  “The test is as true of cerebral power, as if a hundred thousand men lay dead upon the field; or a score of hulks were swinging blackened wrecks, after a game between two mighty admirals.”—Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. (Opening Address at Morphy Banquet, Boston, 1859.) Men whose business it is to understand war and warfare often are amused by senseless comparisons made by writers who, as their writings show, are ignorant even of the rudiments of military art and science. Of course a certain license in expression of thought is not to be denied the layman; he cannot be expected to talk with the exactness of the man who knows. At the same time there is a limit beyond which the non-technical man passes at his peril, and this limit is reached when he poses as a critic and presumes to dogmatize on matters in regard to which he is uninformed. The fanciful conjectures of such people, well are illustrated by the following editorial faux pas, perpetrated by a leading metropolitan daily, viz.: “Everyone knows now that a future war between states having similar and substantially equal equipments will be a different affair from any war of the past; characterized by a different order of generalship and a radically novel application of the principles of strategy and tactics.” Many in the struggle to obtain their daily bread, are tempted to essay the unfamiliar, and for a stipulated wage to pose as teachers to the public. Such always will do well to write modestly in regard to sciences which they have not studied and of arts which they never practiced, and especially in future comments on Military matters, such people may profit by the appended modicum of that ancient history, which newspaper men as a class so affect to despise, and in regard to which, as a rule, they are universally and lamentably, ignorant. What orders of Generalship can exist in the future, different from those which always have existed since war was made, viz.: good generalship and bad generalship? Ability properly to conduct an army is a concrete thing; it does not admit of comparison. Says Frederic the Great: “There are only two kinds of Generals—those who know their trade and those who do not.” Hence, “a different order of Generalship,” suggested by the editorial quoted, implies either a higher or a lesser degree of ability in the “general of the future”; and as obviously, it is impossible that he can do worse than many already have done, it is necessary to assume that the commander of tomorrow will be an improvement over his predecessors. Consequently, to the military mind it becomes of paramount interest to inquire as to the form and manner in which such superiority will be tangibly and visibly manifested, viz.: Will the general of the future be a better general than Epaminondas, Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Gustavus Adolphus, Turenne, Eugene, Frederic, Washington, Napoleon, Von Moltke? Will he improve upon that application of the principles Will the general of the future know a better way for making war than acting against the enemy’s communications? Will he devise a better method of warfare than that whose motive is the concentration of a superior force upon the strategetic objective? Will the processes of his prime logistic operations be preferable to those of men who won their victories before their battles were fought, by combining with their troops the topography of the country, and causing rivers and mountains to take the place of corps d’armee? Will the general of the future renounce as obsolete and worthless that military organization founded centuries before the Christian Era, by the great Theban, Epaminondas, the father of scientific warfare; that system adopted by every captain of renown and which may be seen in its purity in the greater military establishments from the days of Rome to the present Imperial North German Confederation? Will the general of the future renounce as obsolete and worthless that system of Minor Tactics utilized by every man who has made it his business to conquer the World? Will he propose to us something more perfect than the primary formation of forces depicted in Plate XIII of the Secret Strategical Instructions of Frederic II? Will the general of the future renounce as obsolete and worthless those intricate, but mathematically exact, evolutions of the combined arms, which appertain to the Major Tactics of men who are remembered to this day for the battles that they won? Will he invent processes more destructive than those whereby Epaminondas crushed at Leuctra and Mantinea the power of Sparta, and the women of Lacedaemon saw Than those whereby Alexander, a youth of eighteen, won Greece for his father at Chaeronea and the World for himself at Issus and Arbela? Than those whereby Hannibal destroyed seriatim four Roman armies at Trebia, Thrasymenus, Cannae and Herdonea? Will he find out processes more sudden and decisive than those whereby Caesar conquered Gaul and Pompey and the son of Mithridates, and which are fitly described only in his own language; “Veni, vidi, vici”? What will the general of the future substitute for the three contiguous sides of the octagon whereby Tamerlane the Great with his 1,400,000 veterans at the Plains of Angora, enveloped the Emperor Bajazet and 900,000 Turks in the most gigantic battle of record? Will he eclipse the pursuit of these latter by Mizra, the son of Tamerlane, who with the Hunnish light cavalry rode two hundred and thirty miles in five days and captured the Turkish capital, the Emperor Bajazet, his harem and the royal treasure? Will he excel Gustavus Adolphus, who dominated Europe for twenty years, and Turenne, the military Atlas who upheld that magnificent civilization which embellishes the reign of Louis XIV? Will he do better than Prince Eugene, who victoriously concluded eighteen campaigns and drove the Turks out of Christendom? Will he discover processes superior to those whereby Frederic the Great with 22,000 troops destroyed at Rosbach a French army of 60,000 regulars in an hour and a half, at the cost of three hundred men; and at Leuthern with 33,000 troops, killed, wounded or captured 54,000 out of 93,000 Austrians, at a cost of 3,900 men? Will he improve on those processes whereby Napoleon with 40,000 men, destroyed in a single year five Austrian Will the general of the future renounce as obsolete and worthless that system of Grand Tactics, by means of which the mighty ones of Earth have swept before them all created things? Will his system surpass in grandeur of conception and exactness of execution the march of Alexander to the Indus? Will he reply to his rival’s prayers for peace and amity as did the great Macedonian; “There can be but one Master of the World”; and to the dissuasions of his friend; “So would I do, were I Parmenio”? Will he do things more gigantic than Hannibal’s march across the Alps? Than the operation of Alesia by Caesar; where the Romans besieging one Gallic army in a fortified city, and themselves surrounded by a second Gallic army, single handed destroyed both? Than the circuit of the Caspian Sea by the 200,000 light cavalry of Tamerlane, a feat of mountain climbing which never has been duplicated? Than that marvelous combination of the principles of tactics and of field fortification, whereby in the position of Bunzelwitz, Frederic the Great, with 55,000 men, successfully upheld the last remaining prop of the Prussian nation, against 250,000 Russian and Austrian regular troops, commanded by the best generals of the age? Will he conceive anything more scientific and artistic than the manoeuvre of Trenton and Princeton by Washington? Than the capture of Burgoyne at Saratoga and Cornwallis at Yorktown? Than the manoeuvres of Ulm, of Jena, of Landshut? Than the manoeuvres of Napoleon in 1814? Than the manoeuvre of Charleroi in 1815, declared by Jomini to be Napoleon’s masterpiece? Will he excel the manoeuvres of Kutosof and Will he devise military conceptions superior to those whereby Von Moltke overthrew Denmark in six hours, Austria in six days, and France in six weeks? The sapient race of quill-drivers ever has hugged to its breast many delusions; some of which border upon the outer intellectual darkness. One of these delusions is that most persistently advertised, least substantial, but forever darling first favorite of timid and inexperienced minds: “The pen is mightier than the sword.” Explanation of the invincible ignorance of the penny-a-liner is simple, viz.: Of the myriad self-appointed educators to the public, few are familiar even with the rudimentary principles of Military Science and almost none are acquainted even with the simplest processes of Strategetic Art. Hence, like all who discourse on matters which they do not understand, such writers continually confound together things which have no connection. Ignorant of war and the use of weapons; bewildered by the prodigious improvements in mechanical details, they immoderately magnify the importance of such improvements, oblivious to the fact that these latter relate exclusively to elementary tactics and in no way affect the system of Strategy, Logistics, and the higher branches of Tactics. Of such people, the least that can be said and that in all charity, is, that before essaying the role of the pedagogue, they should endeavor to grasp that most obvious of all truths: “A man cannot teach what he never has learned.” Says Frederic the Great: “Improvements and new Naturally, the student now is led to inquire: What then is this immutable military system? What are its text books, where is it taught and from whom is it to be learned? In answer it may be stated: At the present day, private military schools make no attempt to teach more than elementary tactics. Even the Governmental academy curriculum aims little higher than the school of the battalion. Scientific Chess-play begins where these institutions leave off, and ends at that goal which none of these institutions even attempt to reach. Chess teaches to conduct campaigns, to win battles, and to move troops securely and effectively in the presence of and despite the opposition of an equal or superior enemy. Military schools graduate boys as second-lieutenants commanding a platoon. Chess graduates Generals, able to mobilize Corps d’armee, whatever their number or location; to develop these into properly posted integers of a grand Strategic Front and to manoeuvre and operate the army as a Strategetic Unit, in accordance to the laws of the Strategetic art and the principles of the Strategetic science. By precept and by actual practice, Chess teaches what is NOT taught in any military school—that least understood The profession of GENERALSHIP. “Books will speak plain when counsellors blanch. Therefore it is good to be conversant with them; especially the books of such as themselves have been actors upon the stage.”—Sir Francis Bacon. “At this moment, Europe, which fears neither God nor devil, grovels in terror before a little man hardly five feet in height; who, clad in a cocked hat and grey great-coat and mounted upon a white horse, plods along through mud and darkness; followed by the most enthusiastic, most devoted and most efficient band of cut-throats and robbers, the world has ever seen.” “Many good soldiers are but poor generals.”—Hannibal. “No soldier serving under a victorious commander, ever has enough of war.”—Caesar. “Officers always should be chosen from the nobility and never from the lower orders of society; for the former, no matter how dissolute, always retain a sense of honor, while the latter, though guilty of atrocious actions, return to their homes without compunction and are received by their families without disapprobation.”—Frederic the Great. At the terrible disaster of Cannae, the Patrician Consul Aemilius Paulus and 80,000 Romans died fighting sword in hand; while the Plebian Consul, Varro, fled early in the battle. Upon the return of the latter to Rome, the Senate, instead of ordering his execution, with withering sarcasm formally voted him its thanks and the thanks of the Roman people, “that he did not despair of the Republic.” “Among us we have a man of singular character—one Phocion. He seems not to know that he lives in our modern age and at incomparable Athens. He is poor, yet is not humiliated by his poverty; he does good, yet never boasts of it; and gives advice, though he is certain it will not be followed. He possesses talent without ambition and serves the state without regard to his own interest. At the head of the army, he contents himself with restoring discipline and beating the enemy. When addressing the assembly, he is equally unmoved by the disapprobation or the applause of the multitude. “We laugh at his singularities and we have discovered an admirable secret for revenging ourselves for his contempt. He is the only general we have left—but we do not employ him; he is the most upright and perhaps the most intelligent of our counsellors—but we do not listen to him. It is true, we cannot make him change his principles, but, by Heaven, neither shall he induce us to change ours; and it never shall be said that by the example of his superannuated virtues and the influence of his antique teachings, Phocion was able to correct the most polished and amiable people in the world.”—Callimedon. GENERALSHIP |
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