348 1866, or the campaign of 1870, who knows nothing of the campaigns of Napoleon. To take, for instance, the earlier of the two, the Prussian strategy in it has been the subject of much dispute ; and those who think that questions of war can be settled by quoting maxims of Napoleon, or of other great generals, find no difficulty in picking out sayings of his that would condemn without excuse the scheme of the Prussian campaign. Certainly we should ourselves be sorry to suggest that it is the one satisfactory model for future guidance under analogous circumstances. To us it seems that its value, as a sample of what may be done in war, depends on a careful comparison of the handling of the Prussian armies, under the conditions in which they had to act, with the mode in which Napoleon and other great generals acted under their own conditions. The point in which the Prussians offended against the received maxims of Napoleon lay in their attempting to pass the Bohemian mountains in two separate armies, one from Silesia, one from Saxony and Prussia. The Prussian headquarters remained at Berlin in telegraphic connexion with both armies up to the moment when the junction of the two had been so far effected that they were able to communicate with each other. Now Napoleon in many letters, more especially those addressed to his brother Joseph in Spain, has condemned the attempt to arrange complicated schemes for the co-operation of armies acting from different bases of supply. His reason is that such complicated schemes are rarely worked out as they are intended to be. For our own part we do not believe that the warning from the ast experience on which Napoleon s views were based has ceased to be of practical importance. We think that it ought to be present to the minds of all who are working out the plan of a campaign, and that the simpler, the less complicated, the less dependent on the successful combina tion of a number of different elements the plan is the more likely is it to be successful. But we think also that the actual circumstances of each case as a whole must be taken into account, and that in the instance of the campaign under consideration the Prussian headquarters were fully justified in the method they adopted. Such an operation indeed would not have been safe or wise in the days of Napoleon (see below); but for the moment our contention is that the nodifications of the art of war which are necessitated by modern conditions extend to all its branches, and that criticism of modern campaigns which is based upon maxims derived from the past, without taking account of those new
- rit not circumstances, is unsound and untrue. Few things are
- essarily more unsafe in war than to judge by isolated cases of
tedh" success a l ne > as to the soundness of the principles and the
- cess. capacity of the leaders concerned in bringing about the
successful result. The importance of military success is, in Britain more especially, apt to be measured much more by the national interest and national excitement which the result occasions than by any careful estimate of the difficulties actually overcome and the capacity for future command exhibited by the triumphant leader. To take illustrations sufficiently distant from our own days: scarcely any victory, naval or military, has ever excited wilder enthusiasm in England than the capture of Porto Bello by Vernon in 1725; scarcely any disaster, the most disgraceful that ever occurred, caused greater horror and alarm in England than the return of Moore s expedition from Corunna in January 1809. Yet, as subsequent events showed, Vernon was by no means a very able admiral ; and, on the other hand, as all who have really studied the Corunna campaign well know, few have been ever conducted with more conspicuous ability or would have justified a higher confidence in the general. It is thus of the greatest importance that statesmen at least should not be carried away by the sort of hasty criticism which deals in glib phrases, and avoids reasoned examination of facts. The maxims of Napoleon may be as easily kiln- dried and deprived of life as those of Frederick had been by the Prussian army of Jena, which was so sure of defeating the upstart aspirant to military supremacy. To sum up, then, what has been said on the art of war. There is no royal road to the knowledge of the art of handling armies any more than to that of any other branch of human activity. All that the best summary on that subject can profess to do for a reader is to assist him in undertaking a methodic study for himself of the principles which have guided great commanders, of the experiences of those who have fought in great battles and great campaigns, in endeavouring to put himself in their place so as to see with their eyes, hear with their ears, and realize the passions which influenced them, and the circumstances under which their decisions had to be formed. It is not to be forgotten that even a commonplace critic Conditions may find it easy, when all the facts are fairly laid before of hi stori - him, to judge what ought to have been done in a given C! emergency. "La critique est facile, 1 art est difficile," was the motto which Muffling, the very able representative of the Prussian army at Wellington s headquarters in 1815, chose for the title-page of his studies of war. The historical student has at least one advantage which is always and absolutely denied to the general. He may never, for many reasons, have an altogether correct and a completely true picture of all the circumstances which occurred on a given day, but he has a far more complete one than could possibly be before the general at the moment when he formed his decisions. Still more, he has far better materials for judgment than any of the minor actors who had themselves to decide what they ought to do, within the limitations of the orders they received, on most incomplete knowledge of what others were doing at distant parts of the field, of the positions and designs of the enemy, and of many other facts which may now be known with certainty by any one who will read what happened. He who would prepare himself in any measure for criticizing aright must put himself in the place of the soldier who has to choose, must realize the condi tions of personal danger, of noise, of passion, of incom plete and constantly misleading information, of disorder, confusion, panic, excitement, under which decisions are to be formed that must be calm and cool though they involve the lives of thousands of men, the fate of nations, and the course of history, and yet must be given then and there, for the lost moment will not return. Then he will perhaps perceive that after all the question whether he would himself have given the right decision, no matter what his previous training may have been, will be more a question of character than of knowledge. Nevertheless he is much more likely to decide aright if he has in his mind some large knowledge of the accumulated experience of the past than if, without anything to guide him, he judges by a so-called "common sense" which has already led him to ignore the earnest advice of those who have been themselves most successful in war. He is still more likely to decide aright, if, after he has acquired some general knowledge of the experience of the past, his judgment has been exercised by considering under assigned conditions what course he would actually choose to adopt. This is the method of peace preparation for war in which the Prussian officers of our day have been most carefully trained. In all their current works on the study of war they insist on the importance of this formation of the judgment and this training of choice as a matter of the utmost importance. All their most important military educational works take the form of " studies " or problems.
The use of the war game and the training given by peace-
