III

WAR AND ITS CHIEF LESSONS[58]

[Footnote 58: Written in 1900. (_Naval_Annual_, 1901.)]

Had the expression 'real war' been introduced into the title of
this chapter, its introduction would have been justifiable. The
sources--if not of our knowledge of combat, at least of the views
which are sure to prevail when we come to actual fighting--are to
be found in two well-defined, dissimilar, and widely separated
areas. Within one are included the records of war; within the
other, remembrance of the exercises and manoeuvres of a time of
peace. The future belligerent will almost of a certainty have taken
a practical part in the latter, whilst it is probable that he will
have had no personal experience of the former. The longer the time
elapsed since hostilities were in progress, the more probable and
more general does this absence of experience become. The fighting
man--that is to say, the man set apart, paid, and trained so as
to be ready to fight when called upon--is of the same nature as
the rest of his species. This is a truism; but it is necessary to
insist upon it, because professional, and especially professorial,
strategists and tacticians almost invariably ignore it. That which
we have seen and know has not only more, but very much more,
influence upon the minds of nearly all of us than that of which
we have only heard, and, most likely, heard but imperfectly. The
result is that, when peace is interrupted and the fighting man--on