conditions of

strength in limited

war

the elements of strength in limited war are closely analogous to those generally inherent in defence. that is to say, that as a correct use of defence will sometimes enable an inferior force to gain its end against a superior one, so are there instances in which the correct use of the limited form of war has enabled a weak military power to attain success against a much stronger one, and these instances are too numerous to permit us to regard the results as accidental.

an obvious element of strength is that where the geographical conditions are favourable we are able by the use of our navy to restrict the amount of force our army will have to deal with. we can in fact bring up our fleet to redress the adverse balance of our land force. but apart from this very practical reason there is another, which is rooted in the first principles of strategy.

it is that limited war permits the use of the defensive without its usual drawbacks to a degree that is impossible in unlimited war. these drawbacks are chiefly that it tends to surrender the initiative to the enemy and that it deprives us of the moral exhilaration of the offensive. but in limited war, as we shall see, this need not be the case, and if without making these sacrifices we are able to act mainly on the defensive our position becomes exceedingly strong.

the proposition really admits of no doubt. for even if we [pg 73] be not in whole-hearted agreement with clausewitz's doctrine of the strength of defence, still we may at least accept moltke's modification of it. he held that the strongest form of war—that is, the form which economically makes for the highest development of strength in a given force—is strategic offensive combined with tactical defensive. now these are in effect the conditions which limited war should give—that is, if the theatre and method be rightly chosen. let it be remembered that the use of this form of war presupposes that we are able by superior readiness or mobility or by being more conveniently situated to establish ourselves in the territorial object before our opponent can gather strength to prevent us. this done, we have the initiative, and the enemy being unable by hypothesis to attack us at home, must conform to our opening by endeavouring to turn us out. we are in a position to meet his attack on ground of our own choice and to avail ourselves of such opportunities of counter-attack as his distant and therefore exhausting offensive movements are likely to offer. assuming, as in our own case we always must assume, that the territorial object is sea-girt and our enemy is not able to command the sea, such opportunities are certain to present themselves, and even if they are not used will greatly embarrass the main attack—as was abundantly shown in the russian nervousness during their advance into the liaotung peninsula, due to the fear of a counter-stroke from the gulf of pe-chi-li.

[pg 74]

the actual situation which this method of procedure sets up is that our major strategy is offensive—that is, our main movement is positive, having for its aim the occupation of the territorial object. the minor strategy that follows should be in its general lines defensive, designed, so soon as the enemy sets about dislodging us, to develop the utmost energy of counter-attack which our force and opportunities justify.

now if we consider that by universal agreement it is no longer possible in the present conditions of land warfare to draw a line between tactics and minor strategy, we have in our favour for all practical purposes the identical position which moltke regarded as constituting the strongest form of war. that is to say, our major strategy is offensive and our minor strategy is defensive.

if, then, the limited form of war has this element of strength over and above the unlimited form, it must be correct to use it when we are not strong enough to use the more exhausting form and when the object is limited; just as much as it is correct to use the defensive when our object is negative and we are too weak for the offensive. the point is of the highest importance, for it is a direct negation of the current doctrine that in war there can be but one legitimate object, the overthrow of the enemy's means of resistance, and that the primary objective must always be his armed forces. it raises in fact the whole question as to whether it is not sometimes legitimate and even correct to aim directly at the ulterior object of the war.

an impression appears to prevail—in spite of all that clausewitz and jomini had to say on the point—that the question [pg 75] admits of only one answer. von der goltz, for instance, is particularly emphatic in asserting that the overthrow of the enemy must always be the object in modern war. he lays it down as "the first principle of modern warfare," that "the immediate objective against which all our efforts must be directed is the hostile main army." similarly prince kraft has the maxim that "the first aim should be to overcome the enemy's army. everything else, the occupation of the country, &c., only comes in the second line."

it will be observed that he here admits that the process of occupying the enemy's territory is an operation distinct from the overthrow of the enemy's force. von der goltz goes further, and protests against the common error of regarding the annihilation of the enemy's principal army as synonymous with the complete attainment of the object. he is careful to assert that the current doctrine only holds good "when the two belligerent states are of approximately the same nature." [pg 76] if, then, there are cases in which the occupation of territory must be undertaken as an operation distinct from defeating the enemy's forces, and if in such cases the conditions are such that we can occupy the territory with advantage without first defeating the enemy, it is surely mere pedantry to insist that we should put off till to-morrow what we can do better to-day. if the occupation of the enemy's whole territory is involved, or even a substantial part of it, the german principle of course holds good, but all wars are not of that character.

insistence on the principle of "overthrow," and even its exaggeration, was of value, in its day, to prevent a recurrence to the old and discredited methods. but its work is done, and blind adherence to it without regard to the principles on which it rests tends to turn the art of war into mere bludgeon play.

clausewitz, at any rate, as general von caemmerer has pointed out,7 was far too practical a soldier to commit himself to so abstract a proposition in all its modern crudity. if it were true, it would never be possible for a weaker power to make successful war against a stronger one in any cause whatever—a conclusion abundantly refuted by historical experience. that the higher form like the offensive is the more drastic is certain, if conditions are suitable for its use, but clausewitz, it must be remembered, distinctly lays it down that such conditions presuppose in the belligerent employing the higher form a great physical or moral superiority or a [pg 77] great spirit of enterprise—an innate propensity for extreme hazards. jomini did not go even so far as this. he certainly would have ruled out "an innate propensity to extreme hazards," for in his judgment it was this innate propensity which led napoleon to abuse the higher form to his own undoing. so entirely indeed does history, no less than theory, fail to support the idea of the one answer, that it would seem that even in germany a reaction to clausewitz's real teaching is beginning. in expounding it von caemmerer says, "since the majority of the most prominent military authors of our time uphold the principle that in war our efforts must always be directed to their utmost limits and that a deliberate employment of lower means betrays more or less weakness, i feel bound to declare that the wideness of clausewitz's views have inspired me with a high degree of admiration."

now what clausewitz held precisely was this—that when the conditions are not favourable for the use of the higher form, the seizure of a small part of the enemy's territory may be regarded as a correct alternative to destroying his armed forces. but he clearly regards this form of war only as a make-shift. his purely continental outlook prevented his considering that there might be cases where the object was actually so limited in character that the lower form of war would be at once the more effective and the more economical to use. in continental warfare, as we have seen, such cases can hardly occur, but they tend to declare themselves strongly when the maritime factor is introduced to any serious extent.

the tendency of british warfare to take the lower or limited form has always been as clearly marked as is the opposite tendency on the continent. to attribute such a tendency, as is sometimes the fashion, to an inherent lack of warlike spirit is sufficiently contradicted by the results it has achieved. [pg 78] there is no reason indeed to put it down to anything but a sagacious instinct for the kind of war that best accords with the conditions of our existence. so strong has this instinct been that it has led us usually to apply the lower form not only where the object of the war was a well-defined territorial one, but to cases in which its correctness was less obvious. as has been explained in the last chapter, we have applied it, and applied it on the whole with success, when we have been acting in concert with continental allies for an unlimited object—where, that is, the common object has been the overthrow of the common enemy.

the choice between the two forms really depends upon the circumstances of each case. we have to consider whether the political object is in fact limited, whether if unlimited in the abstract it can be reduced to a concrete object that is limited, and finally whether the strategical conditions are such as lend themselves to the successful application of the limited form.

what we require now is to determine those conditions with greater exactness, and this will be best done by changing our method to the concrete and taking a leading case.

the one which presents them in their clearest and simplest form is without doubt the recent war between russia and japan. here we have a particularly striking example of a small power having forced her will upon a much greater power without "overthrowing" her—that is, without having crushed her power of resistance. that was entirely beyond the strength of japan. so manifest was the fact that everywhere upon the continent, where the overthrow of your enemy was regarded as the only admissible form of war, the action of the japanese in resorting to hostilities was regarded as madness. only in england, with her tradition and instinct for what an island power may achieve by the lower means, was japan considered to have any reasonable chance of success.

the case is particularly striking; for every one felt that the [pg 79] real object of the war was in the abstract unlimited, that it was in fact to decide whether russia or japan was to be the predominant power in the far east. like the franco-german war of 1870 it had all the aspect of what the germans call "a trial of strength." such a war is one which above all appears incapable of decision except by the complete overthrow of the one power or the other. there was no complication of alliances nor any expectation of them. the anglo-japanese treaty had isolated the struggle. if ever issue hung on the sheer fighting force of the two belligerents it would seem to have been this one. after the event we are inclined to attribute the result to the moral qualities and superior training and readiness of the victors. these qualities indeed played their part, and they must not be minimised; but who will contend that if japan had tried to make her war with russia, as napoleon made his, she could have fared even as well as he did? she had no such preponderance as clausewitz laid down as a condition precedent to attempting the overthrow of her enemy—the employment of unlimited war.

fortunately for her the circumstances did not call for the employment of such extreme means. the political and geographical conditions were such that she was able to reduce the intangible object of asserting her prestige to the purely concrete form of a territorial objective. the penetration of russia into manchuria threatened the absorption of korea into the russian empire, and this japan regarded as fatal to her own position and future development. her power to maintain korean integrity would be the outward and visible sign of her ability to assert herself as a pacific power. her abstract quarrel with russia could therefore be crystallised into a concrete objective in the same way as the quarrel of the [pg 80] western powers with russia in 1854 crystallised into the concrete objective of sebastopol.

in the japanese case the immediate political object was exceptionally well adapted for the use of limited war. owing to the geographical position of korea and to the vast and undeveloped territories which separate it from the centre of russian power, it could be practically isolated by naval action. further than this, it fulfilled the condition to which clausewitz attached the greatest importance—that is to say, the seizure of the particular object so far from weakening the home defence of japan would have the effect of greatly increasing the strength of her position. though offensive in effect and intention it was also, like frederick's seizure of saxony, a sound piece of defensive work. so far from exposing her heart, it served to cover it almost impregnably. the reason is plain. owing to the wide separation of the two russian arsenals at port arthur and vladivostock, with a defile controlled by japan interposed, the russian naval position was very faulty. the only way of correcting it was for russia to secure a base in the straits of korea, and for this she had been striving by diplomatic means at seoul for some time. strategically the integrity of korea was for japan very much what the integrity of the low countries was for us, but in the case of the low countries, since they were incapable of isolation, our power of direct action was always comparatively weak. portugal, with its unrivalled strategical harbour at lisbon, was an analogous case in our old oceanic wars, and since it was capable of being in a measure isolated from the strength of our great rival by naval means we were there almost uniformly successful. on the whole it must be said that notwithstanding the success we achieved in our long series of wars waged on a limited basis, in none of them were [pg 81] the conditions so favourable for us as in this case they were for japan. in none of them did our main offensive movement so completely secure our home defence. canada was as eccentric as possible to our line of home defence, while in the crimea so completely did our offensive uncover the british islands, that we had to supplement our movement against the limited object by sending our main fighting fleet to hold the exit of the baltic against the danger of an unlimited counter-stroke.8

whether or not it was on this principle that the japanese conceived the war from the outset matters little. the main considerations are that with so favourable a territorial object as korea limited war was possible in its most formidable [pg 82] shape, that the war did in fact develop on limited lines, and that it was entirely successful. without waiting to secure the command of the sea, japan opened by a surprise seizure of seoul, and then under cover of minor operations of the fleet proceeded to complete her occupation of korea. as she faced the second stage, that of making good the defence of her conquest, the admirable nature of her geographical object was further displayed. the theoretical weakness of limited war at this point is the arrest of your offensive action. but in this case such arrest was neither necessary nor possible, and for these reasons. to render the conquest secure not only must the korean frontier be made inviolable, but korea must be permanently isolated by sea. this involved the destruction of the russian fleet, and this in its turn entailed the reduction of port arthur by military means. here, then, in the second stage japan found herself committed to two lines of operation with two distinct objectives, port arthur and the russian army that was slowly concentrating in manchuria—a thoroughly vicious situation. so fortunate, however, was the geographical conformation of the theatre that by promptitude and the bold use of an uncommanded sea it could be reduced to something far more correct. by continuing the advance of the korean army into manchuria and landing another force between it and the port arthur army the three corps could be concentrated and the vicious separation of the lines of operations turned to good account. they could be combined in such a way as to threaten an enveloping counter-attack on liao-yang before the russian offensive concentration could be completed. not only was liao-yang the russian point of concentration, but it also was a sound position both for defending [pg 83] korea and covering the siege of port arthur. once secured, it gave the japanese all the advantages of defence and forced the russians to exhaust themselves in offensive operations which were beyond their strength. nor was it only ashore that this advantage was gained. the success of the system, which culminated in the fall of port arthur, went further still. not only did it make japan relatively superior at sea, but it enabled her to assume a naval defensive and so to force the final naval decision on russia with every advantage of time, place, and strength in her own favour.

by the battle of tsushima the territorial object was completely isolated by sea, and the position of japan in korea was rendered as impregnable as that of wellington at torres vedras. all that remained was to proceed to the third stage and demonstrate to russia that the acceptance of the situation that had been set up was more to her advantage than the further attempt to break it down. this the final advance to mukden accomplished, and japan obtained her end very far short of having overthrown her enemy. the offensive power of russia had never been so strong, while that of japan was almost if not quite exhausted.

approached in this way, the far eastern struggle is seen to develop on the same lines as all our great maritime wars of the past, which continental strategists have so persistently excluded from their field of study. it presents the normal three phases—the initial offensive movement to seize the territorial object, the secondary phase, which forces an attenuated offensive on the enemy, and the final stage of pressure, in which there is a return to the offensive "according," as jomini puts it, "to circumstances and your relative force in order to obtain the cession desired."

it must not of course be asked that these phases shall be always clearly defined. strategical analysis can never give exact results. it aims only at approximations, at groupings which will serve to guide but will always leave much to the [pg 84] judgment. the three phases in the russo-japanese war, though unusually well defined, continually overlapped. it must be so; for in war the effect of an operation is never confined to the limits of its immediate or primary intention. thus the occupation of korea had the secondary defensive effect of covering the home country, while the initial blow which admiral togo delivered at port arthur to cover the primary offensive movement proved, by the demoralisation it caused in the russian fleet, to be a distinct step in the secondary phase of isolating the conquest. in the later stages of the war the line between what was essential to set up the second phase of perfecting the isolation and the third phase of general pressure seems to have grown very nebulous.

it was at this stage that the japanese strategy has been most severely criticised, and it was just here they seem to have lost hold of the conception of a limited war, if in fact they had ever securely grasped the conception as the elder pitt understood it. it has been argued that in their eagerness to deal a blow at the enemy's main army they neglected to devote sufficient force to reduce port arthur, an essential step to complete the second phase. whether or not the exigencies of the case rendered such distribution of force inevitable or whether it was due to miscalculation of difficulties, the result was a most costly set-back. for not only did it entail a vast loss of time and life at port arthur itself, but when the sortie of the russian fleet in june brought home to them their [pg 85] error, the offensive movement on liao-yang had to be delayed, and the opportunity passed for a decisive counter-stroke at the enemy's concentration ashore.

this misfortune, which was to cost the japanese so dear, may perhaps be attributed at least in part to the continental influences under which their army had been trained. we at least can trace the unlimited outlook in the pages of the german staff history. in dealing with the japanese plan of operations it is assumed that the occupation of korea and the isolation of port arthur were but preliminaries to a concentric advance on liao-yang, "which was kept in view as the first objective of the operations on land." but surely on every theory of the war the first objective of the japanese on land was seoul, where they expected to have to fight their first important action against troops advancing from the yalu; and surely their second was port arthur, with its fleet and arsenal, which they expected to reduce with little more difficulty than they had met with ten years before against the chinese. such at least was the actual progression of events, and a criticism which regards operations of such magnitude and ultimate importance as mere incidents of strategic deployment is only to be explained by the domination of the napoleonic idea of war, against the universal application of which clausewitz so solemnly protested. it is the work of men who have a natural difficulty in conceiving a war plan that does not culminate in a jena or a sedan. it is a view surely which is the child of theory, bearing no relation to the actuality of the war in question and affording no explanation of its ultimate success. the truth is, that so long as the japanese acted on the principles of limited war, as laid down by clausewitz and jomini and plainly deducible from our own [pg 86] rich experience, they progressed beyond all their expectations, but so soon as they departed from them and suffered themselves to be confused with continental theories they were surprised by unaccountable failure.

the expression "limited war" is no doubt not entirely happy. yet no other has been found to condense the ideas of limited object and limited interest, which are its special characteristics. still if the above example be kept in mind as a typical case, the meaning of the term will not be mistaken. it only remains to emphasise one important point. the fact that the doctrine of limited war traverses the current belief that our primary objective must always be the enemy's armed forces is liable to carry with it a false inference that it also rejects the corollary that war means the use of battles. nothing is further from the conception. whatever the form of war, there is no likelihood of our ever going back to the old fallacy of attempting to decide wars by manoeuvres. all forms alike demand the use of battles. by our fundamental theory war is always "a continuation of political intercourse, in which fighting is substituted for writing notes." however great the controlling influence of the political object, it must never obscure the fact that it is by fighting we have to gain our end.

it is the more necessary to insist on this point, for the idea of making a piece of territory your object is liable to be confused with the older method of conducting war, in which armies were content to manoeuvre for strategical positions, and a battle came almost to be regarded as a mark of bad generalship. with such parading limited war has nothing to do. its conduct differs only from that of unlimited war in that instead of having to destroy our enemy's whole power of resistance, we need only overthrow so much of his active force as he is able or willing to bring to bear in order to prevent or terminate our occupation of the territorial object.

the first consideration, then, in entering on such a war is to endeavour to determine what the force will amount to. it [pg 87] will depend, firstly, on the importance the enemy attaches to the limited object, coupled with the nature and extent of his preoccupations elsewhere, and, secondly, it will depend upon the natural difficulties of his lines of communication and the extent to which we can increase those difficulties by our conduct of the initial operations. in favourable circumstances therefore (and here lies the great value of the limited form) we are able to control the amount of force we shall have to encounter. the most favourable circumstances and the only circumstances by which we ourselves can profit are such as permit the more or less complete isolation of the object by naval action, and such isolation can never be established until we have entirely overthrown the enemy's naval forces.

here, then, we enter the field of naval strategy. we can now leave behind us the theory of war in general and, in order to pave the way to our final conclusions, devote our attention to the theory of naval warfare in particular.