LAND & WATER 
December 21, 1916 
The New Victory 
By Hilaire Belloc 
THREE things characterise the war at the present 
moment. The first and least important so far 
are the operations in Roumania. The second 
and much more important is the complete success 
of the new French tactical method in the West. The 
third, still more important, is the continued success of 
the German submarines, for upon the measure of this last 
depends the munitioning of the Eastern front and the 
unimpeded activity of this country. With that last 
point I have, of course, nothing to do in these colunms. 
I must leave it to my colleague, Mr. Pollen. The other 
two. which fall into rny province, I will deal with in the 
order of their importance. 
The new tactical method in the West has been wholly 
the product of the present war and mainly the product of 
the 15 months that have passed since the Champagne 
offensive of September 1915. It is a co-ordination of 
many things : Exactitude of time-table ; E.xactitude of 
aerial observation : Exactitude of the barrage fire' which 
the field pieces maintain just in front of advancing troops : 
The power to depend upon the moral of one's troops 
working so verj' close to their own fire and in occasional 
peril from its exceedingly close timing ; Deix;ndence upon 
the fact that the enemy now is compelled to dig too 
deep : Dependence upon extreme accuracy of heavy 
artillery fire, both gun and howitzer, etc. That tactical 
method has for the soul of it perfect synchrony. Errors 
measured in seconds are important ; errors measured in 
minutes would be disastrous. 
The general features of this method have been so often 
described that it may seem like repetition to recapitulate 
them again, however brieHy. It is, however, only by so 
doing that we can follow its peculiar character in the 
future. There is first established a detailed recon- 
naissance including, of course, full photographic informa- 
tion of the " crust of trenches " it is proposed to break 
through and of the belt behind it which it is proposed 
to occupy. Such complete reconnaissance presupposes 
superiority in the air. There is next an " artillery 
preparation " of the ground upon a scale which was 
rmdreamt of even a year ago, although a year ago the 
scale was already a hundredfold that which had been 
known in the older wars. This presupposes in the long 
run, if the method is to be continually applied, superiority 
in the rate of munitionment and production of guns 
o\er the enemy. 
This " preparation " is the matter upon which judg- 
ment perhaps is most ^•aluablc. It must not be so 
lengthy as to destroy the effect of surprise, or to give" 
the enemy too long a warning for the gathering of such 
reserves as he may have within reach. At the sanie 
time, it must be prolonged enough to make a chaos of- 
his trench work, bury his dugouts and — it is hoped at 
least— destroy the greater part of his machine guns 
and their concealed defences. It must be on a wider 
front than the actual assault is designed for lest fhe, 
clement of surprise should be lacking in this respe^rj^yr- 
Yet to make it upon too wide a front is to waste guns and 
munitions. 
Again, this artillery preparation requires, of course, 
superiority in the air so that the work of the gunners may 
be spotted and that as many shots as possible shall tell. 
It includes the destruction of as many as possible of the 
enemy's batteries by direct hits, because it is their fire 
which will most impede the next step. The next step 
consists in the launching of the infantry. The element 
of surprise here comes in obviously with the fact that 
your opponent cannot tell when you intend to stop the 
bombardment. The very moment you have stopped it 
vou launch your waves of men. But the exact synchrony 
of the ending of the main bombardment and the launching 
of the infantry is not enough. That infantry -must; be 
p;otected as it advances by a curtain of field shell" wlljch 
IS deliA'crcd immediately over the heads of the advaiice 
and bursts immediately in front of it and advances 
regularly with the men who are supported behind its shield. 
I'pon paper such work might seem almost mechanical 
and available to any force,, for it would seem only to 
depend upon the exact timing of all the various parts. In 
practice, of course, it requires an army in the very highest 
state of efticiency, becau.se a very small error on the part 
of a ^•ery sjiiall luunber of men would produce disaster. 
The infantr\- so launched may or may not find that the 
machine guns have been thorouglily dominated. There 
is no way of telling. Even the sending out of patrols is 
but a haphazard way of finding out, for the machine 
guns may hold their fire. All you can do is to trust to 
the efticiency of your jjreliminary bombardment ; to 
the previous spotting of the points held by machine 
guns and to tlie power of your infantry and your sup- 
porting artillery upon such points as may still conceal 
machine guns, to overwhelm them. . There would seem, 
for instance, in this last attack to have been more 
machine guns left in action than during the attack 
i)f October. But, at any rate, those who have 
brought this new tactical method to perfection can 
generally rely upon the destruction of such a very 
large proportion of the enemy's machine guns in the 
preliminary bombardment that there will be no dis- 
astrous check, though the casualties inflicted upon the 
advance may be higher in some cases than in others. 
The infantry advance results, if it be successful, in the 
occupation (jf the bombarded belt up to a certain limit 
which has been decided beforehand. There is no break- 
ing through nor is one intended. The action is local and 
restricted so far as each such separate blow is concerned, 
just as the belt bombarded is local and restricted. Th? 
occupation of this belt proves the destruction or permits 
the capture of the guns once placed upon it — for there 
is no withdrawing them by the enemy under such circum- 
stances — and also the capture or destruction of a number 
, ()f machine guns. The enemy overwhelmed by the pre- 
liminary fire is caught in his dugouts or even as he has 
corne into the trenches to resist, hca\ily handicapped as 
he is by the bewilderment the bombardment has produced 
- and the way in which it has cut him off from all support. 
Examples of the New Method 
Those are the general features of this method. Every 
intelligent man reading the news of any such blow— the 
:, British stroke at Thiepval ; the British stroke on the 
Ancre ; the French at Sailly ; the re-taking of Douau- 
mont ; this last stroke on Poivre Hill, and many others — 
^..should and does ask himself two questions, tlie "answer to 
which alone can give the value of the method. 
The first question is this : What is the strategic 
' advantage, in other words, the ultimate military' advan- 
, tage, of local tactical work upon such a scale ?• 
;«• i The second is- : What special relation • has it to the 
iMlies ? Why should we not regard it as something 
common to them and to the enemy equally ? 
The answer to the first question is this : The tactical 
- method here described is, even by such local work as that 
just achieved in front of "Verdun, perfected and brought 
to its maximum \alue. The blows delivered can only be 
delivered at short interwals in fine weather where large 
effectives are gathered, where is, a special accumulation 
of heavy artillery and its munitionment ; but each blow 
delivered, even if winter makes the intervals longer, 
is a proof that the method is better and better estab- 
lished, and each proffers increasingly the characteristic 
advantage of the method which is the infliction by the 
''assailant of greater blows upon the dcicnsivc than he 
himself suffers. E\en with two equal opponents if (a) 
the one is reduced to the defensive and (b) by some 
'^■tactical method you can make the dcfensi\e more ex- 
