LAND A N D W A T E R. 
March 27, 1915. 
been followed by our Ally, can at least be pleaded 
for any just severity the Russians may have seen 
fit to exercise at Meinel in the pursuit of legitimate 
warfare, and the first instance of this kind which 
war has afforded may be valuable as some indica- 
tion of what the enemy's policy will be when, or if, 
hostilities upon a considerable scale shall be raging 
on his own soil. We must wait for further news to 
know whether the raid into Memel can even be 
continued. 
Nothing would be easier than for the enemy 
to move considerable forces in relief of tlie toyvn. 
He has a good railway leading up to it on his side, 
and the Russians have not, I believe, any sucli 
facility of communication on theirs. But the 
diversion is interesting, and its consequences may 
be well worth following. 
II. 
YET A^^AIN -ATTRITION. 
It is right enough that what has been said 
first by a few individuals concerned with the 
exact study of the present campaign, and what 
they have learnt from those actively engaged in 
jrosecuting it in the field, should somewhat 
! ater be published officially, and this is what has 
lappened in the case of the trench-fighting in 
the West. 
It has been pointed out continually in these 
columns for many weeks past that the effort 
against the trenches in the West was not, in the 
main, an effort at breaking through, but an effort 
at wearing down. In the ultimate analysis, vic- 
tory consists in the imposing of the victor's will 
upon the vanquished. This, in its turn, is only 
possible by the military success of the victor's 
army over the vanquished, and this last phrase 
only means, when it is translated into terjns of 
real things, the disarmament of your opponent in 
a larger measure than of your own forces; and in 
proportion to the extent of his disarmament, com- 
pared with your own, is your victory complete. 
Now an enemy is disarmed (by compulsion 
rather than persuasion, which is another matter) 
by one of five methods or by any number of them 
combined. These five are death, disablement from 
wounds, disease, capture, and the destruction of 
his organisation or cohesion. 
Supposing your enemy meets you with a 
number of armed, equipped, and organised men 
equal to your own, and supposing that in any 
fashion, after such and such a lapse of time, 
you have reduced the number of his ai^med, 
equipped, and organised men to one-half of your 
Dwn. You have lost, of course, heavily, and it is 
the difference between his losses and yours that 
has put him into this unfavourable posture. 
Having to meet you now one to two, he is 
hardly sanguine of success. He already dis- 
counts defeat; he is perhaps prepared to accept 
part of your terms. If you are not satisfied with 
tliis, if you believe you can go on increasing the 
disproportion, and if you regard your full terms 
as essential to your future safety, you proceed 
with the task of disarming him by death, by 
killing in action, by capture, by disablement in 
action, by breaking up his organisation witli 
heavy blows against him, and by allowing the 
wastage due to sickness to run its course. 
Being already two to one, you can probably 
accelerate tlie pace of the process, and in a com- 
paratively short time compared witli the first 
period, disarm forces, yet perhaps by a number 
raid quality combined, not as one to two, but one 
to four, compared with your own. When he is 
in such an extreniity he will probably accept your 
terras; and if he does not, why you go on. 
All the wars of history, all the great actions, 
dramatic or dull, all the campaigns, whether slow 
and confused like the Peninsula, or simple and 
immediate, like that of 1815, are, at bottom, 
nothing more than examples of this fundamental 
process. 
All war is tlie attempt to disarm the enemy, 
and we only talk of " A War of Attrition ' as a 
special case when we mean that the process is a 
continuous and detailed one instead of a rapid 
and wholesale one. 
What happened, for instance, at Waterloo 
— a decision arrived at within ten hours? What 
happened was that a French force, acting in the 
proportion of about seven to six (if I remember 
rightly) found its opponents swelled by the advent 
of their Allies till their fighting, no longer more 
tlian seven to nine, broke under the strain (that is, 
lost cohesion) and, upon reforming after the pur- 
suit, stood to their opponents no longer as seven 
to nine, but as less than three to ten. The Duke of 
.AVellington's command and Blucher's had dis- 
armed the French by killing, by capture, by dis- 
ablement through wounds, and by scattering them. 
They had lost a great number of men themselves, 
but they had made the enemy lose a very much 
larger number in proportion, with the result that 
two or three days after the battle with the figures 
stated in this extreme contrast, about three against 
ten, nothing more could be attempted, especially 
as to the numerical disproportion was added of 
course the moral shock. 
There is an inevitable tendency everywhere, 
save perhaps in the higher command, for armies 
and the civilian opinion behind them to be struck 
by the adjuncts of military success more than by 
its fundamental character. Whether the enemy 
retreats or goes forward : Avhether he loses guns : 
whether he is fighting on his own soil or on ours : 
whether a success is achieved quickly or tardily. 
All these things have their value, for they are 
of moral effect, but ultimately the real test is 
" How do the numbers of arm.ed, equipped and 
organised men, and of the materials at their dis- 
posal, stand upon eitlier side, and if, by your 
method of action, whether Fabian or Napoleonic 
(though the phrase is hardly fair to Napoleon, who 
could be as Fabian as anybody) you are more and 
more tending to leave your enemy in a lower and 
lower proportion numerically to your ov,'n men, 
you are heading for victory, and if the contrary, 
you are heading for defeat." 
In this particular case of the trench fighting 
across North-Eastern France you have as pitiless, 
but as clear an instance of this last principle as 
history has ever afforded. The " Eye Witness " 
with the British forces has at last set it openly 
for official publication, and it has been aiming for 
months past in all the work of the Allies : the work 
is a work of attrition. There might be a collapse 
at any moment in some section of the enemy's de- 
fensive line. There might be, therefore, a breach 
achieved there. If that comes off unexpectedly, so 
much the better. But it is improbable, and it is 
not the main calculation. The main calculation is 
directed towards perpetually lowering the 
numbers of the enemy as compared with the 
numbers opposed to him., both in men and in mate- 
rial, until at long last the tide shall have turned. 
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