The Next War: An Appeal to Common Sense/Chapter 1
THE NEXT WAR
CHAPTER I
WAR AND PROPHECY
Mankind, it has been said, lives by happy combinations of words, thinks by phrases. With phrases, no less than with engines of destruction, the world fought the Great War of 1914–18—“The War for Democracy” on the Allied side, “The Place in the Sun” and “Spreading our Kultur” on the German. Volumes of political essays and bales of editorials have less influence among the American people at present than that popular expression, “A hundred per cent American.”
In the two years since the Armistice, a new phrase has entered the discussion of military affairs not only in America but in all the European countries—“the next war.” It appears many times daily in the reactionary press of Berlin, Vienna, Budapest, Paris. It sprinkles the reports in the staff colleges of the Continent, of England, of the United States. It has furnished already the theme for books in all European languages. “The First World War,” the title of a book lately published by Colonel Repington, is only a variant on this phrase.
Prophecy concerning the trend of political affairs is not only perilous but well-nigh impossible. In all the prophecy of the late war, who foretold the future course of Russia? There were whisperings, indeed in the Allied countries, there were loud forecasts in Germany, that Russia might withdraw from the Entente; but who prophesied the curious circumstances of her withdrawal and the still more curious results to which it led? Ten European statesmen believed that Holland, Switzerland or even Spain might enter the great war to one who counted on the United States. And who, before 1917, prophesied in what manner we would be the deciding factor or even hinted at our curious influence on the peace? Who looked forward and foresaw the American flag flying over the mighty fortress of Ehrenbreitstein at Coblenz?
Such affairs as these belong to the political side of war, partake of its uncertainty. It would be foolish, therefore, for even the wisest and best-informed statesman, and still less for a journalist, to prophesy what nations or combinations of nations might oppose forces in that “next war.” The complexity of the question, involving as it does economics, internal politics, religion, sudden outbreaks of mob-mind, shifts of population, the rise of leaders as yet unknown, renders forecast impossible. Beside such a game, chess is as simple as jackstraws.
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, “The Last Shot.” And these forecasts of the military critics might stand now as histories of the great war.
So it is possible to speak with some authority concerning the character of that “next war,” especially since so many able Europeans have already recorded and analyzed the experiences and lessons of “the first world war.” Though we cannot do more than guess at the participants, we can foresee the methods of that struggle and its direct and indirect results on the lives and property, the souls and bodies, of the nations who find themselves involved.
It is difficult, however, rightly to see the future without at least a glance at the past. it is doubly difficult in this discussion, because during the war of 1914–18 certain forces hitherto smouldering burst into blaze. Not only did the character of warfare change, but its whole relation to peoples and to human life. From now on, we must consider war in an entirely new light. An understanding of the difference between old wars and “the next war” is essential to an understanding of the present struggle between militarism and reasonable pacifism, between the aristocratic ideal of society and the democratic, between those who believe in that next war and those who are groping toward a state of society which will abolish war.