August 22, 1914 
LAND AND WATEK 
THE WORLD'S WAR. 
The Meaning of Military Terms and 
THE Reading of Military News. 
WHEN two independent communities conflict in 
will, if neither give way, there must be recourse 
to force. That is, each community must 
attempt to render life so unpleaaing to the 
members of the other community that, rather 
than continue imder such conditions, that other community 
will accept its enemy's wiU. 
For example : If nation A desires to take the goods of nation 
B, while nation B desires to retain its goods, tlien there is a 
conflict of wills. If nation A refuses to give up its project, and 
nation B refuses to give up its goods, recourse to force is 
inevitable. 
Such a recourse to force we call A Stale of War, and the 
operations whereby force is exercised on either side we call War. 
It has been found by experience that men are better able 
to impose their will thus by force upon other men in proportion 
as they are (a) armed with a superior weapon ; {&) mmierous as 
compared with their enemies ; (c) so organised and so informed 
with certain habits both of routine and of obedience that they 
can act in great numbers to the dictation of one central authority, 
with the maximum of cohesion and at the same time with the 
maximum of elasticity. 
A nimibei of men so organised is called an Army. The 
operations of an army, especially against another army, are 
termed Military Operations. 
These operations, having now many generations of tradition 
behind them and a continued development, have accumulated a 
number of technical terms, and are spoken of in a language of 
their own. 
Some of these technical terms are unavoidable, because they 
relate to things peculiar to warfare ; others are merely the 
equivalents of everyday words, and to use them in general 
description is unnecessary. But all Military News comes to us 
expressed in such terms, both necessary and unnecessary, and 
these terms must, therefore, be understood if we are to read 
military news intelligently. 
In order to understand these terms and the way in which 
they are used, we must begin at the beginning and discover 
(1) what is the Composition of an Army ; (2) under what 
conditions an Army lives and movea ; and (3) what task it is 
expected to accomplish, 
I.— THE COMPOSITION OF AN ARMY. 
The essential feature in the composition of an Army is 
that it must be divided and subdivided into separate parts, both 
(a) because only s( can its numbers be controlled, and the central 
command conveyed to all its members, (h) Because only so can 
there be the power to use any part for a time independently of 
the rest j n other words, only thus can dasticity be secured, 
(c) Because «in Army demands the services of men in various 
ways, armed and unarmed, and because, among the armed, the 
weapons differ in their nature and use. 
A modem national army is first of all divided into Army 
Corps. Each Army Corps is in itself a complete model. It is 
an army fully found. If a, nation can put into the field but one 
Army Corps it can none the less put into the field a perfect 
though small army. For every Army Corps has its due 
proportion of the various arms and auxiliary bodies which 
together make up a modem army. 
Each such Army Corps is imder the command of a general 
ofnccr who is aided by his staff, and it is the peculiar business of 
the staff to work out the details of timing, provisioninfj, etc., in 
the movements of a Corps. It is a fair rule of thumb to reckon 
an Army Corps, upon a war footing and at the beginning of a 
campaign before wastage sets in, at about -lO.OOO men. 
An Army Corps is again divided into Divisions : usually 
two in number : in some services and in some special cases, three. 
Each Division contains a duo proportion of every arm and each 
U under a General Officer, subordinate to the General commanding 
the whole Corps. But though divisions thus make up an Army 
Corps, they do not entirely constitute it. Certain groups of men, 
both armed and unarmed, are ascribed to the Coi-ps as a whole, 
and not to the Divisions. For instance, in most services, of 
all the guns present in an Army Corps, only some are attflcLed to 
the Divisions, others are under the direct control of the Army 
Corps as a whole, that is, of its General in command. 
Divisions are again subdivided into Brigades. And here 
wo approach the cross- division of aU armies into bodies using 
different kinds of offence, or, as they are technically called, 
" Armsr 
It is customary to speak of " the three Arms" that is, Infantry, 
Cavalry, and Artillery. But an arm separate from these ia that 
of the Engineers who prepare communications, undertake the 
larger forms of fortification, and attend to all scientific work in 
general, as also what is teniied nowadays sometimes " the fourth 
arm " — that of the men who work the Flying Machines. 
Not all these arms are organised in Brigades, but Cavalry and 
Infantry nearly always are, and a Brigade normally consists of 
two or three Regiments, The Brigade is commanded by the lowest 
grade of General Officer, who is responsible to his General of 
Division, who ia again responsible to the General commanding 
the whole Army Corps. 
Below the unit of the regiment are, of course, many other 
subdivisions, of which the most important to retain is that of 
the Battalion in the Infantry, for that is the unit of the principal 
fighting arm. The Battalion may be taken, by a rough rule of 
thumb, to number, on a war footing and before wastage sets in, 
about a thousand men ; and the strength of a Brigade is reckoned 
in Battalions rather than in Regiments. Thus the French 
Brigade, which [made the reconnaissance in force the other 
day into Upper Alsace beyond Altkirch, and which was in its 
turn a portion of a whole Division advancing from Belfort, 
numbered six Battalions ; and a Brigade of Infantry in the 
field may generally be reckoned at from five to eight of these 
Battalions. 
Another important subdivision to retain is the Battery of 
Field Artillery. In some services a Battery consists of six, in 
others of four, guna. 
A rough list of the various arms and auxiliary forces into 
which any complete armed force is divided comprises not only 
the main arms of Cavalry, Infantry, Field Artillery, and 
Engineers, but also a Medical Corps, the New Flying Corps, and a 
nmnber of smaller bodies — the interpreters, for instance, the 
despatch bearers, etc. 
A rough general idea of the proportion these arms bear one 
to the other is obtained if we give about 60 per cent, to the 
Infantry, rather more than 20 per cent, to the Artillery and 
Engineers, not 11 per cent, to the Cavalry, and the small 
remainder to the train, to the administrative Corps, etc. Or 
again, still more roughly, we may consider a modern Army as 
being as to nearly two-thirda of it Infantry, and as to the 
remaining third mostly Artillery and Cavalry in not quite equal 
proportions (the Cavalry less than the Artillery), with a small 
margin of a twentieth or so left over for administrative and all 
other services. 
Of the actual combatants who form but a large majority and 
not the totality of any force, it is customary to speak in terms of 
one of their weapons. Thus we say that in such and such an 
action, such and such a Commanding Officer could count upon 
so many Bayonets (Infantry), so many Sabres (Cavalry), and so 
many Guns (Artillery). 
Finally, it must be remembered that when a great modem 
national army goes into a Campaign, its Army Corps are grouped 
together into various larger forces, each with a General Officer in 
supreme command. And these larger forces are usually 
designated by the name of some natural feature in the neighbour- 
hood of which their operations are to be conducted. Thus three 
Army Corps under Generals A, B, and C, will be grouped together 
to act in the Meuse Valley, will be put under the supreme 
command of General D, and will be called the Army of the 
Meuse. The operations of the whole national army, including 
every Army Corps and the various groups into which they may 
be combined, are controlled by a Supreme General Staff with a 
General Officer usually called a Generalissimo. In the present 
struggle General Joffre occupies that position upon the French 
side, and General Von Moltke upon the German. 
A modem Army is further distinguished in its composition, 
with all the Great Powers save Britain, by the feature of Con- 
scription, and in every case. Great Britain included, by the 
feature of Mobilisation. 
Conscription is a system whereby all the able-bodied males of 
a country are, on arriving at maturity (that is, in their twentieth 
or twenty-first year) summoned according to a register that is 
