The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1897-07-25
srAxEUvERING MODERN ARMIES.
Their LarSeness Has a Tendency to
Make Them NmmobiIe.
From the London Spectator.


From the London Spectator.
We are by no means sure that armies
at the end of the nineteenth century ara
not to some extent in the condition of the
armies of the last few years of the eighI
teenth century. No doubt, the modern
generals are or, shall we say, seem. less
sleeply-headed than the old bewia-ged Aus
trians and Prussians, though they, it must
be remembered, were in their day reck-
oned men Of science, but at the same time
we expect that good deal of our modern
military organization has become stiff a ID
impractical. We shall be told, no doubt.
that the Prussian army went like clock>
work in 1870, but we must be allowed to-
doubt whether the clCckwork is quite as
good now as It was theu in spite of APP
pearances. Besides Prussia had just The
very force opposed to her in 1870 against
which good clockWork would be sure to.
PREVAIL piece of bogus military mech,
anism. Whether Prussia WoulG have had
an easy victory if some FrencEman had
| arisen capable of organizing and using d
really mobile force of sixty thousand men
is another question. 1t is possible tina.
such a spear-head stuck into the clock.
work might have done a great deal Of
damage That, however, is speculation.
What we do know is that the Prussiaa
army was a splendid lighting organism
at the end of the seven years war, ana
that at Jena, some forty years ago, IL
proved utterly unable to meet NapoleanS
| quick, fierce assault.
In spite then, of the magnificent organ~
| ization of the present European armies,
and of their vast size, we believe it to be-,
quite possible that some new Alexander
may arise who will organize a new meth
cd Of fighting, which, for time, at any
4 e a.. a
| greatness to ruin. OF courses, such a ge-
| MUS in the art of war may never get to-
| the front, but that his opportunity exists
! in the present bloated ornaments we have
| no sort of doubt Yet it will be said, how
| about the big battalons? All military au-
| thorities agree that in the end, and consid.
| ering that the European nations are prac-
| tically equal in courage and morale, tho
! way to win a battle is to confront five mena
! of the enemy with eight, or, if possible.
! ten, men of your own. That proves that:
| the big armies will always beat the smal?'
| BY no means. 1t is becauses We entirely
| and absolutely acquiesce in the big battal-
! ions theOry-"Providence is on the side Of
| the big battalions," was Napoleon's die
tum-that we hold that small and properly
organized mobile armies viii beat tha
huge, unwieldy armies that the modern
| European strategists contemplate putting
into the field.
! Remember. your big battalions must COM
| front the little battalion not on paper, but
! on the ground. Hence, If body of twen-
! ty thousand men can be swiftly and sud-
| denly confronted with a body of forty
| thousand the big battalions rule is on
| the side of the forty thousand. The fact
| that the twenty thousand belong to an or
! ganizati which has a couple of hundred
| thousand men behind it does not matter
| Unless the two hundred thousand men ara
available at the moment they do not
| count.
An extremely mobile army, ready to
| spring first in one direction and then in
| another, is quite capable of beating am
army three or four times it's size, and
| beating it always, by having a substan-
tial majority of combatants in every ac-
| tual engagement. OF course, the big army
may be so splendidly organized that 1t wilk
be quite as mobile, if not more mobile.
than the small army. In that case tho
| small army will be swallowed whole. Alb
| we contend is that the hugeness of the Eu-
ropean armies tends 70 make them immO~
| bile and that, therefore, ii Is always pos
| sible that some clever invention In the di-
rection of intense mobility may give VIC
tory to a small and apparently not par-
| ticularly well-found army in other re-
| gDpCtS.