Probabilities of Future Warfare

Southland Times, Issue 12772, 4 December 1893, Page 2

Probabilities of Future Warfare

(Argus.) Admiral Bowden-Smith made the suggestive remark at the Mayor’s dinner that just before he joined the navy a great authority of the day condemned a new shell because the cost of discharging it involved the Treasury in an expense of 17s 4d, while now the cost of firing a shell from one of the 110-ton guns which are used in the navy is reckoned at L 174 10s. Here we have one peep at the vast changes that have occurred in modern war during a single life-time-changes which are still in active progress. And it so happens that just now one striking incident after another is causing men to speculate everywhere half in terror and half in bewilderment on what is to happen as the result of the new weapons and the new agencies of the day. Something of this experience our ancestors must have had when explosives were first introduced into warfare. There are many traces in literature of the honor and of the repugnance with which this change was viewed. A noticeable one is the use which Milton makes in his “ Paradise Lost ” of artillery in the wars of Heaven. These passages jar harshly on the modern reader, but, as Mark Pattison has said in his acute criticism, the incongruity did not present itself to readers of Milton’s day, because even at that late date the firearms had not ceased to be regarded as something outre and awful, as a “ devilish enginery,” as unfair in the knightly code of honour, and as a base substitute of mechanism for individual valour. It was gunpowder and not Don Quixote, says this writer, which destroyed chivalry, and to a large extent he must be right. The pen of Cervantes was effective because the “ hellish mixture” of Roger Bacon had already rendered obsolete and ridiculous joustsand tournaments and all the courtesies and challenges of the lists, and all idea of righting wrongs by mere lone and unaided personal prowess. But the thrill which the first explosives occasioned could scarcely be as great as that produced bj' the accumulating proofs of the deadly effects of the new weaponsand the new appliances of to-day. And the revolution is not in one direction, but is all round—is in the weapons, is in the explosive compounds, and is in the means of transport. No one knows what the morrow will bring forth. In a vision I Tennyson’s hero

“ Heard the heavens filled with shouting, and there rained a ghastly dew From the nations’ airy navies, grappling in the central blue.” And it is a matter of fact that practising and experimenting with military ballooning is incessantly carried on, and that the idea is entertained that many a work may be damaged and many a gun destroj’ed and many a magazine blown up by bombs dropped, say at night, from aerial heights and from an unsuspected or invisible foe. And if man is to rise above the surface in this instance, he is to sink below it in others. Not a naval power but is endeavouring to perfect submarine boats which shall move In deep water and shall deliver their fatal torpedo shocks without being seen or heard. The other day the French Minister of Marine gave an account of the performance of the Zede, which, in the presence of the President, went down below, and was steered in a perfectly straight line to the selected object of attack and returned in safety. Another such vessel is mentioned as running in and out of Cherbourg at pleasure at a speed of six knots, going down or coming up at will. A whole armada can be imagined as paralysed by the presence of two or three such foes. The mind almost refuses to dwell upon such an incident as the Santander explosion. The old fire-ships which did so much damage in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have fizzled out. Nelson disliked them for one thing. But the mischief that could be worked to fort or flotilla by a vessel charged with the high explosives of to-day would seem to be appalling. Without speculating on the possibilities of the immediate future, however, the actual accomplishments of the present are quite sufficiently perplexing. What must be the effect in actual war of the machine guns before which the Matabele have fallen in thousands? What must be the effect of the modern magazine-fed rifle sending, as in the Chilian fights, its elegant lead-pencil bullets through the man in the first rank, the man in the second, and killing the man in the third ? These weapons, it is evident, can work with even more deadly effect than was anticipated of them. The days of savage rushes on civilised and trained forces must de absolutely over. There can be no Killiecrankie for Highlanders and no Isandula for even myraids of Zulus. Other changes there are which cannot be welcomed with so good a grace. There can be no more Waterloo?, and even to come to later days no more Gravelottes. D’Erlon’s grand advance at Waterloo in four solid columns in echelon would now be an act of sheer insanity. Milhaud’s cloud of cavalry would never live to so much as reach the British squares. But the far-famed British squares themselves would melt away into thin air before the new artillery fire, and never again is it likely that man will see the “ thin red line tipped with steel ” advancing on a foe as steadily as on the parade ground. Alma and Balaclava would be the last of these spectacles, as Odessa was the final instance of vessels sailfng in under canvas alone to engage batteries. The Crimean conflict closed the war era of Marlborough and Wellington, of Turenne and Napoleon, and all their tactics, though not their strategy, have to be forgotten. Colonel Maurice argues with force that that army is likely to fare best which can most disperse itself into a myriad of skirmishes and can come the quickest together under any officers whenever there is a chance for a rush.

But the navy is evidently to be the greatest victim of the changes. Every fresh incident shows with what terrific effect tho new forces will tell afloat, and how radically they will change all the old conditions of battle. British ironclads have gone down with a tap, so have German warvessels, so have Chilian fighting ships ; and now from Brazil wo have the news of how a transport was rammed and disappeared immediately, 500 of the troops and crew being drowned — arid this, alas, would seenr to foreshadow the fate of many a gallant merchant fteamer when met by some paltry gun or torpedo boat. And as to the efficacy of modern artillery, there comes the statement that before oue of these Brazilian vessels could escape from the fire of the fort she was hulle 1 and forty men were killed. That ships cannot engage batteries now seems to be accepted ar a rule, and it does not appear how they are to confront each other. Annihilation seems to be within tho power of each side in the engagement. In Nelson’s day the beaten vessel struck her flag, but in these times the vessel must sink her foe or go under herself. Such a catastrophe as that of the blowing up of the. Orient at

the Nile or the sinking of the Vongeur in the Channel lives in history as exceptional in war, but these events are evidently the ordinary incidents of tomorrow. Again, Captain Eardley Wilmotc writes on the enormous speed which is being obtained by specially-built war vessels. The British Navy has 27-knot boats, torpedo catchers—or rather ’ these vessels are now being constructed—and this is the train speed of 30 miles an hour. “It opens up the possibility that in the naval action of the future two flotillas may approach one another at a speed of 2000 yards a minute, and that from the moment they sight one another, at a distance of ten miles, to the moment of collision little more than eight minutes may elapse. It will be for the coming tactician to evolve magnificent results out of a speed such as this; but that tactician will need a brain of remarkable coolness and judgment that can almost dispense with reflection.” The admirals of the old school would pound away for a day or night, but now a few minutes and all may be over. Imagination may depict some solitary shattered survivor crawling back with the news of the catastrophe. Whether the clerical gentlemen will ever make of this world “ a little heaven below” may be doubtful, but their brethren of the military profession appear to be able to create an inferno upon earth.