November ?o, 1915. 
LAND A JN i VV A 1 1^ K 
THE BREAKING POINT. 
By JOHN BUCHAN. 
THE psychology of the hghting man in 
war has, so far as I know, never been 
made the subject of a professorial 
treatise. It is a work which we might 
have expected from the Teutonic genius, but per- 
haps the difficulty of making laboratory experi- 
ments stood in the way. The result is that the 
task has been left to the novelists, like Mr. Stephen 
Crane, and conspicuously Miss Mary Johnstone, 
whose two great novels on the American Civil 
War are not only fine history but fine philosophy. 
But, since mankind will always generaHse upon a 
matter which so vitally concerns it, we have a 
variety of working rules, which every soldier 
knows but never formulates. One concerns the 
difficulty of sitting still under heavy fire. That 
is why the men in the support trenches which the 
enemy is shelling have a more difficult task than 
the attack. The chance of movement is a great 
relief, and the fact that a definite job is before a 
man gives him something better to think about 
than expectations of a speedy decease. That is 
why, too, the officer who has the problem of 
keeping his men together and getting them some- 
where is Hkely to be less troubled with nerves 
than the man whose business is merely to follow. 
To keep the mind engrossed is the great prophy- 
lactic against fear. 
THE DEFENSIVE. 
The practical question which has often been 
discussed among soldiers is when the breaking 
poin is reached — after what proportion of losses 
the defensive or the offensive will crumble. The 
question is really twofold, for the problem of 
defence is different in kind from the problem of 
attack. In the latter to carry on requires a 
cer+ain modicum of hope and mental energy ; in 
the former there need be no hope, but merely a 
passive and fatalistic resistance. It is useless to 
speculate about the breaking point in a defence. 
1 1 men from pride or any other cause are resolved 
not to surrender they will perish to the last man. 
There were no survivors of the Spartans at Ther- 
mopylae, or of the steel circle of the Scots at 
riodden. Yakub and the defenders of the Black 
Flag were utterly destroyed at Omdurman. There 
were no survivors of the portion of the 3rd 
Canadian Brigade at the second battle of Ypres 
which heki St. Julien. No man returned from 
that company of the 2nd Scots Guards who were 
cut off at Festubert on May i6th. They re- 
mained on the field of honour with a ring of the 
enemy's dead around them. 
THE ATTACK. 
But in attack the question of the breaking 
pomt IS pertinent. After what losses will a unit 
lose Its coherence and dissolve ? The question, of 
course, only applies to corporate things, like a 
cortipany, a squadron or a battalion, which depend 
for their military effect on training and discipline. 
A surge of individuals vowed to death will perish 
to the last man. A rush of Ghazis, determined to 
enter Paradise, will not cease so long as any are 
iJrve Take the charge of Ali-Wad-Helu's horse- 
men against the left of Macdonald's Brigade at 
Omdurman. Mr. Churchill has described it. 
" Many carrying no weapon in their hand, and 
all urging their horses to their utmost speed, 
they rode unflinchingly to certain death. All were 
killed and fell as they entered the zone of fire^ — 
three, twenty, fifty, two hundred, sixty, thirty, 
five, and one out beyond them all — a brown smear 
across the sandy plain. A few riderless horses 
alone broke through the ranks of the infantry." 
There is no rule for such Berserker courage. The 
question is how far discipline will carry men who 
have no hankering for Paradise. 
THE OLD REGIME. 
In the Eighteenth Century it carried them 
very far. Those were the days of rigid and elabo- 
rate drill, and a disciphne observed with the 
punctiliousness of a ritual. It may have been 
inelastic and preposterous and destined to go 
down before a less mechanical battle-order, but 
it achieved miracles all the same. There was 
Marlborough's attack on the Schellenberg, where 
he lost in one hour more than a third of his men, 
and the Guards had twelve officers down out of 
seventeen, and yet succeeded. There was the 
assault by Lord Cutts on Blenheim village, when 
Row led his men steadily up under the French 
fire till he could tap the palisade with his sword. 
Most famous case of all, there was the advance of 
Cumberland's centre at Fontenoy to within fifty 
yards of the French Guard, when Lord Charles 
Hay toasted the enemy and the British looked 
coolly at a row of muzzles till the word came for 
their volley. Or, to take an instance from the end 
of the old regime, there was the Prussian infantry, 
who, on the day of Jena, faced Lannes at the 
village of Vierzehnheiligen, and for two hours 
stood dressed in line volleying steadily at the enemy 
in cover, because such were their orders. 
Napoleon and the armies of the Revolution 
changed all that, but they too could perform 
miracles, and the last charge of the Old Guard at 
Waterloo is among the classic feats of history. 
CALCULATIONS ABOUT THE 
MAXIMUM. 
In the latter half of the Nineteentli Centur\'' 
when human life began to be more highly valued 
and philosophers looked forward to the decline 
of war, people took to fixing a maximum loss in 
attack beyond which civilfsed troops could not 
keep cohesion. I have forgotten what the figure 
was, but it was exceeded in many cases, such as 
the Virginians' attempt on. Cemetery Hill at 
Gettysburg, and von Bredov/'s famous Todfenritt 
at Mars-la-Tour, when of the 7th Madgeburp 
Cuirassiers only 104 returns d and of the i6th 
Lancers only 90. The maximimi, whatever it was, 
ceased to have much meaning.!; as the conditions 
of fighting changed, and it >ft'as altogether ex- 
ploded by the performance of the Japanese at 
Port Arthur. The truth is tl lat no such figure 
means much, for the power of a u nit to advance after 
losses will depend entirely uf ton circumstances. 
The sense of winning, of being t Jie spear-head of a 
