The Great War (All 8 Volumes). Various Authors

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ the burrowers in the earth crawl from the parapets and take to their legs, they know that their fate is almost altogether dependent upon the preparation by the guns rather than any effort of their own. Ahead of them is this wall of smoke and dust from the explosions, in which they are lost to the observer. Keeping units together and protecting them is as difficult as maneuvering ships in a fog. The delicate problem of the gunner is to protect the invader just as far forward as possible, without putting shells into his own men. A few from defective fuses must fall short. This is expected and is a part of the cost of a charge; but none with correct fuses and dependable powder should. The gunners time their part to that of the invader, by lifting their fire from the first to the second line trench, as their own men are entering the first.

      Granted that the barbed wire is cleared and the men enter the enemy's trench, they may find themselves struggling over heaps of dust mixed with the rags of sandbags, splintered timbers and the flesh and uniforms of their enemy—at first see not a single adversary. They will be instantly due for heavy shell fire; and also for heavy machine gun and rifle fire from the second line enemy trench. They begin to dig at once in order to establish protection. Out of this wreckage they have to reverse the enemy's trench, so that it shall face toward him. This becomes a matter of desperate effort and usually it is in the course of this that the severest casualties are suffered. But should the artillery destruction of the trench be imperfect, upon entering it they may still take the enemy by surprise in his dugouts. In that case, bombs in hand, at the doorways of these cellars they demand surrender. In case it is not given, they throw the bombs into the dugout; for, to enter, means that they will be shot down.

      Or, upon entering the trench, they may meet the enemy's soldiers running out of their dugouts for hand-to-hand battle. The traverses are so narrow that the length of the rifle makes it a clumsy weapon, and the adversaries in modern war, whose guns carry twenty miles, engage hand to hand, using knives, bombs and even their fists. With discarded rifles and bombs lying about a trench, it is difficult to give quarter. For a prisoner who is down may pick up a rifle or a bomb and turn on his captor. It is not human savagery so much as conditions that has made the fighting so grim. Having established themselves in a certain section or sections of the trench, naturally the new occupants have the enemy on their right and left. That is, on one side of one of the winding traverses will be a German, and say on the other side a Frenchman. Neither sees the other's head, for both are hidden behind these walls of earth. If one starts around the corner, it means a bayonet or a bullet for him.

      To gain ground in a trench requires a superior supply of bombs. Any small package that will contain a high explosive would serve the purpose. Early in the war, bombs were made out of jam tins and bottles or any other receptacle which could be filled with an explosive and set off by a fuse. Later on, different varieties of manufactured bombs in great quantities appeared. There have been instances of five thousand being used in a single day over two hundred yards of trench. After throwing a bomb from the traverse, the offensive follows up the explosion by rushing along the traverse and catching the defender with a bayonet while he is hors de combat from the effect of the explosion. While this orgy—characteristic of cave dwellers battling on a precipice in its ferocity—is proceeding, all is precision at the rear. As the caissons bring up the supplies of ammunition, the green-curtained motor ambulances speed on to the hospital with the wounded and the military police direct the congested traffic and keep watch for spies.

      VITAL LESSONS

      War is force, violence, killing. Whoever tries to disguise its character is a poor soldier and a poorer citizen. If you would avoid it, and if you would prepare for it, you must look at it as a fact, squarely in the face. Never has war been so savage as it is in this most progressive age in history. We had popular education, aseptic surgery, the wireless, and antitoxin, but war came nevertheless, and in the wake of Hague conferences and much preaching of internationalism. It came when the nations were supposed on account of the press and the telegraph to have been farther removed from parochialism than ever before, when more people in every nation in Europe knew the language of their neighbors than ever in history.

      In the cave dweller's time, combatants used a stone hatchet which was the best weapon that science could produce. To-day by land and sea they have used all the powers of destruction known to modern man; all the scientific brains of Europe have been at the disposal of commanders. Yet no single revolutionary invention has appeared in the course of the war. The idea of the gas was old. Man already had learned to fly. Guns have been larger and shells more powerful, but the principle is the same. Weapons have been further developed, but the types have not changed.

      All the essential lessons which the Germans applied they learned in the Russo-Japanese War. The line of trenches throughout the winter of 1904–05 before Mukden were much the same type as those along the Aisne. There were trenches in the Civil War and in the Crimea, and in the American Revolution and in many wars before that. So far as one can learn, there has not been a single invention by a civilian which would have been of any use to the British navy in fighting submarines. All have been devised and applied by naval experts who knew conditions. No profession is more expert than soldiering and none is older, because it began when Cain killed Abel.

      War being the ultimate resort of force, then the poet, the dreamer, the scholar, the doctor and the organizer of the arts of peace may succumb to the bully with the square jaw, the low brow and flesh-tearing incisors, unless the civilized man uses his resources and talents to make weapons which are stronger than the bully's fist. This is precisely what civilization does in order to protect itself.

       The two forces which were really prepared for this war were the British navy and the German army. The British navy has kept command of the seas and the German army has planted its trenches on foreign soil. For any nation which is separated from other nations by the sea, the military lesson of this war is that the sea is the first line of defense. You will escape bloody trenches at home if you never allow an enemy to land. He cannot land until he has driven your navy off the seas.

      The other lesson is that a nation should know its method of defense and have it as complete, practicable and ready as the German army and British navies were. For three or four years, the Belgians saw the Germans constructing railroad sidings at Aix and making their preparations for the blow they struck. Yet the Belgians did not modernize their forts, or adequately strengthen their army for defense. If to the staffs of England and France war seemed inevitable, their governments refused to be convinced.

      Any nation which is considering preparedness for national defense must have a national policy. It must know what it is going to defend and how it is going to defend it. The British navy was built for the specific problem of either defeating the German navy in battle or keeping it fast in its lair. The German army was organized for the purpose of the invasion of France and then of Russia; the French army for defense from Germany.

      Their efficiency was not the result of the expenditure of money, for money will not buy defense. It requires training, organization, and patriotism, and courage, which are not for sale in the market places of mankind.

      Until this war the opinion among English-speaking peoples was universal that the volunteer system was the best method of recruiting. This on the principle that the man who offers himself to fight, fights better than the one who is called to arms by government order. Thus England raised 3,000,000 men. But to a man who has lived much with armies, it seems an immoral method; it means hiring men to fight for you. One man's life is just as valuable to him as another's. It is the final sacrifice which he makes for the defense of his country or his home. He should make it himself and not ask others to make it for him. Those who should be the first into battle are the men of wealth, of position, the favored ones. They owe their country more than the others, because their country has done more for them.

      M. Raymond Poincaré, President of СКАЧАТЬ