THE COLLAPSE OF FORTIFICATION. 
By COLONEL P. N. MAUDE, C.B. 
ONE of the great surprises Uus war has brought to 
the uninitiated is the sudden and complete 
collapse of the many fortresses on which both 
money and intellect have been lavished lu 
Belgium, France, and Austria. 
To the lay mind there is something majestic in the frown- 
ing masses of masonry which normally form the charac- 
teristics of all permanent fortifications, and it needs an 
effort of imagination to realise that these imposing features 
have so completely lost their defensive value in face of 
modern artillery and high explosive shells that at present only 
those fortresses still hold out in which the defenders have 
succeeded, by means of hastily-constructed field entrench- 
ments, in keeping the enemy out of range of their actual walls. 
No one, however, notices that by so doing they have in fact 
given awiy the whole case for expenditure in peace on per- 
manent works, by increasing enormou.sly the numbers of men 
required to defend the nucleus which the permanent works 
were designed originally to protect. 
The object of surrounding a certain town or junction 
point of many communications (the two ideas are generally 
identical) with permanent defences has always been, 
primarily, to enable the few to dispute its possession against 
the many. If £100,000 spent on great walls and ditches 
made it possible for, say, two battalions of men to resist as 
long as ten could have done without their support, its ex- 
penditure was economically justifiable, because the interest 
and depreciation of the capital sum sunk in such works was 
very much less than the pay of the eight thousand men or so 
which would have been needed to defend an unprotected posi- 
tion. Not thirty years ago we still applied this reasoning to 
the problems of defence arising in our coaling stations and 
Colonial ports, and essentially the same idea underlay the 
construction of the Belgian, as, indeed, of all other 
defences. 
But already the writing was on the wall for those to read 
who had knowledge enough to perceive its interpretation. 
The history of the evolution of warfare showed that the 
ratio between the cost of construction and the cost of the 
garrison which could be served by sinking capital in fixed 
defences had been steadily falling ever since the invention of 
gunpowder as a propulsive agent. With every yard gained 
by the artillery in range we were approximating to a point 
where the advantage of the defence would vanish and the 
attack wo-aid finally secure the upper hand. 
In other words, it became clear that a time was coming 
when it would pay better to spend all money available from 
the nation's revenues on the maintenance of mobile armiesi 
which could carry war into the enemy's country rather than 
on unproductive works intended to resist aggression. 
The coming of the high explosive shell settled the ques- 
tion. As a nation the Germans were the first to understand 
what its arrival must mean. Seeing that the time was near 
at hand when no amount of masonry, or armour plating, or 
even deep earthwork trenches confined to a fixed position 
could avail against the destructive power of the shells that 
could be Irought against them, they began to abandon the 
construction of new forts or fortresses and spent all moneys 
they could obtain for engineer services on the construction 
of roads and railways within their frontiers by which guns 
heavy enough to destroy in a few hours the defensive 
works they knew existed in their possible enemy's country 
could be brought into action at the earliest moment possible. 
In so doing they solved one of the most important problems 
in national economy — namely, substituting productive 
investment of capital for the unproductive sinking of huge 
funds on which both interest and depreciation had to be paid, 
for their strategic railways belonged to the State, as did 
the commercial network of tliose already existing that acted 
as feeders to the main lines, besides developing the districts 
which they traversed, and thus becoming paying propositions 
themselves in their turn. Substantially, though not quite so 
thoroughly, we have pursued the same policy in India for tlia 
last twenty-five years without finding a scientific explanation 
for our practice. 
It is thanks to this far-seeing policy tliat the Germans 
have been able to develop the enormous power of aggression 
and resistance which has so long held the Allies at bay. They 
have substituted everywhere the idea of men instead of stone 
walls, and but for the immense disproportion in numbers of 
troops and resources which the Allies are by degrees develop' 
ing again.st them (a disproportion which never came any- 
where within their calculations), they might well have suc- 
ceeded in their dream of world conquest. They only did no! 
allow for their adversaries' possible equation. Fortunately, 
neither the Russians nor the French were quite unprepared for 
what has happened, and both have adopted a policy adapted 
each to the special topographical conditions of their respective 
frontiers, policies which discount to the utmost the advan- 
tages their superior preparations had conferred upon the 
Germans. 
Had we succeeded in penetrating the enemy's territory 
at an early period of the campaign we should have found our- 
selves confronted by all the disadvantages that a want of 
mobility entails, for the Germans, whilst keeping all their 
own lines, would have destroyed everything as they retreated, 
and we should have had difficulties to contend against which 
now they are encountering in their raids into Poland and 
Galicia. 
Now, the fighting power of an army is never to be arrived 
at by counting heads {.lone, but is always a product of many 
factors, the chief of which are numbers and mobility. Thus 
in South Africa, because the Boers could at need cover twelve 
miles in an hour against our four — or average thirty miles in 
a day as against our t-en — we had to maintain in round 
numbers about nine British soldiers in the field for eaclj 
mounted Boer. Hence if we had invaded Germany whilst she 
was still in possession of, say, four million men capable of 
moving twice as fast as ours by means of her strategic rail- 
ways, we should have required somewhere about sixteen mil- 
lions of men to complete her overthrow. 
Since, however, and viewing the problem in bulk, wa 
could not destroy her power of mobility without invasion, 
there was nothing left for us to do but to compel her to destroj/ 
her oivn numerical superiorit;/ hy fruitless attacks which in 
the nature of things could never succeed. This well explains 
the long delay that has occurred in bringing her to decisive 
action. 
We have had to suit our methods of warfare to the 
different topographical conditions of each frontier and to 
employ diplomacy as well to ensure her response to our call. 
In the West, having checked her invasion, the rapidly 
acquired ascendancy of our aircraft has been one of the most 
important factors in our success. 
Thanks to the better means of observation thus secured 
— i.e., thanks to our airmen — the power of our artillery has 
been nearly, if not quite, trebled. Secure in this superiority, 
we next set about the approach, by siege methods, to points 
from which we can at any time sever the enemy's lateral rail- 
ways by which reinforcements can be rushed from one point 
of the frontier to the other, and since the possession of this 
power of lateral transmission is vital for the Germans, they 
have been compelled to attack tis over and over again at 
points of onr own choice to prevent its destruction. In so 
doing they have been uniformly losing men in the proportion 
of not less^than three to one, and this proportion, it is clear 
from all the latest French reports, has been steadily growing. 
Thus recently the French have been killing them off at the 
rate of five to one. 
On the East the Russians have had to adopt another 
method, but one which is equally efficacious. Having hun- 
dreds of miles of territory behind them, the temporary loss 
of which matters nothing to the cause as a whole, they have 
met the furious German offensive precisely as the Boers dealt 
with our advances in South Africa. They have stood to draw 
the German attacks, and then, since the possession of a par- 
ticular trench was of no value to them one way or the other, 
they ha?e withdrawn, exactly as the Boers used to retire 
before us. Thus the Russians have gradually lengthened 
the lines of the German communications, until these are be- 
coming suitable targets for raids by their mounted infantry, 
which, when the time comes, they will use as De Wet and 
Botha used their commandos on the veldt. 
Had we endeavoured to emulate our antagonist-s by try- 
ing to " hack our way through " in their brutal and 
blundering fashion, we might very well have taken three 
years over the task, or more; but analysing the problem 
skilfully and concentrating on the decisive factor, I think I 
may safely prophesy on a speedy decision in our favour. 
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