552 
NOTE ON INFANTRY TACTICS. 
Until the Line shall be near the enemy, the brigadier can order the 
First Line to advance more quickly, or a rear Line to close up; but it 
would be better not to send an order finding fault 
Two real difficulties of our own making stand in the way of our for¬ 
mulating any system of attack. They are extending for safety, and 
dividing the battalion into eight companies. The evil of these diffi¬ 
culties does not end with their preventing our formulating an attack 
and having a drill in three Lines. So long as they shall prevent us, 
history will give us a right to believe that we should win in battle; 
but reason will conclude that the enemy ought to heat us. We could 
win only by fortune favouring us, or by the superior virtue of our 
troops more than makiug up for the disadvantages we put upon them. 
The scheme of carrying extended order from skirmishing into battle 
assumes that there would be less loss in extended order, and that to 
advance in extended order under destructive fire is practicable. A 
condition is supposed to have varied so much as to call for a change 
in tactics; and a change is made. Waiving the argument that the 
conditions has not varied so much as we suppose, we submit that such 
a change as we are making cannot reasonably be made without satisfy¬ 
ing the question—is it practicable ? In judging, of that which has not 
yet been done in battle, whether it could be done or not—the question 
not being determinable by trial on the drill ground, but only by ap¬ 
preciation of the moral effect of the fire of the enemy—our guide must 
be experience. We must know what battle is, or trust to the judgment 
of those who know : as, perhaps, the truth has never been told except 
by one Russian writer, what battle is cannot be learned from books. 
It is impossible to believe that the officer who invented attack in ex¬ 
tended order had ever advanced with infantry under fire which caused 
great loss; or that he had ever advanced under fire with infantry 
through broken ground, and then gone back by himself over the line 
of advance. Advance in extended order under destructive fire is not 
practicable. Assuming it to be practicable—that is to say, assuming 
that the moral effect of the fire of the enemy would not cause more 
men to fall out in extended order than with closed files—it is still prob¬ 
able that more men would be in front after an advance in line than 
after an advance in column of single ranks, or of lines, with extended 
files. In reality—that is to say, as all the things except one are, and 
as we believe the one thing, as yet untried, would be—a line of well 
disciplined soldiers, advancing under destructive fire to attack, becomes 
an irregular line, and moves on; and an attack in extended order made 
by the best disciplined soldiers in the world would waste, until the men 
who should be left would lie down and go no further. We can see any 
day on a drill ground that extended order takes up too much frontage, 
or gives too many lines; and that there is weakness everywhere, unless 
thin lines on the proper frontage are crowded one upon another to 
danger and confusion. Attack in extended order fails to pass the test 
of drill. 
When Lines shall swarm together in the firing line, it will not so 
much matter how many companies there are in the battalion. Until 
then, at home and in the field, the improper division of the battalion 
