WEAPONS AND FORMATIONS All the troops of an army must be trained in the use of their weapons and in those evolutions required for effective action aria for the co-operation of the various units large and small. Forma tions and evolutions are handed on by tradition and in modern armies regulated by official text-books. They must be suited to the weapons employed and are therefore perpetually modified to keep pace with the progressive improvement of weapons.
Among weapons the important distinction is between those which are held in the hand for cutting and thrusting, of which the types are the sword, the spear and the bayonet, and those which are thrown from a distance by hand or by machine, the arrow and the javelin, the stone and the bullet, the grenade and the shell.
The history of formations and evolutions is that of a continual argument carried on in the recurring trials of the battlefield be tween the hand weapon and the missile, between mass and elas ticity of evolution, between the arm and the head. It is the story of the unwieldy phalanx against the nimble maniples, of the Roman legionaries hurling their javelins into the mass of spear men and rushing with their short swords into a crowd in which no man had room to wield his spear. It is the story of the legion helpless against the swarm of mounted Parthian bowmen, of the long-bow against the man at arms, the bullet against the bayonet.
In the i8th century came the dispute of the heavy column against the flexible column and the line, argued first on paper between Folard and Guibert. "It is an illusion and a prejudice" said Guibert "that the force of a body of troops is increased by augmenting the depth of its formation." It came to trial at the end of the i8th century between French skirmishers and the Prussian line and later in the Peninsula and at Waterloo between the British two-deep line and the French column. The introduc tion of the first breech-loader, the needle gun, established the supremacy of the bullet. But the tradition of "cold steel" and of the mass died hard. In 1866 the Austrians rushed against the needle gun and were shot down. At Gravelotte swarms of Prus sians, eager to charge, were slaughtered by the bullets of the Chassepot. Faith in the bullet had not yet overcome the super stition of the bayonet; in South Africa it happened too often that a body of British troops surrounded by a ring of invisible Boers found their only escape from the bullet in surrender. Yet this experience did not prevent British troops a dozen years later from being sent into fields of barbed wire to be massacred by the bul lets of the machine gun and magazine rifle. The bullet and the
shell have made an end of all fighting formations except thin lines or small clusters of skirmishers. Only out of range are the old formations of column and of line still possible. They are now merely formations of assembly or modes of moving troops.
The history of cavalry, apart from that of reconnaissance, leads up to the charge at full speed of a line of horsemen riding knee to knee. This was in the r8th and i9th centuries the ideal of cavalry trainers, who dreamed of the shock of the charge. But it is doubtful whether the shock has ever been realised in action, for in practice the opposing ranks pass through one another and instead of the smashing collision comes the melee. Against mod ern fire-arms the cavalry charge is hopeless, and the role of the horseman is restricted to reconnaissance, supplementary to that which is effected in the air, to the pursuit of demoralised troops and to the rapid seizure of points to be held by firearms.
The training of an army in peace consists in practice of the evolutions which are thought to be suitable for war. These as a rule embody the experience of the last war. Repetition makes them habitual; they become stereotyped. The habits of any so ciety are difficult to change, and the professional soldier of all ranks becomes so accustomed to traditional forms and modes of action that he is apt to lose his receptivity to new ideas. The workings of an army thus tend to run in grooves and usually after a long period of peace a regular army begins a war by repeating the methods which tradition has retained from wars long past. This may lead to painful surprises if those who have had charge of the opposing army have meantime adopted im proved weapons and modes of operation.
The Greek name for the art of the commander was strategy, of which the object was defined as victory. The Greek name for arranging an army in order of battle was tactics. These terms are still used; with the distinction that tactics is defined as the art of fighting battles and strategy as the art of so directing all the operations of the army as to lead to a decisive victory, that is, to the destruction, in a military sense, of the enemy's forces. The terms are convenient in theoretical analysis. But in practice the two forms of activity are inseparably inte.rmingled.