the discussions of the past score of years. Great battles, great surrenders, the startling milestones of a campaign or a war, remain vividly impressed upon minds that may never have appreciated or suspected the underlying strean. of causes which from time to time emerges in these coicuous results. And as such popular recusa tion is essentially narrow in scope, so the matters to which it relates are the most narrowly technical, and consequently those which in fact it can least accurately weigh. A general outcome --victory or defeat-is within its comprehension; the fitness or the errors of the military means employed are much less so, except in very general statement. Politicians, doubtless, find the same in their campaigns. Broad considerations of policy, appreciation of conditions, especially those of the future, which correspond to the strategic diagnosis of the warrior, are much less effective at the moment than some telling phrase, or suggestion of immediate interest, which can be quickly fashioned into a campaign cry that halloes down reasonable opposition. Such victories, however, are fruitless in war or in politics. Unless the position won is strategically decisive, by its correspondence to the conditions of the war or of the nation, the battle might as well, or better, never have been fought. In military affairs the choice of action, being in the hands of one man, may by him be determined, for good or ill, without regard to his followers; and in the analogous position of a despotic ruler, where ability exists, a fortunate solution may be reached independent of popular will. Happily for those who love freedom, this case is rare. In popular government the foresight of the statesman must wait upon the conversion of the people, often extorted only by the hard logic of experience. The good of national conviction and support must be purchased at the expense of national suffering, consequent upon the slowness of national comprehension of conditions not at once apparent. Yet in the end it is the country ahead, not that behind, which will control the course of the river. Justly appreciated, military affairs are but one side of the politics of a nation, and therefore concern each indiVail who has an interest in the gov. ernment of the State. They form part of a closely related whole; and, putting aside the purely professional details, which relate mostly to the actual clash of arms.-the province of tactics,-military preparations should be determined chiefly by those broad political considerations which affect the relations of States one to another, or of the several parts of the same State to the common defence. Defence, let it be said parenthetically to the non-military reader, implies not merely what shall be done to repel attack, but what is necessary to do in order that attack may not be attempted, or, if undertaken, may be resisted elsewhere than at the national frontier, be that land or sea. From this point of view, which is strictly accurate, defence may be defined broadly as provision for national well-being by military means. It was the primary misfortune, or, more correctly, the primary error of Russia, that by neglect of this provision her statesmen placed her in such a condition that, upon the outbreak of the recent war, she was forced at once into a position of pure defence, the scene of which was her own frontier, land and sea, as constituted through her several measures of acquisition or aggression during the preceding years of peace. From what has been said, it will appear that such considerations as may naturally arise from the naval point of view, through reflection upon the still recent war, will divide into two classes: those that concern the direction of national policies, and those which affect the construction, armament, and management of fleets, which, in the last analysis, are simply instruments of national policy. The question, for instance, of the possession, fortification, and development of Port Arthur, as a naval station, as was done by Russia is one of broad national ey; one upon which every naval State has to reach decisions in reference to the ports available for naval purposes, which it may control in various quarters of the world; one also concerning which there obtain, in both military and naval circles, differences of opinions that have to be weighed by governments. On the other hand, the question whether Port Arthur, developed as it had been by Russia, and under the other existing conditions, should have been abandoned at the beginning, as some contend, or retained and obstinately defended, as it actually was, is more closely military in scope; although, belonging as it does to the province of strategy, the arguments pro and con can be more easily and quickly apprehended by the nonprofessional mind. Conversely, it is open to argument whether Japan was well advised to attach as much importance as her course of action indicated to the downfall of the fortress, its actual capture, as distinguished from neutralizing its military effect by a simple corps of observation, sufficient to prevent evacuation by the garrison to reinforce the Russian field army, or to stop the entrance of reinforcements or supplies from without, which might prolong resistance. This question also is military in character; and strategical, not tactical. It affects the conduct of the war, and by no means necessarily the wisdom of the decision of the Russian Government to establish an adequate naval base at that point. Whatever opinion may be held as to the proper line of action in the particular instance, once war was begun, it is quite conceivable that a government may be perfectly justified, by considerations of general policy, in establishing a military or naval base for the support of one of its frontiers at some particular point, and yet that, by c ditions of subsequent moment, the ander-in-chief on the spot, or his superiors at home, may properly decide that the exigencies of the immediate situation dictate its abandonment. These immediate conditions may be imputable as a fault to either the government or its general; they may arise from inadequate preparation by the one or mistaken management by the other; but they do not therefore necessarily impeach the wisdom of the original decision, which rested upon quite other grounds. It is precisely the same in other incidents of statesmanship. One administration may secure a national advantage of far-reaching importance, which a successor may forfeit by carelessness in improvement, or by some mismanaged negotiation; by prolonged neglect, or by a single mistake. Neither outcome would condemn the original measure, which rests on its own merits; recognizing the possibilities, and presupposing-quite legitimately-a consistent furtherance of the steps first taken. Such considerations are so obvious that the statement of them at length may probably seem tedious. Yet I am confident that it is the failure thus explicitly to analyze to one's self the several lights in which a complex problem may be regarded, the tendency to view them too exclusively together, as a composite single result, that leads to much confusion of thought, with the probable consequence of erroneous determination. Take, for instance, the question of the speed of battleships. No one will deny for an instant that, other things being equal, additional speed-the highest-is desirable. This, however, is not the question. It is the question mixed up with the assumption But the expen that other things are equal, that you are getting your additional speed for nothing; or, to express it otherwise, there is the momentary forgetfulness that omething else in the way of efficiency must be sacrinced, and that, when a certain speed has been attained, small increment must be purchased at a very great sacrifice. What shall the sacrifice be? Gun power? Then your vessel, when she has overtaken her otherwise equal enemy, will be inferior in offensive power. Armor? Then she will be more vulnerable. Something of the coal she would carry? diture of coal in ever increasing ratio is a vital factor in your cherished speed. If you can give up none of these things, and it is demonstrable that without some sacrifice you cannot get the speed, will you then-and this is what all navies are now doing-increase the size of the ship? Yes, you say, by all means. Well then, where will you stop? Or, the same question in other words, what will you sacrifice in order to get your greater dimensions? you have fewer ships; smaller numbers with larger individual power? You will sacrifice numbers? Then you sacrifice so far that power of combination which is essential to military dispositions, whether they relate to the distribution of the fleet in peace, with reference to possible war, or to the exigencies of the campaign, or to the battlefield. But, if the final decision be we will have numbers as well, then the reply is you must sacrifice money; which, starting from the question of speed, brings us face to face with one of the great present problems of national policy among all naval nations, the size of the budget. For the line of reasoning which applies to the 18,000 or 20,000 ton ship will hold good when you have reached 30,000, and your neighbor "goes one better," by laying down one of 32,000. Will This question of speed, thus developed, may be illustrated perfectly aptly from that of Port Arthur. In the case of that port, the question, fully stated, was not simply, "Is the position in itself one good for Russia to keep, or for Japan to capture?" It was, "Is the place worth the sacrifice which must be made to hold or to win it?" If Russia who keep it, she must sacrifice from Kuropatkin's too small army some forty or fifty thousand men. If Japan was bent on taking, she must withdraw from her field army to the siege operations, from first to last, from seventyfive to one hundred thousand; and, if she was in a hurry, she must be prepared for the further sacrifice, otherwise unnecessary, of many thousands of lives, in the desperate assaults made to hasten the end. It is to be supposed that each party measured adequately the sacrifice either way, and took the alternative adopted in full view of the cost; yet it is by no means sure that this was the case. It is at least very possible that to each Port Arthur derived its importance from attention fixed upon it to the exclusion of qualifying considerations; as may be supposed the case with speed, from the extravagant demands now made for it in ships, the chief function of which should be to give and to take hard knocks, and that not severally, but in conjunction with others of their like, which we style a fleet. The question of Port Arthur, indeed, was one so important in the general campaign up to the moment of its fall, and afterwards by the effect upon subsequent operations of the delay caused by the siege, that among military critics it has given rise to very diverse opinions, affecting more or less the question of national policy in establishing such bases. Where there is found on the one side the unqualified assertion of a cardinal mistake by the Russians in 1 The Japanese losses at the siege have been estimated at 56,000. "Journal of the Royal Artillery," October 1905, p. 322. not at once evacuating a position which could not be ultimately held, and concentrating with Kuropatkin every available soldier, and on the other an equally sharp criticism by soldiers-not by seamen-of Japan for having diverted so many troops from Oyama ás seriously to affect the vigor and conclusiveness of his operations, thereby enabling the enemy continually to escape, it is clear that the argument is not wholly one-sided. If the Japanese were compelled, or induced, it matters little which, to devote to the siege a number of men who in the early part of the war might have been used decisively against Kuropatkin's relatively feeble army, it follows that the leaving the place garrisoned had an effect favorable to the Russians at a very critical moment. That the Japanese felt compelled, and really were compelled, to their course can scarcely be doubted, unless one views the land and sea campaigns as wholly separate operations. For purposes of discussion they may be so severed, but actually they were one whole; and ultimate conclusions cannot be accurately reached without bearing in mind their interrelation. It was essential to the Russians to protract the land campaign, to gain time to develop their naval strength; it was essential to the Japanese to destroy the fleet in Port Arthur before such development, in order to secure the sea communications upon which their land campaign depended. To ensure this end it was imperative to gain control of the port. That the Russians actually made no adequate use of the chance obtained for them by its prolonged resistance is nothing to the purpose. It is difficult to find an adjective fitted to characterize the apathy of the Port Arthur division or the delays in despatching the Baltic fleet. The fact remains that they had their chance through the protraction of the siege. My own opinion from the first has been, and now continues, that regarded in itself alone, and with reference to the land campaign only, the retention by Russia was corre+ ard that, haval campaign in its en ety been managed with anything like the ability shown by Kuropatkin, the event of the war in Manchuria might have been different. That to naval success a long tenure of Port Arthur was absolutely essential is too obvious for comment; but imagine the effect upon negotiations, had the conditions on shore, including the fall of Port Arthur, been precisely as they were when peace was signed, but that a timely previous co-operation between the Port Arthur and 'Baltic divisions had left the Russians in sure control of the sea. That the view here outlined was held by the Japanese, rightly or wrongly, is clear from the persistence of Admiral Togo in his attempts to block the port, and to injure the fleet within by long range firing; and afterwards from the sustained vigorous character of the prolonged siege operations. We now know that in the Russian naval sorties of June 23 and August 10 the Japanese had but four battleships to the Russian's six on the spot. Togo, doubtless, could not have anticipated so cruel a stroke of fate as that which, on May 15, 1904, deprived him of two battleships in one day by submarine mines; but, whatever the value of his fleet in its largest numbers, it was quite evident that the Russian fleet, "in being" in Port Arthur, by itself alone constituted a perpetual menace to the sea communications of Japan, the absolutely determining factor of the war; while taken in connection with the Russian Baltic fleet, still in existence, the possibilities of fatal disaster to the Japanese depended wholly upon the skill with which the Russians managed the naval resources remaining to them after the first torpedo attack of February 8, and upon the time they were But the expen that other things are equal, that you are getting your additional speed for nothing; or, to express it otherwise, there is the momentary forgetfulness that something else in the way of efficiency must be sacrificed, and that, when a certain speed has been attained, " increment must be purchased at a very great sacrifice. What shall the sacrifice be? Gun power? Then your vessel, when she has overtaken her otherwise equal enemy, will be inferior in offensive power. Armor? Then she will be more vulnerable. Something of the coal she would carry? diture of coal in ever increasing ratio is a vital factor in your cherished speed. If you can give up none of these things, and it is demonstrable that without some sacrifice you cannot get the speed, will you then-and this is what all navies are now doing-increase the size of the ship? Yes, you say, by all means. Well then, where will you stop? Or, the same question in other words, what will you sacrifice in order to get your greater dimensions? you have fewer ships; smaller numbers with larger individual power? You will sacrifice numbers? Then you sacrifice so far that power of combination which is essential to military dispositions, whether they relate to the distribution of the fleet in peace, with reference to possible war, or to the exigencies of the campaign, or to the battlefield. But, if the final decision be we will have numbers as well, then the reply is you must sacrifice money; which, starting from the question of speed, brings us face to face with one of the great present problems of national policy among all naval nations, the size of the budget. For the line of reasoning which applies to the 18,000 or 20,000 ton ship will hold good when you have reached 30,000, and your neighbor "goes one better," by laying down one of 32,000. Will This question of speed, thus developed, may be illustrated perfectly aptly from that of Port Arthur. In the case of that port, the question, fully stated, was not simply, "Is the position in itself one good for Russia to keep, or for Japan to capture?" It was, "Is the place worth the sacrifice which must be made to hold or to win it?" If Russia who to keep it, she must sacrifice from Kuropatkin's too small army some forty or fifty thousand men. If Japan was bent on taking, she must withdraw from her field army to the siege operations, from first to last, from seventyfive to one hundred thousand; and, if she was in a hurry, she must be prepared for the further sacrifice, otherwise unnecessary, of many thousands of lives, in the desperate assaults made to hasten the end. It is to be supposed that each party measured adequately the sacrifice either way, and took the alternative adopted in full view of the cost; yet it is by no means sure that this was the case. It is at least very possible that to each Port Arthur derived its importance from attention fixed upon it to the exclusion of qualifying considerations; as may be supposed the case with speed, from the extravagant demands now made for it in ships, the chief function of which should be to give and to take hard knocks, and that not severally, but in conjunction with others of their like, which we style a fleet. The question of Port Arthur, indeed, was one so important in the general campaign up to the moment of its fall, and afterwards by the effect upon subsequent operations of the delay caused by the siege, that among military critics it has given rise to very diverse opinions, affecting more or less the question of national policy in establishing such bases. Where there is found on the one side the unqualified assertion of a cardinal mistake by the Russians in 1 The Japanese losses at the siege have been estimated at 56,000. "Journal of the Royal Artillery," October 1905, p. 322. |