Page:"The next war"; an appeal to common sense (IA thenextwarappeal01irwi).pdf/21

But forecasting the methods, strategies and effects of future wars is more like a purely mathematical problem, and infinitely easier. Such forecasts have been made in the past; and the best-informed and more intelligent of them have been vindicated by the course of events. Before the Russo-Japanese war, military critics who combined sound information with sound imagination said that in the next war between thoroughly prepared armies, the frontal lines would become deadlocked in trenches, and that battle could then be won only by a sudden and well-conceived surprise on the flank. That is exactly the history of the Russo-Japanese war; Nogi’s great flanking movement won the battle of Mukden after the main forces had undergone some weeks of stalemate in the front trenches. Had the Russians possessed a single scout aeroplane, Nogi’s success would have been impossible. The aeroplane appeared a few years later, proved itself not a toy but a practical machine. Then the military critics, of the class before mentioned made a new forecast. A war between densely-populated and thoroughly armed peoples such as those of Europe, they said, might be decided by an overwhelming initial thrust. Failing that, it must settle down to a long deadlock in trenches, a war of attrition with unprecedented losses, to be decided only when one side or the other crumpled up through exhaustion of economic resources and of morale. That view was expressed for the United States in Frederick Palmer’s novel,