THE FUTURE OF WAR

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 61, 9 September 1937, Page 22

THE FUTURE OF WAR

MACHINES VERSUS MEN

LESSONS LEARNED IN SPAIN

INFANTRY ESSENTIAL

The machine is not 4 yet master of the man and the defence still has the edge on the offence, European military opinion holds, according to a survey of the Continent just completed, writes Hanson Baldwin in the "New York Times." No nation is going "all out" for the tank and the truck, and animal transport still has an important part in the scheme of war. infantry still seems to be "the Queen of Battles" whether the doughboy gets to the scene of action by truck, tractor, horse, or "Shank's mare," and laurel still crowns the brow of the commander who "gits there fustest with the mostest men." Despite the development of the tank and the plane and the faster tempo that machines have brought to the terrible symphony of war, anti-tank guns, anti-aircraft guns, defending planes, and the Maginot Lines of Europe have more than matched for the defensive the development of the offensive. Most expert opinion, therefore, holds that a future war—at least in Western Europe—will quickly degenerate once again into the stalemate of trench warfare unless the war can be won in a swift initial stroke, almost an impossibility if the opposing nations are fairly evenly matched. In Eastern Europe, with great manoeuvring spaces spread wide for the thunder of guns, somewhat more open warfare may be expected, with horsed cavalry playing an important role in the roadless regions and with swift motor-mechanised units striking wherever opportunity offers. These conclusions have been reached after a study of the various field manoeuvres, held last year—the largest since the war—and after months of study, discussion, and reflection about the military lessons of the Ethiopian and Spanish wars. Most military experts seem agreed—if it can be said that they agree on anything—that these two wars have been fruitful in technical lessons but barren in tactical ones'; They also seem agreed that military thought is in the most active state of flux since ( the war and admit that the generals1 and the marshals are shoving their" tanks and trucks about- experimentally on the., chessboard of manoeuvre in an effort to develop modernised tactics,that will unlock the stalemate of trench warfare. ' MINOR LESSONS LEARNED. In this respect neither Ethiopia nor Spain has been very helpful. Minor lessons drawn from the colonial warfare and from the bloody civil strife have been many, but they deal mainly with such subjects as changes in rifle bolt mechanism, redesign or simplification of machine-guns and the relative merits of different types of uniform, clothing, anjl equipment. The World's .latest wars have contributed little or nothing to tank tactics—a subject of supreme .interest to military men—and the old argument about the relative merits of the plane and other arms remains at least partly unsettled. The Spanish war in particular has been the centre of attention of European military : men because to some extent Spain has been used as a testing laboratory for Europe's weapons. However, the extent of foreign material aid has been exaggerated. Only a small amount of the recent weapons have been tried out in Spain and only a very few of these are the latest available. Moreover, the lessons drawn from Spain must be qualified because of the small amount of modern equipment available, its misuse by unskilled commanders, the lack of strategical coordination, and of a definite strategic concept, and because of the inadequate training and discipline of a large part of both armies which —particularly in the first months of the war—were little more than armed mobs. In some ways, therefore, the military lessons of the Ethiopian conflict—although that was a colonial war—are more valuable than those of Spain, because in Ethiopia there was at least one modern, well-equipped, wellsupplied, disciplined army. The great lessons of.the Ethiopian war were the importance of adequate preparation, the necessity of • wellorganised services of supply—including road building, which was of particular importance in this war—and the great value of a completely unified command. Contrary to popular belief, tanks and mechanised forces were of relatively little value in the difficult Ethiopian terrain; in all cases tanks without infantry support were ineffective. But aviation was an important, although not a decisive, arm. VARIED USES OF PLANES. Aviation was particularly important in supplying ground troops, in liaison work, in strategic (though not in tactical) reconnoissance, as a psychological weapon against the enemy's morale, and to a lesser extent for bombardment purposes—although the lack of, concentrated targets made such bombardments in that half-wild country difficult. In, any case, artillery bombardment proved of more military effectiveness in general than air bombing. Machineguns and hand grenades were important weapons, with the hand grenade producing a greater moral effect. The Italian native troops with white officers played a preponderant part in the campaign, since they were better acclimatised and better trained to colonial warfare than white soldiers. In general, the Italian regular showed himself a good fighter, although not so fine as his enhanced reputation' after the taking of Addis Ababa led the world to believe. On the other hand, the Italian Black Shirt militia proved to be somewhat poorly trained and its efficiency was .somewhat further marred on several occasions by the mistakes of some political generals. Nothing so far learned in Spain or in manoeuvres has upset the verdicts arrived at after Ethiopia, although the defeat of Italian fighters at Brihuega on the Guadalajara front, near Madrid, would seem to deflate the Italians' pretensions as fighting men. However, this seems to be one of the many examples of wishful thinking now so current in Europe. The Italians in Spain have not covered themselves with glory, it is true, but they are fighting on foreign soil, they lack the patriotic -incentive that spurred them on in Ethiopia, and. abov; all, there are no regular Italian units in Spain, so far as can be learned The Italian forces there are composed almost entirely of "volunteers" (many of them actually volunteers in the true sense of the word) drawn from Black Shirt units or picked up from the reserves, with a few incompetents from regular units as well as many raked up from the streets —all formed into units after arrival in Spain. ALL TRUE TO TYPE. Hence it is dangerous to attempt to evaluate the fighting spirit of the regular Italian Army from the Italian achievements—or lack of them—in Spain. In general, as far as troops are concerned, Spain has shown the world nothing it did not know before; the

Germans display their usual discipline, j technical ability, and capacity to be i cogs in a military machine; the Moors j show their good fighting qualities, other foreigners the usual faults and virtues associated with their varied nationalities, and the Spaniards a fanatical, tialf-hopeless courage. As far as equipment is concerned, all lessons derived from Spain must also be taken with a grain of salt. ' Of Italian, German, and Russian tanks, the Russian machines are perhaps the best, although not overwhelming so, and all have conspicuous faults. Virtually all light tanks have track bases that are too short, so that they can be easily immobilised (and later destroyed at leisure) by digging broad, deep trenches that the tanks cannot bridge and from which they cannot climb out. The Italian, light two-man Fiat, although it shows high speed and is very manoeuvrable, has betrayed the same faults • displayed in Ethiopia; it. has been easily put out of action, and since its guns (in some models) are limited to fire ahead, it can be easily approached from the sides or rear and taken with but little danger. None oi! the tanks used in Spain has thick enough armour, with the German 18-millimetre armour plates on the eight-ton tanks clearly insufficient, and the 20 to 23-millimetre thickness of others insufficient to prevent penetration of anti-tank projectiles fired by any one of half a dozen types of antitank guns. Above all, tanks have not beer used properly, and never in sufficient numbers, to draw any real tactical lessons from their experiences, except possibly the one that, "the value of high starting speed has been greatly over-estimated." At most'no more than fifteen or twenty tanks have been used together in any one battle in' Spain, whereas current German practice calls for the employment of 100 tanks per kilometre of front. MUST BE USED IN MASS. Apparently the experience of Spain has shown that tanks need more armour and that they must be used in mass and with proper infantry and artillery support if an attempted breakthrough against a well-defended trench system is to have any. chance of success. And it may be that the principal role of the tank, as some German military opinion holds, will be that of mechanical cavalry to operate on the enemy's flanks and in the rear of a retreating enemy, once the break-through has been achieved by other forces. Experience in Spain has shown that the anti-tank gun in considerable numbers is now an indispensable part of the equipment of every army. There are any number of types, from the shoulder rifle to the wheeled gun towed by truck or- mule, with the lighter types apparently most favoured today. But the heavier 47-millimetre gun is certain to find increasing favour as the armour of tanks is thickened, as it will be, to meet the latest answer of the defence. ' Planes also have operated in Spain in too small numbers and under too artificial conditions to draw any very cogent conclusions from their operations. Of the planes that have been sent to Spain Russia's have probably been,the best—all things considered— partly because her best planes are close reproductions of American types, partly because Germany and Italy have not sent their very latest types as Russia has (though most of their planes in Spain , have been the same types as those that form the bulk oi the German and Italian air forces). ' BIRDMEN AND GUNNERS. The Russians have displayed surpris- , ing ability as flyers. The Germans, on the other hand, have shown surprising ability as anti-aircraft gunners, and their .anti-aircraft equipment and organisation are rather generally thought to be about the best in Europe. In general the lessons of recent military months can be summed up as follows: — \ 1. A fortified or well-prepared trench line manned by determined, w>ll-equipped troops is going to be just as tough a nut to crack as it was in the World War. Probably the only way it is going to be cracked—unless the tactics of surprise are .far more developed than they now are—is by application of the superior mass pressure of all arms. 2. Tanks and mechanised forces will have important but auxiliary roles in future warfare and are not likely to replace infantry as "the Queen of Battles." 3. Anti-aircraft equipment, defending planes, and various other air defence measures can be made more and more effective and should be able to exact a higher and higher toll of attacking planes, although these measures will never prevent some bombers from getting through to their objectives. 4. Repeated aerial bombardments of cities or 'military objectives—even when such bombardments are unopposed even by passive defence measuresare not likely to win wars. In other words, war cannot be won in the air, although aerial warfare, it is certain, has given Mars seven-league boots and has made all war many times more frigntful.