19th January.
'THOUGH surprises in war have in the main been tactical rather than strategic, there is a vast difference between what we may call fundamental surprises and the passing success of an ambush or two. The one is the main factor in the victor's triumph, the latter counts for little. It is very rare, for example, that anything of listing importance has resulted from the cleverest of guerrilla fighting. The Spanish were adepts at it in the wars against Napoleon, but it was only the serious forward movement of Wellington that cleared the Peninsula. The best efforts of the Franc-tireurs of 1871 were of no avail, neither were those of De Wet in the recent South African campaign, In treating of surprises in war, therefore, we shall take no notice of trifling successes of the guerrilla type, and look only to those which have been surprises, not merely to the soldiers concerned, but to the world at large. In its day, the Mace onion phalanx was. such a surprise, so were the English long-bow, the first cannon, and generally each new and radical departure in the use of weapons. But coming to modern times the first genuine surprise to onlookers as to combatants was the rapidity of the movements of the armies of Napoleon. As our readers know, his "Army of England," foiled in its first aim by: the successes of Nelson, became the army of the Danube, and in an incredibly short space of time had entered Austria, won its battles, and dictated a peace. But it was not merely on the march that Napoleon excelled all his predecessors as well as his contemporaries. His movements on the field of battle were as remarkable in those days for their celerity as was the rapidity with which his men were transported. Tactic: and strategy acted and reacted, the one upon the other, and on this new departure was founded the series of surprises with which Napoleon startled Europe. Armies on the battle-field had, up to that time, been as rigid asa bar of iron. He made his a chain of steel, so flexible, that any one part could at short notice come to the aid of any other.
So from that time to this there has been no first-rate war without its accompanying surprises. The Crimean brought steam ships to the service of battle for the first time. The American Civil War saw; numerous preconceived ideas knocked on the head. Civilians became, in! some cases, better soldiers than trained men, and hastily contrived fighting ships which revolutionized the naval history of the world.
The Austro-Prussian war of 1866 brought into notice the tremendous advance wrought by the breechloader. That of 1870-1 emphasised the value of quick-firing artillery with plenty of it, and resulted in an entirely new system of attack. When men criticise the shortcomings of the British in South-Africa, it should not be forgotten that Steinmetz at Gravelotte sent in his men shoulder to shoulder as Blucher would have done had he been there, and that notwithstanding the fact that Frenchmen armed with the murderous chassepdt lined the heights.
When Russia fought Turkey in 1877-8, both sides were perhaps equally well armed. The surprise then was Plevna, or in other words the marvellous success of the spade. It should not, indeed, have been a surprise to Russia, for her own Todleben had taught the lesson more than twenty years before at Sebastopol. Russia had flooded the territory immediately south of the Danube with her countless hosts, against whom it was thought poor Turkey had no chance. She was to be! swallowed up instanter. But Osman! Pasha "et his men a-digging. and when the Russians came to attack they went as sheep to the slaughter. Roumania was induced to come to the Muscoviie's assistance, or it "is difficult to say what might not have happened. Even then it was only after almost superhuman efforts by Skobeleff and his men that Osman was so battered in his entrenchments and so short of food as to be obliged to surrender. Had there been a power at his back to second his efforts as they deserved, the long delay in the advance of the Russians might have been fatal to their chance of success.
These same Turkish soldiers, maligned and be-littled as they frequently have been, made short work of the Greeks at a more recent date, and thus gave the world' another little surprise on the battle-field.
Lastly we come to the Boer war, and here, perhaps, surprise followed surprise not altogether from purely military causes, but because of the utter unpreparedness of the British Army. Sul making all allowance for shortcomings revealed by the Commission, the surprises of the war itself were sufficiently startling and dramatic. They were in the main the result of three things: smokeless powder, extraordinary mobility on the part of the Boers, and the presence of big guns on the field of battle. Never before had the power of the small bore been so amply demonstrated. In the first few fights the percentage of British officers picked off was alarming, so alarming indeed that all distinctive marks were discarded, swords were cast aside, and many officers went into battle with a carbine or rifle. Again and again men found themselves under fire, not knowing whence it came. The attacking force was extended as men were never extended before, and yet the Boer could not be outflanked. It was only by makin, wide-spread sweeps with ach superior numbers that Roberts and Kitchener little by little swept the Boer forces into their net. For nearly three years the world had the spectacle of a little band of farmers and graziers, fewer all told than the people ofa second-rate city, giving successful defiance to the empire on which the sun never sets.
Should war break out in Manchuria, which Heaven forfend, what are the surprises in store
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.