IMAGINATION IN THE WAR. 
By H. G. Wells. 
To the Editor of Land and WateIi. 
Dear Sir, — I am entirely with Mr. Blin Desbleds upon 
the question of a big effort to bring off a sustained 
with any imagination it is 
do now. It could be done, 
it would end it decisively, 
nor our military authorities 
novel. By trial 
year of warfare. 
aerial offensive; to anyone 
the obvious thing for us to 
It could end the war and 
But neither our politicians 
are prepared to attempt anything so 
and experience the Germans, after a 
are fighting exactly as any imaginative person interested in 
such tilings in 1900, say, could have told them they would 
have to fight. Our side is, of course, rather behind that and 
fighting in the fashion of 1899. If 3-ou doubt this, read what 
follows.* It was written in 1899 and published in 1900. It 
puts balloon for aeroplane, because in those days aeroplanes 
were too extravagant an idea for sensible people to swallow, 
and the whole passage is obviously " toned down " to the 
digestive capacity of sensible people. 
The great change thai is working itself out in warfare is the same 
change thut is working itself out in the substance of the social fabric. 
The es.sent!«l change in the social fabric, as we have analysed it, is 
the progressive supersession of the old broad labour base by elaborately 
organised mechani.sm, and the obsolescence of the once valid and neces- 
sary distinction of gentle and simple. In warfare, as I have already 
indicated, this takes the foim of the progressive supersession of the 
horse and the private soldier — which were the living and sole engines 
of the old time — by machines, and the obliteration of the old distinc- 
tion between leaders, who pranced in a conspicuously dangerous and 
encoaraging way into the picturesque incidents of battle, and the led, 
who cheered and chaige<l and fiUeid the ditches and were slaughtered 
in a wholesale dramatic manner. The old war was a matter of long, 
dreary marches, great hardships of campaigning, but also of heroic 
conclusive momenta. Long periods of campings — almost always with 
an outbreak of pestilence — of marchings and retreats, much crude 
business of feeding and forage, culminated at last, with an effect of 
infinite relief, in an hour or so of "battle." The battle was always a 
■»ery intimate tumultuous affair, the men were flung at one another in 
Tast, excited masses, in living fighting machines as it were, spears or 
bayonets flashed, one side or the other ceased to prolong the climax, 
and the thing was over. The beaten force crumpled as a whole, and 
tb« victors as a whole pressed upon it. Cavalry with slashing sabres 
marked the crowning point of victory. In the later stages of the old 
warfare musketry volleys were added to the physical impact of the 
contending regiments, and at last cannon, as a quite accessory method 
of breaking these masses of men. So you "gave battle" to and 
defeated yoor enemy's forces wherever encountered, and when you 
reached your objective in his capital the war was done. . . . The 
new war will probably have none of these features of the old system of 
fighting. 
The revolution that is in progress from the old war to a new war, 
different in its entire nature from the old, is marked primarily by the 
•teady progress in range and efficiency of the rifle and of the field-gun 
— and more particularly of the rifle. The rifle develops persistently 
from a clumsy implement, that any clown may learn to use in half a 
day, towards a very intricate mechaniam, easily put out of order and 
easily misused, but of the most extraordinary possibilities in the hands 
of men of courage, character, and high intelligence. Its precision at 
long range has made the business of its care, loading, and aim subsi- 
diary to the far more intricate matter of its use in relation to the 
eoat«ar of the ground within its reach. Even its elaboration as an 
instrument is probably still incomplete. One can conceive it provided 
in the future with cross-thread telescopic sights, the focussing of 
which, corrected by some ingenious use of hygroscopic material, might 
even find the range, and so enable it to be used with assurance up to 
a mile or more. It will probably also take on some of the characters 
of the m.»chinc-gun. It will be used either for single shots or to 
quiver and send a sptay of alriiost simaltaueoaa bullets out of a 
magazine evenly and certainly, over any small area the rifleman thinks 
advisable. It will probably be portable by one man, but there is no 
reason really, except the bayonet tradition, the demands of which may 
be met in other ways, why it ghouW be the instrument of one sole 
man. It will, just as probably, be slung with its ammunition and 
equipment upon bicycle wheels, and be the common care of two or 
more associated soldiers. Equipped with such a weapon, a single 
couple of marksmen even, by reason of smokeless powder and care- 
fully chosen cover, might make tlwmselves practically invisible, and 
capable of surprising, stopping, and destroying a vi.sible enemy in 
quit« consideiiiole numbers who blundered within a mile of them. 
And a series of such groups of marksmen so arranged as to cover 
the arrival of reliefs, provisions, and fresh ammunition from the rear, 
might hold out against any visible attack for an indefinite period, 
unless the ground they occupied was searched very ably and subtly 
by some sort of gun having a range in excess of their rifle fire. If 
the ground they occupied were to be properly tunnelled and trenched, 
even that might not avail, and there would be nothing for it but to 
attack them by an advance under cover either of the night or of dark- 
ness caused by smoke-shells, or by the burning of cover about their 
position. Even then they might be deadly with magazine fire at close 
qnarters. Save for their liability to such attacks, a few hundreds of 
airch men could hold positions of a quit* vast extent, and a few 
thousiind might hold a frontier. Assuredly a mere handful of such 
men could stop the most muUitudinous attack or cover the most dis- 
orderly retreat in the world, and even when some ingenious, daring, 
and >u<;ky night as^aaH had at last ejected them from a position, 
dawn would simply restore to them the prospect of reconstituting ia 
new positions their enormous advantage of defence, 
• « * • 
Probably between contiguous nations that have mastered the art 
of war, instead of the pouring clouds of cavalry of the old dispensa- 
tion, this will be the opening phase of the struggle, a vast duel all along 
the frontier between groups of skilled marksmen, continually being 
relieved and refreshed from the rear. For a time quite possibly there 
will be no definite army here or there, there will be no controllablo 
battle, there will be no'Oreat General in the field at all. But some- 
where far in the rear the central organiser will sit at the telephonic 
centre of his vast front, and he will strengthen here and feed thera 
and watch, watch perpetually the pressure, the incessant remorseless 
pressure that is seeking to wear down his countervailing thru.st. 
Behind the thin filing line that is actually engaged, the country for 
many miies will be rapidly cleared and devoted to the business of war, 
big machines will be at work making second, third, and fourth lines 
of trenches that may be needed if presently the firing line is forced 
back, spreading out transverse paths for the swift lateral movement of 
the cyclists who will be in perpetual alertness to relieve sudden local 
pressures, and all along those great motor roads our first " Anticipa- 
tions " sketched, there will be a vast and rapid shifting to and fro 
of big and very long range guns. These guns will probably be fought 
with the help of balloons. The latter will hang above the firing line 
all along the front, incessantly ascending and withdrawn ; they viill 
be continually determining the distribution of the antagonist's forces, 
directing the fire of continually shifting great guns upon the apparatus 
and supports in the rear of his fighting line, forecasting his night plans 
and .seeking some tactical or strategic weakness in that sinewy line of 
battle. 
It will be evident that such warfare as this inevitable precision 
of gun and rifle forces upon humanity will become less and less 
dramatic as a whole, more and more a^ a whole a monstrous thrust 
and pressure of people against people. The battalion commander will be 
replaced in effect by the organiser of the balloons and guns by which 
his few hundreds of splendid individuals will be guided and reinforced. 
In the place of hundreds of thousands of more or less untrained young 
men marching into battle, there will be thousands of sober men braced 
up to their highest possibilities, intensely doing their best ; in the 
place of charging battalions, shattering impacts of squadrons and wide 
harvest-fields of death, there will be hundreds of little rifle battles 
fought up to the hilt, gallant dashes here, night surprises there, the 
sudden sinister faint gleam of nocturnal bayonets, brilliant guesses 
that will drop catastrophic shell and death over hills and forests sud- 
denly into carelessly exposed masses of men. For eight miles on either 
side of the firing lines — whose fire will probably never altogether die 
away ^^•hile the war lasts — men will live and eat and sleep under the 
imminence of unanticipated death. . . . Such will be the opening 
phase of the war tliat is speedily to come. 
And behind the thin firing line on either side a vast multitude of 
people will be at work; indeed, the whole mass of the efficients in the 
State will have to be at work, and most of them will be simply at 
the same work or similar work to that done in peace time — only now 
as combatants upon the lines of com.Tiunication. The organised staffs 
of the big road managements, now become a part of the military 
scheme, will be deporting women and children and feeble people and 
bringing up supplies and supports ; the doctors will be dropping from 
their civil duties into preappointed official places, directing the feed- 
ing and treatment of the shifting masses of people and guarding the 
valuable manhood of the fighting apparatus most sedulously from 
disease ; the engineers will be entrenching and bringing up a vast 
variety of complicated and ingenious apparatus designed to surprise 
and inconvenience the enemy in novel ways ; the dealers in food and 
clothing, the manufacturers of all sorts of necessary stuff, will bo 
converted by the mere declaration of war into public servants ; a 
practical realisation of socialistic conceptions will quite inevitably be 
forced upon the fighting State. Tlve State that has not incorporated 
with its fighting organisation all its able-bodied manhood and all its 
material substance, its roads, vehicles, engines, foundries, and all its 
resources of food and clothing ; the State which at the outbreak of 
war has to bargain with railway and shipping companies, replace ex- 
perienced station-masters by inexperienced officers, and haggle against 
alien interests for every sort of supply, will be at an overwhelming 
disadvantage against a State which has emerged from the social con- 
fu-sion of the present time, got rid of every vestige of our present 
distinction between official and governed, and organised every element 
in its being. 
I imagine that in this ideal war as compared with the war of to day, 
there will be a very considerable restriction of the rights of the non- 
combatants. . . t 
If the things that were obvious to imaginative people in 
1900 are only taken up slowly and reluctantly by practical 
people in 1915, what earthly good is it for any one of imagi- 
nation to put his facnlty at such problems at all? If our 
people will not deal with imagination they must work out 
things in toil and bloodshed. Our people are not going to 
attempt an aerial offensive at the suggestion of Mr. Blin 
Desbleds; they will never attempt it until the Germans have 
tried it and made succe.sses with it. Then and then only will 
it appeal to them as a rational proposition. — Very sincerely 
yours, 
H. G. Wells. 
* A qiwtation from 
1900. 
' Anticipations," by M. G. Wells, published 
15» 
