[Footnote 64: Written in 1906. (_The_Morning_Post_.)]

It has been contended that raids by 'armaments with 1000, 20,000, and 50,000 men on board respectively' have succeeded in evading 'our watching and chasing fleets,' and that consequently invasion of the British Isles on a great scale is not only possible but fairly practicable, British naval predominance notwithstanding. I dispute the accuracy of the history involved in the allusions to the above-stated figures. The number of men comprised in a raiding or invading expedition is the number that is or can be put on shore. The crews of the transports are not included in it. In the cases alluded to, Humbert's expedition was to have numbered 82 officers and 1017 other ranks, and 984 were put on shore in Killala Bay. Though the round number, 1000, represents this figure fairly enough, there was a 10 per cent. shrinkage from the original embarkation strength. In Hoche's expedition the total number of troops embarked was under 14,000, of whom 633 were lost before the expedition had got clear of its port of starting, and of the remainder only a portion reached Ireland. General Bonaparte landed in Egypt not 50,000 men, but about 36,000. In the expeditions of Hoche and Humbert it was not expected that the force to be landed would suffice of itself, the belief being that it would be joined in each case by a large body of adherents in the raided country. Outside the ranks of the 'extremists of the dinghy school'—whose number is unknown and is almost certainly quite insignificant—no one asserts or ever has asserted that raids in moderate strength are not possible even in the face of a strong defending navy. It is a fact that the whole of our defence policy for many generations has been based upon an admission of their possibility. Captain Mahan's statement of the case has never been questioned by anyone of importance. It is as follows: 'The control of the sea, however real, does not imply that an enemy's single ships or small squadrons cannot steal out of port, cannot cross more or less frequented tracts of ocean, make harassing descents upon unprotected points of a long coast-line, enter blockaded harbours.' It is extraordinary that everyone does not perceive that if this were not true the 'dinghy school' would be right. Students of Clausewitz may be expected to remember that the art of war does not consist in making raids that are unsuccessful; that war is waged to gain certain great objects; and that the course of hostilities between two powerful antagonists is affected little one way or the other by raids even on a considerable scale.

The Egyptian expedition of 1798 deserves fuller treatment than it has generally received. The preparations at Toulon and some Italian ports were known to the British Government. It being impossible for even a Moltke or—comparative resources being taken into account—the greater strategist Kodama to know everything in the mind of an opponent, the sensible proceeding is to guard against his doing what would be likely to do you most harm. The British Government had reason to believe that the Toulon expedition was intended to reinforce at an Atlantic port another expedition to be directed against the British Isles, or to effect a landing in Spain with a view to marching into Portugal and depriving our navy of the use of Lisbon. Either if effected would probably cause us serious mischief, and arrangements were made to prevent them. A landing in Egypt was, as the event showed, of little importance. The threat conveyed by it against our Indian possessions proved to be an empty one. Upwards of 30,000 hostile troops were locked up in a country from which they could exercise no influence on the general course of the war, and in which in the end they had to capitulate. Suppose that an expedition crossing the North Sea with the object of invading this country had to content itself with a landing in Iceland, having eventual capitulation before it, should we not consider ourselves very fortunate, though it may have temporarily occupied one of the Shetland Isles _en_route_? The truth of the matter is that the Egyptian expedition was one of the gravest of strategical mistakes, and but for the marvellous subsequent achievements of Napoleon it would have been the typical example of bad strategy adduced by lecturers and writers on the art of war for the warning of students.

The supposition that over-sea raids, even when successful in part, in any way demonstrate the inefficiency of naval defence would never be admitted if only land and sea warfare were regarded as branches of one whole and not as quite distinct things. To be consistent, those that admit the supposition should also admit that the practicability of raids demonstrates still more conclusively the insufficiency of defence by an army. An eminent military writer has told us that 'a raiding party of 1000 French landed in Ireland without opposition, after sixteen days of navigation, unobserved by the British Navy; defeated and drove back the British troops opposing them on four separate occasions… entirely occupied the attention of all the available troops of a garrison of Ireland 100,000 strong; penetrated almost to the centre of the island, and compelled the Lord-Lieutenant to send an urgent requisition for "as great a reinforcement as possible."' If an inference is to be drawn from this in the same way as one has been drawn from the circumstances on the sea, it would follow that one hundred thousand troops are not sufficient to prevent a raid by one thousand, and consequently that one million troops would not be sufficient to prevent one by ten thousand enemies. On this there would arise the question, If an army a million strong gives no security against a raid by ten thousand men, is an army worth having? And this question, be it noted, would come, not from disciples of the Blue Water School, 'extremist' or other, but from students of military narrative.

The truth is that raids are far more common on land than on the ocean. For every one of the latter it would be possible to adduce several of the former. Indeed, accounts of raids are amongst the common-places of military history. There are few campaigns since the time of that smart cavalry leader Mago, the younger brother of Hannibal, in which raids on land did not occur or in which they exercised any decisive influence on the issue of hostilities. It is only the failure to see the connection between warfare on land and naval warfare that prevents these land raids being given the same significance and importance that is usually given to those carried out across the sea.

In the year 1809, the year of Wagram, Napoleon's military influence in Central Germany was, to say the least, not at its lowest. Yet Colonel Schill, of the Prussian cavalry, with 1200 men, subsequently increased to 2000 infantry and 12 squadrons, proceeded to Wittenberg, thence to Magdeburg, and next to Stralsund, which he occupied and where he met his death in opposing an assault made by 6000 French troops. He had defied for a month all the efforts of a large army to suppress him. In the same year the Duke of Brunswick-Oels and Colonel Dornberg, notwithstanding the smallness of the force under them, by their action positively induced Napoleon, only a few weeks before Wagram, to detach the whole corps of Kellerman, 30,000 strong, which otherwise would have been called up to the support of the Grande ArmÉe, to the region in which these enterprising raiders were operating. The mileage covered by Schill was nearly as great as that covered by the part of Hoche's expedition which under Grouchy did reach an Irish port, though it was not landed. Instances of cavalry raids were frequent in the War of Secession in America. The Federal Colonel B. H. Grierson, of the 6th Illinois Cavalry, with another Illinois and an Iowa cavalry regiment, in April 1863 made a raid which lasted sixteen days, and in which he covered 600 miles of hostile country, finally reaching Baton Rouge, where a friendly force was stationed. The Confederate officers, John H. Morgan, John S. Mosby, and especially N. B. Forrest, were famous for the extent and daring of their raids. Of all the leaders of important raids in the War of Secession none surpassed the great Confederate cavalry General, J. E. B. Stuart, whose riding right round the imposing Federal army is well known. Yet not one of the raids above mentioned had any effect on the main course of the war in which they occurred or on the result of the great conflict.

In the last war the case was the same. In January 1905, General Mischenko with 10,000 sabres and three batteries of artillery marched right round the flank of Marshal Oyama's great Japanese army, and occupied Niu-chwang—not the treaty port so-called, but a place not very far from it. For several days he was unmolested, and in about a week he got back to his friends with a loss which was moderate in proportion to his numbers. In the following May Mischenko made another raid, this time round General Nogi's flank. He had with him fifty squadrons, a horse artillery battery, and a battery of machine guns. Starting on the 17th, he was discovered on the 18th, came in contact with his enemy on the 19th, but met with no considerable hostile force till the 20th, when the Japanese cavalry arrived just in time to collide with the Russian rearguard of two squadrons. On this General Mischenko 'retired at his ease for some thirty miles along the Japanese flank and perhaps fifteen miles away from it.' These Russians' raids did not alter the course of the war nor bring ultimate victory to their standards.

It would be considered by every military authority as a flagrant absurdity to deduce from the history of these many raids on land that a strong army is not a sufficient defence for a continental country against invasion. What other efficient defence against that can a continental country have? Apply the reasoning to the case of an insular country, and reliance on naval defence will be abundantly justified.

To maintain that Canada, India, and Egypt respectively could be invaded by the United States, Russia, and Turkey, backed by Germany, notwithstanding any action that our navy could take, would be equivalent to maintaining that one part of our empire cannot or need not reinforce another. Suppose that we had a military force numerically equal to or exceeding the Russian, how could any of it be sent to defend Canada, India, and Egypt, or to reinforce the defenders of those countries, unless our sea communications were kept open? Can these be kept open except by the action of our navy? It is plain that they cannot.