August 29, 1918 
LAND &? WATER 
THE WAR: By HILAIRE BELLOC 
The Club and the Sword 
Four Phases of the Allied Offensive 
WHAT is happening ? 
We all know that things have taken a turn 
— but they need explanation. We all know 
that the initiative was recovered upon Tliurs- 
day, July i8th. We all know that from July 
iSth onwards a running fire of active engagements has been 
lit by the Allied Higher Command at its own pleasure, and 
against the will of our opponents. We all know that it 
has extended day by day until it now comprises the whole 
vast distance between Arras and Rheims — 150 miles, the 
distance from London to Exeter. We all know that each 
successive increase in this great action has arrived by regular 
steps, none of them sensational in scope or result. We all 
know that each of them has registered some advance, of 
3, 9, 15, or 20 miles. We all know that in the process the 
great salients originally thrust forw-ard by the German 
offensive have been reduced and that the enemy retirement 
continues. But what does it mean ? What is it leading to ? 
To answer that question accurately is of immediate prac- 
tical importance. Upon our answer will our view of the war's 
future, and therefore of our present civilian polic}-, turn. If 
we answer the question wrongly, if we misunderstand the 
situation, we shall be in danger of a false public opinion and 
therefore of a false policy. 
The German answer to this question is as follows :• — 
"Marshal Foch, and the Allied forces under his command, 
are perpetually trying to break, our line and perpetually 
failing." 
That answer has the merit of simplicity and therefore of 
appealing to the least instructed minds of those to whom it 
is addressed. It has had its echo here in London, and it is of 
the highest importance that this falsehood should be exposed. 
FOCH ON THE ART OF WAR 
If you will turn to those " Lectures upon the Art of War " 
delivered to the French Staff College by Marshal Foch when 
he was instructing there as a colonel, and if you will look 
up page 305 of the volume in which these lectures are collected ■ 
(an edition in Knglish will appear this autumn — I here refer 
to the present French fourth edition of 1917) you will find 
a very remarkable passage. 
The author is speaking of Napoleon's method in war, and 
quoting a certain set of orders issued by the Prussian General 
Staff after their study of Napoleon's methods and during the 
interval between that general's retreat from Moscow and his 
defeat at Leipsic. These orders are drawn directly from a 
study of Napoleon's methods and are but a reflection of 
those methods : Hence their value. Now the very first of 
these orders, which the lecturer quotes as the capital one 
of the series, concludes with these words : — 
" W'e therefore lay down this principle : economise forces 
while keeping the combat nourished, right up to the moment when 
we shall pass from such a preparation to the main attack." 
It would have been well for the Prussians if, in spite of 
their amazing victories of a generation ago (victories won 
in a few days and absolutely decisive against two great 
powers, their rivals) they had had the humility, that is, the 
good sense, to remember the lesson they had learnt sixty 
years before at the hands of their great master and conqueror. 
This principle, " to economise men but nourish the battle 
up to the hour of decision," laid down by the Prussian Staff 
in 1813, was abandoned after the tremendous successes of 
1866 and 1870. After those facile but stupendous achieve- 
ments the Prussians were, to tell the truth, turned into 
gamblers : gamblers who thought they held loaded dice, no 
doubt, but still gamblers. They abandoned caution which 
they had once possessed ; htimour, its cousin, they had 
never known. They changed their theory of war from a 
lesson learnt to a new theory of neces.sary success. The 
victories of 1864—70 were certainly enough to turn anyone's 
head with pride, and the Prussian's head is weak to that 
cheap intoxicant. At any rate they did abandon the sound 
principle of self-distrust, and from now and henceforward 
they will pay the price. 
THE RIVAL THEORIES 
The complete and rapid triumphs of a generation ago 
produced in the Prussian Staff a certain doctrine of war the 
very opposite of that which Napoleon taught (or rather 
practised), the opposite of that out of which this sentence 
which I have just quoted, " nourish the battle while econo- 
mising men and waiting the harvest," came. 
From 1866 onwards, and quite apparent after 1S71, two 
military' theories faced each other in Europe. They may 
be called the theory of the Club, and the theory of the Sword. 
The first was that of modern Prussia. The second was 
that of the continuous tradition (with Napoleon as its 
fountain head), which the French conceived and which 
inspired them throughout all the strain of this mortal cam- 
paign, until that great date five weeks ago, when the war 
changed its face. 
The contrasting roots of those opposing theories are, in 
the one case, that of Prussia, a preconceived superiority in 
men, in material, in rapidity, in moral, in every element of 
fighting power. Such superiority being taken for granted, 
the enemy's plan, or supposed plan, is neglected. The whole 
weight of the superior instrument bears down upon his victim. 
The effect is immediate ; the consequences of the blow rapid 
and irrecoverable. There is no alternative in case of tem- 
porary inferiority, except a brute and sullen defensive. If 
the club does not completely down its victim, the user of the 
club knows of no method but a wall or thicket behind which 
to recover : A space of time in which he can lift the club 
again to swing it. He takes a long time, he strikes again. 
If he fails again, again he pauses, and recuperates at length. 
It is a method excellent if, though the stupider, you can be 
sure of always being the stronger. It is a method fatal to 
you in a struggle with one who, though weaker, has better 
intelligence, and may at last become stronger as well. 
If you follow this war in the West, you will fmd that such 
a conception underlies all that Prussia has done. She has 
struck enormous blows as heavily and as suddenly as pos- 
sible, with little concei^n for what an inferior opponent riiight 
have in mind. Her generals, were not greatly concerned to 
penetrate the plan of those against them, for that plan — 
they said — would cease to exist once the staggering blow 
had got home — that is, in a few hours after the launching 
of a great offensive. 
Did the blow fail ? Well, then, there was nothing for it 
but to stand strictly upon the mere defensive, again not 
worrying over-much about the opponent's mind. They were 
still superior. They had but to recover time and oppor- 
tunity in which to create a superiority in force, to lift the club 
again for a crushing blow. Every single act upon their side 
in the drama of the last four years on the West has been of 
that nature : Charleroi, Ypres, Verdun, Caporetto, St. Quen- 
tin, The Chemin des Dames, and this last hopeless breakdown 
before Rheims. 
Now the opposing theory of the French General Staff is 
almost exactly the converse. It precedes from the precon- 
ception that your enemy may be stronger than yourself. 
Not that he is stronger, still less that he will always be stronger ; 
but that unless you have designed for the phase in which he 
may be stronger, you are not possessed of the art of war at all. 
The Napoleonic tradition is based upon the idea that 
whereas anybody ought to succeed with a crushing superi- 
ority, art consists in coming out to handle the affair whilst 
still inferior, and especially in knowing how to pass that 
difficult bridge between defence and offence, which is the 
critical turning point of every conflict. It has two chapters : 
How to pass from mere deffence to a cautious offence in the 
first crisis of the change ; how to pass from partial offence 
to main offence in the last and decisive crisis of the change. 
From this tradition, which I have called the tradition of the 
sword as opposed to the tradition of the club, and which is 
(it would seem) the tradition of civilisation as opposed to 
the tradition of the barbarian — the tradition of manoeuvre 
in all ages as opposed to the tradition of rush — there arise 
many principles and rules of conduct in war. 
