officers is thus greater than ever it was, and the ideal would be to
have in each battalion 64 section commanders, each capable of
leading and training their sections in the use of the weapons with
which they are armed. The 16 platoon commanders and their
seconds-in-command will have to be experts in teaching the uses
of all platoon weapons and in the tactical handling of the sections
in the use of ground. The achievement of this ideal should leave
company and battalion commanders free to think out and
practise with their units the best methods of cooperating the
platoon weapons with the battalion weapons (the machine-gun
and the light mortar) and of coordinating these with the other
arms (artillery, tanks and aircraft).
Under peace-time conditions this ideal may remain a dream owing to the scarcity of men with whom to carry out any form of training. Also the battalions serving in peace-time at home suffer under the additional burden of completing the elementary training of all recruits, because these are only partially exercised at the regimental depots which they join on enlistment. The civilian is apt to think that a battalion 700 strong has 700 men with which to train itself for war, but in practice it is fortunate if it can muster a single company at a time for training owing to the demands made for drafts and peace duties. Another great hindrance to British training is involved in the fact that the commanders of home battalions are compelled to furnish from their units, and send abroad every year, all the drafts which are required by their linked battalions serving overseas. But, as if these hindrances were insufficient, an even greater difficulty is caused by what are commonly known as " employments." These are of two kinds: (a) " employments " carried out by the battalion in peace and war, and (6) " employments " carried out by the battalion in peace only. The latter may be servants to staff and departmental officers, gardeners, men employed in regimental institutes, or at brigade, divisional or command head- quarters, grooms of officers outside the battalion, etc. These are the type of employments which eat the heart and sold out of every company commander, and which militate against his efficient training for war. Two remedies at least are obvious, but like all transparent truths are slow to be adopted. In the first place the need is for some form of " employment company " to be established in peace, as it had been in the war, to relieve battalions of such servitude. In the second place, the regimental depots might be so reorganized as to turn out recruits fit to take their places in their sections and platoons, and capable of taking part in company training, whether at home or abroad, directly they join any battalion. Without these two indispensable reforms the problem of training the British infantry for a future war is likely to continue unsolved.
Before proceeding to describe what infantry does, it may be useful to emphasize one outstanding diffirence between British and continental European organizations, namely, the absence from the British service of any regimental personnel. British brigades are composed of four single battalions which lack regi- mental unity of moral and tradition, as well as the habit of work- ing together in peace-time. Nor are the brigades even permanently constituted as are the continental regiments. There are com- pensating advantages, due to garrisons scattered over an empire with the valuable experience of service overseas. But all the facts do not seem to have been taken into consideration by those who framed peace and war establishments after 1871, or they would surely have compensated battalion commanders for the first line transport and other services which depleted their ranks. Indeed, from whatever angle British battalions are viewed in detail, they appear to exist only on sufferance; and constantly an endeavour becomes visible to make one man count as two. When this calculation has been successfully achieved it is found that training has invariably been sacrificed. The band however always remains.
The Rdle of Infantry. The question is sometimes, " What is the use of Infantry? Is it not butchery to expose men on foot to the mechanical horrors of the battle-field of to-day?" A sooth- sayer occasionally declares: " There is no place left in battle for a man as a fighting entity his role is that of a machine tender."
But man, on foot, is still more universally mobile than any ma- chine. In his agility still rests the key to unlock the fastnesses which no machine yet invented can enter wherein his fellow man can hide himself. The more destructive weapons become the more does man seek impregnable shelter in which he can escape the missiles of death-dealing machines. But where man has entered, there also man can follow to seek him out, and until the assailant possesses a mechanical octopus he must himself go in to dislodge his adversary. The appliances manufactured by invent- ive genius only help to break down the barriers to this final act of combat. Man in war cannot be beaten until he owns himself beaten. Experience of all war proves this truth. So long as war persists as an instrument of policy the objects of that policy can- not be attained until the opponent admits defeat. Total exter- mination, even if it were possible, would recoil on the victor in the close-knit organization of the world's society, and might involve his own moral and commercial ruin. Moreover it is unnecessary. In all war, man, immediately he realizes that his opponent is permanently superior, and directly he has no further hope of victory, yields. To this history bears witness.
Therefore victory produces a moral rather than a material result. To conquer one has to make the enemy feel the force of a superiority which shakes his faith in his own power to win. This demoralization is achieved by a concrete manifestation. Military history testifies that the infliction of casualties does not produce it as a certainty. The survivor alone retains the power to admit defeat, and must therefore be made to feel the superiority of his opponent. The concrete proof of this to him lies in being driven back not a few yards only, for his moral will survive that but in being hurled back in confusion. The demoralization which begets a conviction of inferiority also comes from the break-up of organization. When the parts .do not function hope vanishes.
Now, the greater the progress in weapons, the more far-reach- ing is their range of destruction. But this greater range brings with it its own counterpoise. The man on the battle-field feels that it is no use to run. Speed of foot will not outstrip the velocity of the projectile, and, as there is little hope of safety in flight, he stands his ground in desperation and seeks to hide from the missiles. He becomes fatalistic, resigned to death. Terror of the machine has overstepped its aim. In such mental state man is no longer guided by his instinct of self-preservation. Tempo- rarily he is akin to an animal confronted by some inhuman threat which it does not understand. It remains motionless, petrified, awaiting its doom, until it perceives some living agency behind the threat. Then only are its senses restored and its instinct of self-preservation revived. It flees. So with men on the battle- field. The sense of defeat, of inferiority, can only be achieved by an agency which is tangible and human. Man needs something from which to run some tangible oncoming danger from which escape is possible. The hostile infantry supplies it in human form. Even in panics, when no real enemy is present, the images created by hallucination are those of human pursuers.
It is the infantry, and the infantry alone, which can bring about retreat or surrender in the open field and so place the cop- ing stone victory on the edifice of battle. A great artillery bombardment will drive the enemy to ground, but even where great concentration of shell-fire is achieved, it cannot dislodge him. He is safer in his dug-out than in flight. The tank is tangi- ble, it is true, and therefore less petrifying, but man can avoid it or hide from it more easily than from infantry. Moreover it is less agile, more cumbersome, more limited in its modes of action than the foot-soldier. There are types of obstacles which it can- not yet surmount, ground which will not bear its weight, or which is too rough or steep to cross. Cavalry, like infantry, is a human arm, but it affords too easy a target, is too quickly stopped by rifle or machine-gun fire, and is less mobile on rugged and broken ground. Its superior speed is insufficient compensation for these drawbacks except against broken and flying infantry. Thus we see that infantry is the sole decisive arm in battle, that its power is based on huma'n rather than on material factors, and that its tactics spring from moral elements of which the chief is fear.
If therefore we wish to understand the action of infantry we
