person. 
 
 The Government which in 1904 reconstructed the 
 War Office made two mistakes : in forming a General 
 Staff it forgot that a General Staff is an organ for a 
 particular purpose — operations ; and that, if an organ 
 is to perform one function well, it must have no other. 
 By making the Chief of the General Staff the First 
 Military Member of the Army Council, the govern- 
 ment threw upon him the responsibility of supervising 
 the work of his colleagues, the heads of the other mili- 
 tary departments. It thus saddled him with the cares 
 of administration, and thereby prevented him from 
 devoting his whole time and attention to the pure 
 generalship which is his special business. Accord- 
 ingly it obliged him to depute his own work to a 
 subordinate — the Director of Operations. Moreover, 
 
256 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 it cut the directorate of operations into two parts — 
 one for operations in the United Kingdom, and 
 another for operations abroad. Thus the art of 
 generalship was not in reaHty given that fir"St place in 
 the whole system which properly belongs to it. 
 
 But a far greater mistake was the abolition of the 
 Commander-in-Chief, and the consequent divorce 
 between knowledge and power. All power was given 
 to the Secretary of State, who so long as he was a 
 political personage could have no knowledge of war, 
 and all the knowledge of war was left to the General 
 Staff, which had no authority of its own. 
 
 In 1914 the outbreak of war with Germany illu- 
 minated the situation like a flash of lightning, and 
 the first act of the government was to abandon the 
 civilian Minister of War and give the office of Secre- 
 tary of State for War to Lord Kitchener, who thereby 
 became, in fact though not in name, Commander-in- 
 Chief. The members of the Government thus showed 
 an appreciation of the needs of war, by making the 
 soldier upon whom they relied for the conduct of the 
 war a member of the Cabinet; so that he could him- 
 self direct the whole of the military operations with 
 the entire authority of the supreme executive. 
 
 Every man has the defects of his qualities; Lord 
 Kitchener's commanding talents were accompanied by 
 an inability to appreciate the division of labour. He 
 took the whole work into his own hands, not only 
 that of command or general direction but' also that 
 of supply, and instead of relying upon the heads of 
 departments — the Chief of the General Staff, the 
 
BRITISH CONSTITUTION AND WAR 257 
 
 Adjutant-General, and the rest of them — ^he attempted 
 to go into every matter himself and settle it without 
 the aid of the department that existed to deal with it. 
 Where before there had been a Staff without a Com- 
 mander there was now a Commander without a Staff. 
 The Report of the Dardanelles Commission proves 
 Lord Kitchener to have been unaware that the problem 
 of an attempt to force the Straits had been studied by 
 the General Staff, and the conclusion reached and 
 recorded that the operation was hardly practicable. 
 Moreover, Lord Kitchener's almost lifelong absence 
 from England had left him no opportunity of making 
 himself acquainted with the modern conditions of the 
 army. I am assured that when he undertook to raise 
 a new army he did not know the character of the 
 Territorial Force, and thereby failed to make the most 
 of its excellent organization for recruiting and other 
 purposes. 
 
 That brought with it an unfortunate consequence. 
 The war had not been going on many months before 
 there were fighting side by side troops and officers 
 of three categories : the original Regulars, who were 
 serving before the War ; the Volunteers or Terri- 
 torials; and the so-called New Regulars. The 
 French Revolutionary Army of 1793 had had all 
 these categories. The French amalgamated them and 
 abolished all distinctions between them; and in that 
 way formed the wonderful homogeneous army with 
 which Napoleon conquered the greater part of Europe. 
 This amalgamation brought with it, as nothing else 
 could have done, la carrikre ouverte aux talents; and 
 
 17 
 
258 gove;iinment and the war 
 
 the rise of that galaxy of generals which surrounded 
 Napoleon. In oui; own case we know that since the 
 war b^gan aU the best minds, of the country, all the 
 best spirits, have become officers of the army. Those? 
 who jojnied in 1914 have by this time ha,d an experi- 
 ence, especially of the actual fighting, which, sur- 
 passes that of the oldest veterans before 191 4. Yet I 
 am told that it is still regarded as an advantage in 
 selection and promotion that a man should have been 
 before the war a professional officer. The only advan- 
 tage t^^t 9.U§Il|:, to. gJcist i^ superior knowledge of th,ei 
 work to, be done and greater skill and devotion in its 
 performance. If and when an officer who was formerly 
 professional has, acquired these advantages, the army 
 ought, to have the benefit of thein. But where all 
 alike are offeriiig th^ir lives for their country, no 
 other consideration pught to exist than the, fitness o| 
 the man for the work he is to do. I am sure tha.t 
 thosp qf&cers |;o whom the search for victory -is the 
 ruliifg niptiye entirely agree >yitb me in the view that 
 it must not be regarded as the monopoly of a cast^. 
 Nothing is wofse for a national army than professional^ 
 trade-unionism, the real militarism. 
 
 Lord I^itchepipr's brave effort to do too much haidi 
 one gppd result. It led to the fpr^mation of the Minis- 
 try of IVfunitipns, a first recognition of the wisdoiji, 
 of distingqi^hing between gupply and comqiand!. 
 
 Whep, the country was startled and shocked by the, 
 loss of Lord Kitchener, the Q^yemment fell back 
 upoR the mcichinery of the Arnjy Council and the 
 Chief of the General Stciff, which had been at wo^l?; 
 
BRITISH CONSTITUTION AND WAR 259 
 
 from 1904 to 191 4, with the sound addition, made by 
 an Order in Council of January, 191 6, that the orders 
 of the government to the commanders in the field 
 should emanate from the Chief of the General Staff. 
 
 The most recent change of ministries brought with 
 it a further modification. A Secretary of State for 
 War was appointed without becoming a member of 
 the supreme executive — the War Cabinet — and appar- 
 ently from that time on the Chief of the General Staff 
 has communicated directly with the Cabinet. 
 
 I cannot help thinking that the completion of the 
 development would be reached if the Chief of the 
 General Staff became, under whatever title, a member 
 of the supreme executive committee. The General 
 Staff would then in all probability become an indepen- 
 dent office for military direction or command, while 
 the maintenance and supply of the Army would 
 become the work of a minister of military administra- 
 tion and supply, with which the Ministry of Muni- 
 tions would be closely associated. In that way the 
 two functions — command and supply — ^would each 
 have the place indicated by experieince and the theory 
 of war. 
 
 I have made no mention of the Cabinet Committee 
 of Imperial Defence, of which from time to time much 
 has been heard and said. It is probably an excellent 
 institution for keeping the representatives of the 
 Dominions in touch with the ideas of the Imperial 
 Government and for enabling them to explain their 
 own ideas. But I am too much a disciple of those 
 whom I may venture to call the Old Masters to put 
 
a6o GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 faith in mixed bodies of this kind for the direction of 
 operations. 
 
 The opinions on this subject of the two greatest of 
 strategical critics were clear and strong. Nothing is 
 so bad, in the judgment of Jomini, as a council of 
 war either at the headquarters of an army or at the 
 seat of a government. The only function that can 
 be assigned- to such a body is that of adopting the 
 bases of a plan of campaign. This is in any case a 
 necessity, for every government must consider the 
 outlines of its plan of campaign. But even here a 
 certain unity of military judgment is required. 
 
 On this subject the most weighty judgment ever 
 expressed is that of the author of the classical treatise 
 On War, who writes : 
 
 " None of the main plans which are necessary for a 
 war can be made without insight into the political 
 relations; and people say something quite different 
 from what they really mean when they talk of the 
 harmful influence of policy on the conduct of a war. 
 It is not the influence but the policy which they should 
 blame. If the policy is sound — that is, if it hits the 
 mark — it can affect the war only in its own sense, and 
 only advantageously ; and where this influence diverts 
 the war from its purpose the source must be sought in 
 a mistaken policy. . . . To ensure that a war shall 
 answer fully to the intentions of policy, and that the 
 policy shall be suited to the means available for the 
 war, there is, where soldier and statesman are not one 
 and the same person, only one good means — namely, 
 to make the Commander-in-Chief a member of the 
 Cabinet, so that at the critical moments he may take 
 part in its deliberations and decisions. . . . Extremely 
 
BRITISH CONSTITUTION AND WAR 261 
 
 dangerous is the influence in a Cabinet of any mili- 
 tary officer other than the Commander-in-Chief. It 
 can seldom lead to vigorous commonsense action.'* 
 
 Not less instructive are the words of Marlborough, 
 which I quote from his letter of the 2nd of August, 
 1705: 
 
 To the Pensioner of Holland 
 
 ' Meldert, 
 
 'August 2, 1705. 
 
 'Sis, 
 
 ' I am very uneasy in my own mind to see how 
 everything here is like to go, notwithstanding the 
 superiority and goodness of our troops, which ought 
 to make us not doubt of success. However, it is cer- 
 tain, that if affairs continue on the same footing they 
 now are, it will be impossible to attempt anything con- 
 siderable with advantage, since councils of war must 
 be called on every occasion, which entirely destroys 
 the secrecy and dispatch upon which all great under- 
 takings depend; and has unavoidably another very 
 unhappy effect, for the private animosities between 
 so many persons as have to .be assembled being so 
 great, and their inclinations and interests so different, 
 as always to make one party oppose what the other 
 advises, they consequently never agree. 
 
 'I do not say this because I have the honour of 
 being at the head of the army, but it is absolutely 
 necessary that such power be lodged with the genersil 
 as may enable him to act as he thinks proper, accord- 
 ing to the best of his judgment, without being obliged 
 ever to communicate what he intends further than he 
 thinks convenient. The success of the last campaign, 
 with the blessing of God, was owing to that power 
 
 * Clansewitz, Von Kriege, Book VIII., ch. vi. B. 
 
262 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 which I wish you would now give, for the good of the 
 public, and that of the States in particular. And if 
 you think anybody can execute it better than myself, 
 I shall be willing to stay in any of the towns here, 
 having a very good pretext, for I am really sick. 
 
 'I know this is a very nice point, but it is of the 
 
 last importance, for without it no general can act 
 
 .oifensively or to advantage, or discharge with honour 
 
 the trust that to the world seems to be reposed in him.' 
 
 A review of the arrangements for the direction of 
 the navy in war can be compressed into a very few 
 words. During the last great war, in the epoch of 
 Nelson and Napoleon, the action of the navy was 
 directed by a board which represented the Lord 
 High Admiral in Commission. Another board was 
 entrusted with the duty of supplying the ships and 
 stores which formed the material portion of the fleet. 
 But before the beginning of the reign of Queen Vic- 
 toria, these two bodies were amalgamated into one,- 
 which combined the functions of command and supply. 
 The Chairman of this Board of Admiralty was the 
 First Lord, the Cabinet Minister, a political personage 
 unacquainted with war. Its other members were four 
 Sea Lords, one or more Civil Lords and a Secretary. 
 The political chief, the First Lord, had power, with 
 the concurrence of one other member of the Board, to 
 act in the name of the whole committee. In 1895 I 
 ventured to criticize this arrangement by pointing out 
 that it failed to provide the navy with a Commander- 
 in-Chief for war, and suggested that the First Sea 
 Lord should be made Commander-in-Chief and be 
 given authority in peace and war to issue all orders 
 
BRITISH CONSTITUTION AND WAR 263 
 
 for the distribution and movement ©f ships and fleets ; 
 that his should be the office in which should be 
 prepared all orders to the admirals commanding 
 squadrons or fleets, and that he should be selected 
 on the sole ground of his strategical and tactical quali- 
 fications for this duty. These criticisms and this pro- 
 posal were supported, for a few weeks only, by the 
 Navy League, with the net result that the First Sea 
 Lord was formally recognized by the government as 
 its naval strategical adviser. But there was no con- 
 sistent attempt to select a First Sea Lord on the 
 ground of mastery of naval operations, and no attempt 
 whatever to relieve him of the many administrative 
 duties to which it was impossible he could properly 
 attend if he really devoted himself to strategical 
 problems and to the study of the operations of a future 
 naval war. Mr. Churchill, indeed, on becoming First 
 ' Lord of the Admiralty in 191 1, created at the Admir- 
 alty an office akin to that of the Chief of a General 
 Staff of an aj-my, but the head of this office was not 
 made a member of the Admiralty Board, and occu- 
 pied a comparatively subordinate position. 
 
 During the course of the war there has been some 
 slight development. The Chief of the Admiralty 
 Staff has been brought into closer relation with the 
 First Sea Lord, whose function as strategical director 
 of the navy has been emphasized, though he still 
 seems to be more deeply immersed in general adminis- 
 trative business than is consistent with complete con- 
 centration on the business of strategical direction, 
 which ought always, in my judgment, to be insepar- 
 
264 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 ' able from his position. Authority without strategical 
 insight must be expected to fail in war; for without 
 the judgment produced by a life's study of the opera- 
 tions of war, no man can hope to solve happily the 
 problems which war presents. But no insight will 
 avail unless it is coupled with authority. A strategist 
 who has not the power to have his solution carried 
 out and put into execution is not a commander. 
 
 The words of the late Captain Mahan, written 
 nearly thirty years ago, cannot be too often recalled : 
 
 ' While a Government is responsible for its choice 
 of the chief naval commander, it must depend upon 
 him for the enforcement of discipline and for the 
 choice of measures at once practicable and adequate to. 
 compass the ends of the war. Upon him more than 
 upon any other must fall the responsibility of failure ; 
 for he knows or should know better than the Govern- 
 ment, what the fleet can be made to do, what the 
 state of discipline really is, and what his own capacity 
 to carry out the one and support the other. Only 
 through him can the Government act. When it dis- 
 regards or overrides without displacing him mischief 
 ensues ; but the correlative of the generous, confident, 
 and hearty support it owes him is on his part unceas- 
 ing intense effort, or resignation.' 
 
 The Government has lately appointed a most dis- 
 tinguished administrator to be First Lord of the 
 Admiralty. It is beyond doubt a wise move to 
 appoint an administrator to be the head of the 
 administrative business of the Navy. And this, 
 according to my reading of the lessons of history, 
 would be best accomplished by reviving the distinc- 
 
BRITISH CONSTITUTION AND WAR 265 
 
 tion between supply and command. Command 
 should be the function of the First Sea Lord; his 
 should be the voice to explain in the Cabinet his 
 design for the conduct of the Naval War; his the 
 voice communicating that design to the naval officers 
 afloat. If the administrator must also be a First 
 Lord, it might conduce to a better understanding of 
 his functions if he were to be called the ' First Shore 
 Lord.'* 
 
 There are two delicate points which I have hitherto 
 passed over. The first is the place, in a geographical 
 sense, of the Commander-in-Chief of either Service. 
 Should he be at the headquarters of the principal 
 army or of the main fleet, or should he remain at the 
 seat of government? I suggest that this should be 
 left entirely to him. The modern facilities for move- 
 ment from place to place and for the transmission of 
 documents — even of considerable length — make it 
 easy for a commander to communicate his views from 
 one place to another. 
 
 The great difficulty consists in the selection of men 
 qualified for supreme command. To produce leaders 
 is the chief function of national education ; to discover 
 them and to put power into their hands is perhaps 
 the highest and the hardest function of the statesman. 
 For there is no selection without rejection. The task 
 is, however, less difficult in war than in peace because 
 
 * Since this was written the business of the direction of 
 operations has been separated from that of supply, and the 
 First Sea Lord has become Chief of the Naval Staff — in accord 
 with the view expressed in the text. 
 
266 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 in war everyone understands the application of the 
 precept 'by their fruits ye shall know them.' 
 
 The general answer to the question raised by the 
 title I have chosen is that the Cabinet system of the 
 late nineteenth and the early twentieth century is a 
 machine suitable for the conduct of war, provided the 
 Cabinet is a council of heads of the great depart- 
 ments — under the presidency of the Prime Minister — 
 and provided also that each minister is a master of 
 the subject with which his department is concerned. 
 Its efficiency is diminished in proportion as the mem- 
 bers lack the necessary command of their subjects, 
 and by the presence of members (other than the Prime 
 Minister): having no departments to supervise. Only 
 the head of a department can be fully in touch with 
 the problems that arise in it; and the opinion of a 
 person deprived of that touch is apt to be in the nature 
 of advice in the air. I view therefore with some mis- 
 giving the recent arrangement by which the Cabinet 
 is to a great extent cut off from the great offices which 
 carry on the several branches of the actual business of 
 government, and by which a secretariat is interposed 
 between the supreme governing committee and those 
 offices. 
 
 The story which I have told of the attempts of 
 governments carried on during a quarter of a cen- 
 tury to set in order the machinery for the direction 
 of the Army and the Navy, illustrates what I believe 
 to be the chief weakness of our national life — ^the want 
 of faith in knowledge. The educated class, which the 
 democracy has found in almost hereditary possession 
 
BRITISH CONSTITUTION AND WAR 267 
 
 of the machinery of legislation and adijiinistration, 
 has relied, on good Ipreeding and a liberal education, 
 of which the haU-m^rk was and is the degree of one 
 of l^e iTOivej;sitieS| — especially the honours degree 
 of one of the older universities. Such an education 
 undoubteidly develops the powers of the mind and 
 produces ability. But the members of a government 
 require njore than abihty; each of thew requires a, 
 masi^ery of a subject, of the art or science upon which 
 are ba,sed thp activities of the of[i,ce which hq aspires 
 to direct, and of its application. This mastery is to 
 be had only through a long apprenticeship — the devor 
 tion of the best years of a man's life to the profession 
 to which he is called- In the army and navy the 
 leading has suffei:ed bpcause the officers received a 
 professional training without the ba^is of a, previous 
 liberal education such a^ thp universities give to their 
 better students. That can be remedied npw, if the 
 government wishes, because the new armies contain 
 all the young men of liberal education whom, the coun- 
 try has produced, and among the officers, old and 
 new, of the ejcpanded army, will be found when search 
 is made a Camot, a Hoche, and even a Napoleon. 
 
 But far more dcn^gerous than defects in the com- 
 l^tant services, which remedy themselves in the hard 
 if costly schopl of war, is, tl^e; weakness of govern- 
 njent that necessarily results from giving authority to 
 men withput knowledge or experience of the kind of 
 business over which they are set. There are only two 
 methods of forming a committee for governing a nation 
 — for directii^ the nation's work. One is thajt hitherto 
 
268 GOVERNMENT AND THE WAR 
 
 practised, by which a personage distinguished by 
 party services, or by anything except mastery of the 
 business which he is to superintend, is placed as 
 Cabinet Minister at the head of a department, while 
 its permanent chief, presumably the competent man, 
 is made his subordinate, his adviser whose advice he 
 may reject. This is government by incompetence. It 
 has been accompanied by inefficiency and confusion 
 and can lead only to defeat. The other method is 
 to appoint as Cabinet Ministei- at the head of each 
 department the most competent master of the work 
 which that department has to do. The old wrong 
 method was due to conditions which made the con- 
 sideration of party all-important. It may be doubted 
 whether, worked on that method, the constitution is 
 as satisfactory as the late Lord Salisbury thought it 
 for the production of happiness; assuredly it will 
 never produce victory. In war the mere thought 
 of party is treason. 
 
 Unless the spirit in which the constitution has been 
 worked for the last fifty years is changed within the 
 next six months, the constitution and those who have 
 worked it will disappear in defeat aiid revolution. 
 To-day the submarine and the aeroplane are telling 
 all men that the alternative is between defeat and 
 victory. Victory cannot be won by a government of 
 amateurs. A government that seeks victory must 
 begin by entrusting the conduct of the war to men 
 who understand war. 
 
 BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD, ENGLAND