Detroit evening times. (Detroit, Mich) 1921-1958, 1943-05-17
The World in RerieW:
Who Runs the War? Part y


at an advantage and the opposing troops at
disadvantage.
To use third military term, there is the
broad and difficult problem of "logistics,
which is the art of moving men and materials
in war. Back of the moving of men and
materials there lies the field of raising fight
ing men. feeding and equipping them and
furnishing supplies FOR them, without stint
and without failure.
COME of the functions embraced IN these
y varied operations are distinctly profess
sional, the part of the soldier and the sailor
He understands them as no one without the
training of a soldier or sailor can under
stand them. This applies first of all and
particularly to tactics
II does not suffice for one to be merely
an historian Of tactics and know how troops
were led and commanded at Gettysburg or at
Chapultepuc or at Brandywine. or at Blen-
helm, or in more ancient conflicts Of arms,
because tactics is changing subject and for
this very reason even old soldier who
fought, for example, in the first World War,
and mastered the4aeties- that Roeh-naY
not be considered competent TO pass upon the
tactics Of this war.
Tactics change because weapons change.
With every considerable alteration in the
weapons Of destruction, the organization Of
troops, in units and in numbers, has to change,
too and the manner Of approach TO battle and
engagement in battle alters radically.
The battalion in solid close formation of
Napoleons day gave way TO the three file line
of the Civil War and then TO the widely ex-
tended skirmsh formation of the Spanish
American War, and now to the small, isolated
Of pia rIa
Independently penetrating the enemys posi-
ton iniltrating behind his lines. All of these
methods are very different one from another
all evolved at times when the weapons in
mems hands had changed.
As HAVE already said tactics, by all
"A agreement, is a professional subject. 1t
has to be engaged in TO be understood. 1t re-
qures a combination of moral qualities added
TO experience.
As technical professional matter, it is TO
be attained only by actual engagement in
arms; it can not be expected to be learned in
the study chair or in the corner drug store or
barber shop. Only the men actually prac-
ticng it are really competent to criticize il.
But strategy, the art of high command.
curiousy is capable of being understood by
those who are not soldiers and sailors. For
while it is the function of the general and of
the admiral it is actually simpler than tactics.
1t rests upon principles that do not change
from century to century and it is possible by
study and reflection to understand these prn-
ciples and even to apply them.
4 BOVE strategy in its truly military sense,
n there is something still higher in which
the soldier and the sailor usually participate
only as counselors and in which the supreme
decisions are made by the civilian heads.
This is the general planning of a war or
wars, the general policy with respect to the
maintenance and use of armed forces. This
is sometimes called grand strategy, but let us
call it instead, general strategy
1t is inseparable from politics. 1t is in
sense the politics Of war, the governmental
side, the public side. and one which must au-
thortatively be decided by governmental au-
thority, and being in part political, in
representative government it should be par
ticipated in by the people themselves