14 ANCIENT AND MODERN METHODS OF WARFARE "' Outline. 7. Introduction. 2. Man responsible for bringing about changes. 3.

Ttie way to control the external forces. 4. ; War is no new thing. 5. Methods have changed. 6. Difference between the modern and ancient methods : of warfare. Great changes have been brought about in the last hundred years or so. There are grounds to believe that the world we live in is the outcome of a gradual process of evolution and that this process is f, still going on. Apart from the biological evolution of the species, however, which is a matter of millions of years, other, minor processes of evolution are constantly going on. These are like eddies in the steady flow of a stream, the influx and out flux of smaller waves in one big wave rushing onwards, the ripples near the bank which appear and disappear apparently regardless of the flow of the main stream, but in reality the result of the currents and cross-currents in it. Man himself is the result of the evolutionary process of millions of years, so that every little line that appears on your forehead has a history behind it, 53 and may be traced back to the very beginning of time. But man himself is responsible for bringing about changes-he is not a mere plaything, not merely the inert outcome of different forces working upon him, but a conscious weapon of all. He destroys and recreates and moulds. And he has reached a stage where he has seen able to capture and control forces that seem to be inexhaustible in their possibilities. From the very beginning of his history he has been struggling with internal forces anc! trying to subdue them are but the victories he has scored in recent years, have surpassed all. That he had previously triumphed. The way to control the external forces was considerable accelerated in the last century, so that the changes wrought were so rapid and astonishing that man was bewildered. As he went on, he gathered momentum, every new one easier and more speedy. The result is before us to-day. Is not war that has cropped due to it? But war is no new thing. The warring instinct in man is as old as he himself, it was born with him, and some say it will die only when he himself dies. The rapid and revolutionary changes wrought in the external world by new inventions have not changed man essentially, for this "progress" is progress only in one direction divorced from progress in other directions. Intellectually njan has advanced, emotionally he is the same. Biologically, man is still in a slow process of evolution, and it may take him millions of years yet to become different in his mental habits from what he is to-day. The world we live in is vastly different from the Athens of the third century-even from the Europe of the 18th century-but the poet, the philosopher and even the man in the street of to-day arc in no way better than those of the third century. Hence man is as quarrelsome today as he

was yet in his infancy, only he has found belter weapons of destruction loday. While he killed-or made a clumsy, inartistic attempt at killing-wit IT a stone in the stone age, he is now able to kill with a rifle-speedily, scientifically, neatly. This is almost all the difference that has come about in man as a warning animal. Yet this difference is a very great difference indeed! The savage fought and killed, but he fought single-handed, and he killed but a few, in spite of all his efforts. War was then a very petty affair-even such wars as Seven Years War and the Crimean War54 55 look like petty quarrels when compared with wars of today. Thhen the savage killed less. There were widows then, and orphans, biut they were few nought. War was a matter of personal bravery; it w^as very much like a football match of to-day-it was a sport, more savuggc than football, but conducted on the same principles. The combatanUs were trying to win glory, and if heads rolled instead of rubber balls it was only because the methods of winning glory happened to be different from those in a football match. The medieval knights tilted ait each other in sport, unhorsed each other, killed each other, and! were crowned with laurels for doing so. The warrior was everywhere the most glorious figure in society. The methods have changed. The scythe has been replacced by the moving machine. Today war has became a vastly bigger affair. The scale has changed. Where we killed in hundreds we now i kill in millions. Science has given us weapons which are not only more effective and deadly, but which have also a large field. Machines, rather than of man, fight to day. It is fight of tanks and aerorplanes ratbers than of men. Battleship fights battleship now, of course rman is there to work the machine, and he does matter-he has to I be as courageous as his ancestors used to be, he requires as much presence of mind and resourcefulness, but it is after all the machine; that matters. It is not the more courageous one who wins, but th<e one whole has the better machine. This substitution of man by machine has resulted irn the passing away of that glory from which once always accompanied it. Now, when you kill, you do not even know that you have killed-certainly not whom you have killed. When the ancient warrior lolled his man he felt triumphant. You may kill a thousand today and you will feel anything but disgust if you d^on't happened t<o be altogether an idiot. But 1 is not merely on account of the passing away olf the glory that surrounded King Arthur of old that war has thus become disgusting. It is rather because warfare is today more destructive, bloody and ravaging than it ever was before. The battles of the past were fought in the battlefields, the battles of todays foughl in ervi-ry home of the countries involved. The battles of the past were naimed after places, the battles of today after continents. There are no b idles of Blenheim and of Plassey now-we have battles of Europe and of

'' t

Africa instead. When Germany and England fought it was not merely

the soldiers whom they sent to fight that were in danger, the civilian ^ living far away from the scene of actual battle may died sooner than

his son fighting in the field. The arm of the R.A.F. was long, and of the Luftwaffe too. The very conception of war, therefore, is altogether changed to-day. While war was comparatively an isolated affair in the past it is * to-day an affair in which everyone is involved. Of course, wars always

had their effects on the whole nation, so that the pocket of the merchant who had never handled a gun was affected by a victory or defeat. But it is not merely the pocket that is now affected, it is the head which has to be protected in under-ground air shelters. The wars

of today are won and lost in factories, and a labourer helping in ^ producing a part of a machine-gun is "striking as much at the enemy as

the soldier who handles it when it is ready. There was a time when two tribes would exterminate each other, and no one sixty miles away would be any the wiser. Then came the time when two nations fought and other nations far away knew nothing of their wars. Today it is the whole world that is fighting, and every man and woman of the world, so that the different countries are but so many armed camps. This chainge in scale has necessarily led to other changes in tae methods of warfare. It is not merely that we fight scientific wars instead of fighting with mere man-power. It is not merely a question of change of weapons, or means of warfare. It is not even a mere change in the scale of the war. It is question of change of the whole psychology of war. Modern warfare is a warfare of machines; it is also a warfare Of nations, an ^f air of the whole world-but more than that it is a warfare of nerv-. ; liven to-day, in spite of the

introduction of machines and our rcLmce on them it is ultimately the man that counts. It is morale of the nation that counts more than anything else. What had the English when the Second World War began? They had much less than the French, who had been equipping themselves for war while the English had been sleeping. Yet France succumbed at the first blow while England stood firm. It was because of the moral of the British. Those who conduct the war of to-day know this, and therefore, along with the war of machines there goes on the much more deadly57 56 war of words. Much more is wrought by propaganda than the world dreams of. The Press today is a more effective weapon than even tanks, for it is the Press,-and the radio, toowhich keeps war going. Propaganda, therefore, has become a vital part of warfare to-day. The difference between the modern and ancient methods of warfare is thus very great indeed. It is so vast that we may well hesitate in giving the same name to two very different phenomena. The wars of the past seem to be no wars at all, it seemed that then people did not fight, they only played. Today they fight. Today it is not fire and sword that is carried to another country, it is death itself. We don't toy today with our weapons, we use them. While the older wars were wars between man and man, the present war is war between men and men. And yet if we see but a little deeper we will find that man has not changed at all-he happens only to change his methods. Modern war is only the ancient war plus science. Science his increased our heroism. It has added to our range. It is the same instinct that impels us still, only we have better means of satisfying that instinct and even he change in methods is only superficial-a change in quantity, not quality, if one may so put it. The method of waging warfare is still the same-that of killing as many as possible of the enemies-only the means have changed.