Chapter IV: The Chief of the General Staff

In the best work the man is more than the school. An ordinary man gives out no more than has been put into him. All his performances can be explained by his antecedents. But the best workers contribute from themselves an element which no analysis can adequately explain. A Newton or a Columbus, a Stanley or a Whitworth, has some unseen spring of force and insight.

A man of this stamp is required at the head of an army, and above all at the head of the organization entrusted with the design of operations.

The eve of a war is always accompanied by a great outburst of feeling, which in ninety-nine men out of a hundred manifests itself as an excitement, a disturbance, interfering with the action of the judgment and distorting the view of persons and events. But this is the very time when the weightiest decisions must be taken. The provisional plan of concentration, the result of careful preparation in quieter times, has to be reconsidered in relation to the circumstances of the moment, and definitely settled and adopted. The judgment of the strategist must therefore be perfectly clear, uninfluenced by the emotions which he shares with the rest of his countrymen.

When the concentration has been ordered, and while the armies are in movement, come the first collisions, following one another in quick succession. Every day brings its surprises, even to the best informed and best prepared headquarters. The strategist's equilibrium must be disturbed as little by unexpected events as by the throbs of national emotion. He must prepare the way for a decisive battle. No one knows better than he the terrible nature of the sacrifices which it will involve, and the stakes which are risked upon its issue. The lives of thousands will be lost; many thousands will be wounded; a mistake, miscalculation, or mishap may lead to defeat, with far-reaching, perhaps disastrous, consequences to his country. But under the weight of this vast responsibility the strategist's judgment must work smoothly and easily, like the compass in a storm, with no derangement of its delicate equipoise.

The man whose insight remains clear, whose judgment retains its even balance, when the greater part of mankind are stunned with the awe of great events, who remains true to himself while others are carried away by what seems an irresistible current, is not cast in the common mould. Ordinary men shrink into insignificance beside him. He is separated from the average officer by a gulf which no system of training can bridge. The inner calm which neither great occurrences, nor danger, nor responsibility can disturb cannot be imparted, and no method can be prescribed for its acquisition.

The natural place for a leader of men is in the supreme command. Where a general of this type is at the head of an army he will himself superintend the work of strategical preparation such as is carried on in the office of the great general staff at Berlin. His chief of the staff will be a confidential assistant, whose main function will be to lighten for him the burden of detail, and the two men will stand to one another in the same relation as that which subsists between the general commanding an army corps and the chief of the general staff of the corps.

In Prussia the king is the head of the army, and there are good reasons why he should take the field in person--reasons which have not been weakened by his becoming also German Emperor. A king who keeps in his own hands the general direction of the Government cannot very well work out for himself the problems involved in the strategical preparation of a campaign. His chief of the staff becomes his strategical adviser, alike during peace and war, and occupies a position of far greater importance than the assistant to a professional commander-in-chief. King William I., in the two great wars in which he took the field, reposed entire confidence in his chosen chief of the staff; and to the fine character which could do this without loss of dignity, as well as to the genius of Moltke, must be attributed the success with which in these wars the armies were directed. Moltke always attributed to the king the responsibility for the strategical decisions, and that quite correctly; but the king equally correctly regarded Moltke as their source, and attributed the success of the army to Moltke's "conduct of the operations."[1] The victories of Prussia in 1866, and of Germany under Prussian guidance in 1870, were due to the perfect understanding between the king and Moltke, a relation equally creditable to them both. It must not be forgotten, moreover, that the king exercised the supreme political as well as the supreme military authority, and that in the political department, too, he had in Bismarck a trusted adviser, the counterpart of Moltke. Thus was secured the harmony between the political and the military direction which is essential to great success in war. From the exceptional characters of the king, of Bismarck, and of Moltke, and from the equally exceptional relation between them, it would be rash to deduce a system, which in any case could be applicable only to the case of a king wielding the entire executive power.

The relation between the Commander-in-Chief and his chief of the staff must thus be regarded as a personal one, which will vary in its nature according to the characters and gifts of the two men. If the commander has in himself the necessary intellectual power, the chief of the staff should be of subordinate mould; if the commander requires help in the conception of the operations, his assistant must be able to supply the initiative required. It is evident that the case in which the subordinate is the source of inspiration implies on the part of the commander a magnanimity far from common, and that, therefore, this arrangement must be considered to be rather the exception than the rule.

The element of permanent value in the Prussian system is the classification of duties according to which it regulates the division of labour. The whole authority of the Government is concentrated in the person of the king who is the head of the army. The king does nothing himself; every part of the work is done for him. The whole of the business of the army is divided up into compartments, so as to leave nothing over, and at the head of each compartment is an officer, who within it exercises the king's authority. The king's supervision does not appear to consist in his doing over again the work of these officers. They submit to him any important new decisions which they propose, for they are responsible to him. But in case the king is unable to agree with the course proposed, there is reason to believe that the officer who suggests it retires, his place being filled by a successor who shares the king's view. In this way the authority of the king is maintained without impairing the initiative of his chosen and authorized assistants.

The actual command of the troops is in the hands of the generals commanding army corps and of the governors of fortresses; they account directly to the king, and all their subordinates to or through them. The general concerns of the army pass through one of three departments. Personal matters, such as the appointment and promotion of officers, retirements, rewards, and decorations go to the king's military cabinet, which has its own chief. Administrative affairs, that is questions of organization, equipment, armament, and fortification, belong to the ministry of war. The third department, that of the general staff, is principally occupied with the strategical and tactical rather than with the administrative direction of the army. These various departments communicate directly with one another, a process which is facilitated by regulations leaving no doubt which of them upon any given point has the power to decide.

It thus appears that the institution of a general staff as one of the organs of the management of an army is based upon a true analysis applying equally to all civilized armies, and to all ordered warfare.

Military success requires primarily the intelligent direction against the enemy of the forces employed. The general staff originated as the auxiliary instrument of this direction, and as such is found, at least in a rudimentary form, in every army. In Prussia alone its full importance was understood, and it received an organization peculiarly suited to its purpose. The distinction was steadily kept in view between the all-important conduct of the operations against an enemy and the subordinate though necessary business of administration.[2] Every function directly bearing upon the conception or design of the action of the army or of its principal parts against the enemy was assigned to the general staff, which thus became an enlargement of the commander's mind, serving to facilitate his performance of his most characteristic and most difficult duty. To the command thus strengthened the army was rendered pliable partly by means of a suitable subdivision into permanent autonomous bodies, and partly through the organization of the administrative side by side with the military services.

The army corps--managing its own internal affairs--having its adjutancy, its auditoriat, and its intendancy to supply its needs with the assistance of and in connection with the ministry of war--is a body easily amenable to the strategical direction proceeding from a general centre. Thus the growth of the organ of strategical direction was necessarily accompanied by a corresponding development of other military institutions by which the perfect adaptability of the organism to the directing agency was attained and preserved.

The importance of the office of chief of the general staff of the army led to its being filled by selection. The confidence reposed in a chosen chief implied that he should be unhampered in the means of fulfilling his duties. He was therefore entrusted with the selection, and eventually with the training, of the officers for his own department.

The design of military operation involves the most complete knowledge of the military sciences, and the most perfect mastery of the military art. Accordingly the great general staff has become a school of generalship, from which have emanated a series of masterpieces of military history and historical criticism, while its individual members have produced valuable works dealing with the various branches of the theory of the art of war.

The attachment of the War Academy to the general staff for which it is the training school is the means of raising to the highest level the standard of military education.

The common devotion of the general staff in all its branches to that portion of military activity which makes the most exacting demands upon the intellectual faculties as well as upon the will, finds its expression in the unity of the general staff through all the branches of the army. A consequence of the selection by which the corps is composed, and of the requirement of practical familiarity with the duties of leadership and with the life and spirit of the troops, is the constant passage of officers to and fro between regimental and general staff service, and their alternate employment in the various branches of the general staff itself.

The general staff, in short, is the brain, and something more than the brain, of the army.

"Its chief and his 200 officers prepare beforehand for all probable campaigns; they follow the progress of the armies of their neighbours at the same time that they study the several theatres of war; they work out together the methods of war; they familiarize themselves with the machinery of the army, bringing their influence to bear upon all questions of organization and training; they form an organism whose arteries spread all through the army, gathering practical experience and carrying wherever they go the same continuous stream of principles and of doctrines."[3]

[1] See the king's letters to Moltke of Oct. 28, 1870: "Ihrer ... weisen Führung der Operationen," and of March 22, 1871: "Die unübertreffliche Leitung der Kriegsoperationen." Moltke, _Gesammelte Schriften_, i., 268, 9.

[2] The function of the military administrator is to transform into military force so much of the resources of the State as the Government thinks proper. The process is continuous, and goes on during war as well as during peace. In Prussia it is conducted by the ministry of war, the channel or instrument by which the resources of the country are rendered available for employment against the enemy. Cp. p. 61.

[3] _Revue militaire de l'Étranger_, vol. xxxii. p. 261.

THE END.

Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London.

* * * * *

THE GREAT ALTERNATIVE:

A PLEA FOR A NATIONAL POLICY.

BY

SPENSER WILKINSON.

_Small Demy 8vo, 7s. 6d._

CONTENTS.