Military detachment

“ To prevent the building of defenses, or smash them when built, to concentrate gunfire on communication trenches so as to render them impassable, to destroy reliefs coming in or going out, to carry death to the foe in ditches and dugouts—in short, to injure him in any way that human ingenuity and military science could devise—such were the tactics employed by belligerents during the days and nights when in official language there was "nothing to report." ”

“ The military power must be destroyed, that is, reduced to such a state as not to be able to prosecute the War. This is the sense in which we wish to be understood hereafter, whenever we use the expression "destruction of the enemy's military power." ”

“ Even in the portions of the country which were most loyal, political combinations and secret societies were formed, furthering the work of disunion; while, from motives of disloyalty or cupidity, or from excited passions or perverted sympathies, individuals were found furnishing men, money, and materials of war and supplies to the insurgents' military and naval forces. Armies, ships, fortifications, navy-yards, arsenals, military posts and garrisons, one after another were betrayed or abandoned to the insurgents. ”

“ If it is an object to destroy roads or to block up a defile; the means which outposts or detachments from an army can apply to that purpose, bear about the same relation to those furnished by a body of insurgent peasants, as the action of an automaton does to that of a human being. The enemy has no other means to oppose to the action of national levies except that of detaching numerous parties to furnish escorts for convoys to occupy military stations, defiles, bridges, etc. ”

“ But to remove armies aggregating several million men, with guns and supplies, from a contracted area, in the face of a victorious and aggressive enemy, without the retreat degenerating into a rout is almost impossible; it requires generalship of highest order. Day by day the remorseless jaws of the Allied military machine, hinged to the north of the Aisne,—British and Belgian forces on the north, French in the center, Americans on the south and east,—were closing, and when the American forces fought their way through the Argonne to Sedan (forty miles northeast of Rheims) the case was hopeless. ”

“ If the defects of our present national defence speak to foreign countries of our weakness, an increase of militia would indicate military design. A reputation for bellicoseness, fully as much as for impotence, invites complications. Martial rivalry, suspicions, and jealousies are the recipe for disaster. ”

“ The public mind of the country has been recently shocked by savage atrocities committed upon defenseless emigrants and border settlements, and hardly less by the unnecessary destruction of valuable lives where inadequate detachments of troops have undertaken to furnish the needed aid. Without increase of the military force these scenes will be repeated, it is to be feared, on a larger scale and with more disastrous consequences. ”

“ One of the means of avoiding the disastrous results to which detachments sometimes lead is to neglect none of the precautions prescribed by tactics for increasing the strength of any force by posting it in good positions; but it is generally imprudent to engage in a serious conflict with too large a body of troops. In such cases ease and rapidity of motion will be most likely to insure safety. It seldom happens that it is right for a detachment to resolve to conquer or die in the position it has taken, whether voluntarily or by order. ”

“ Thus a perpetual reduction of our military and naval armaments, and means of maintaining our independence or even existence as a nation, is forced upon successive Governments, without the slightest regard to the obvious peril with which such reductions, with increasing armaments on the part of our neighbours, and increasing points of attack upon the part of ourselves, must be attended; and the policy which has impoverished the greater part of the nation terminates in its natural result, the destruction of the nation itself. ”

“ Likewise all other attacks by enemy civilians on the Armed Forces, its members and employees, are to be suppressed at once by the military, using the most extreme methods, until the assailants are destroyed. ”

“ The collection of information, the destruction of important enemy equipment or supplies, the neutralization of enemy positions, the severing of physical means of communication and transport, and the like, are suitable objectives. The attritional effect of repeated raids may be very great. Skillfully executed raids frequently produce panic among the populace and thus, by political pressure, cause a change in the existing apportionment of fighting strength to the extent of upsetting military plans in other theaters. ”

“ As a rule the detachments should not consist of less than 25 men each. With this arrangement of the column, it will rarely be possible for an enemy to close simultaneously with all of the detachments, one or more being left unengaged and under control to support those engaged or to inflict severe punishment upon the enemy when he is repulsed. ”

“ Special law-abiding units of all arms must be placed at the disposal of Commanding Officers as a bulwark against mutiny, and against the horrors of possible demobilisation. (8) Military Revolutionary Courts must be established and capital punishment introduced in the rear for the troops and for civilians guilty of the same crimes.
“If you ask me whether these measures are likely to produce good results, I will answer frankly: Yes, but not at once. It is easy to destroy the Army, but time is needed for its reconstruction. ”

“ Cut off from their base, with no hope of reinforcements and no line of retreat, those remnants can but surrender to the enormously superior forces that will be brought against them; for, however much the friends of conscription may belittle our present military arrangements, they will hardly contend that 464,487 fighting men are incapable of dealing with a broken and disheartened Army. ”

“ That the military tactics pursued by the British military authorities has led to the entire ruin of the territory of both Republics, with burning of farms and towns, destruction of all means of subsistence, and exhaustion of all sources necessary for the support of our families, for the maintenance of our forces in the field, and for the continuation of the war. ”

“ Once restrict legitimate warfare to the limits of national defence, and it is evident that the refusal of men to take part in a war of aggression would equally put an end to the necessity of defensive exertion. ”

“ Europe already possesses enough of arms and ammunition to keep others under her subjection, and the proposal of disarmament in the League is simply to disable the East from recouping their shattered military Materiel. ”

“ To withdraw our Army altogether from the conquests they have made by deeds of unparalleled bravery, and at the expense of so much blood and treasure, in a just war on our part, and one which, by the act of the enemy, we could not honorably have avoided, would be to degrade the nation in its own estimation and in that of the world. ”

“ If, however, the defenders obstinately refuse to be drawn, and the leading detachment has shouted itself hoarse to no effect, it is relieved by a second, or even a third, until the siege is abandoned for the day. ”

“ Partisan detachments, individual organizations, and saboteurs must penetrate into all cities, large and small, and widely deploy intelligence and sabotage work there. Destroy and burn communication centers, power plants, boiler plants, water supply, warehouses, fuel tanks and other objects of military or economic importance. ”

“ Military necessity admits of all direct destruction of life or limb of armed enemies, and of other persons whose destruction is incidentally unavoidable in the armed contests of the war; it allows of the capturing of every armed enemy, and every enemy of importance to the hostile government, or of peculiar danger to the captor ”

“ Let those beware who think that the time has [Pg 312] come for them to overthrow the Revolutionary Government with the help of bayonets.’”
The contradiction was still more striking in military matters. In a dry but powerful speech, the Supreme Commander-in-Chief drew a picture of the destruction of the Army, involving the whole country in its ruin, and with great reserve explained the gist of his programme. General Alexeiev related, with genuine bitterness, the sad story of the sins, sufferings and gallantry of the former Army. ”

“ Merely to inflict anguish and death upon a great number of civilians, and those largely women and children, is obviously of no military service. But if such suffering is inflicted in the course of an attack which promises the destruction or even the crippling of works of military character like arsenals, munition plants, or naval stores, it must be accepted as an incident of legitimate warfare. The limited information obtainable in wartime seems to indicate that the German raids had no legitimate objective in view but were undertaken for the mere purpose of frightfulness. ”

“ In spite of the disruption of the Army, we must continue the struggle, however arduous it may be, and we must even be prepared to retreat into the depths of the country. Our Allies should not count upon immediate relief through our advance. Even in retreating and remaining on the defensive, we are drawing upon us enormous enemy forces, which, were they relieved, would be sent to the Western Front and would crush the Allies and then turn against us. Upon this new Calvary the [Pg 294] Russian people and the Russian Army may yet shed rivers of blood and endure privations and misfortunes. ”

“ We would neither fight nor permit anyone else to fight for us. He demanded that we should not arm ourselves for defense and in the next breath declared that he was not in favor at present of dismantling the forts we now possessed or of disbanding the army. He denounced all arms and all wars and yet favored being half armed and half ready for an inadequate defense. He asked that we stand absolutely alone in the world and half armed maintain the guardianship of the Western Hemisphere against the serried millions of veteran soldiers of armed Europe. ”

“ They are at present strong enough, they suppose, in their domestic resources, and in the difficulties presented to a hostile force by the nature of the country, to bid defiance to invasion, or, at all events, to inflict a very severe chastisement on the invaders, and their excited manner of speech so acts upon their minds that they begin to think they can defy, not merely the United States, but the world. ”

“ Whereas war has too long devastated the earth and the time has now come for peace, I, the man destined to stop all war, hereby declare unto you that you shall, each and all, disarm; that your troops shall be disbanded, your navies sunk or turned to peaceful ends, your fortifications dismantled. One year from this date will I allow for disarmament and no more. At the end of that time, if no heed has been paid to my injunction, I will destroy, in rapid succession, every battleship in the world. ”

“ When the present war is over, should one of the belligerent nations, with its veteran fighting blood up, attack us, how are we prepared to meet that attack?
Our army and navy men tell us that our position is pathetically defenseless. They tell us that, should our Navy be destroyed or evaded, and an army of only a hundred thousand men, equipped with all of the arms and paraphernalia of modern warfare, be landed on our coast, the invading army could go anywhere it might see fit, live off the country, capture our big cities, and hold us up for ransom in spite of all that we could do. ”

“ Leger raised the siege, and retreated with circumstances indicating great alarm; the tents were left standing, the artillery was abandoned, and a great part of the baggage, ammunition, and provisions fell into the hands of the garrison, a detachment from which harassed the retreating enemy. But the British troops were exposed to greater danger from the fury of their savage allies than from the pursuit of the Americans. During the retreat they robbed the officers of their baggage, and the army generally of their provisions and stores. ”

“ To refuse supplies to the Army, therefore, is to compel the complete cessation of all its operations and its practical disbandment, and thus to invite hordes of predatory savages from the Western plains and the Rocky Mountains to spread devastation along a frontier of more than 4,000 miles in extent and to deliver up the sparse population of a vast tract of country to rapine and murder. ”

“ How can one believe it possible to solve international questions by means of the veritable cataclysm which will constitute, with the present means of destruction, war waged between the five great Powers, by ten millions of soldiers?... In this war explosives so powerful will be employed that every grouping of troops on the flat country or even under the protection of fortifications will become almost impossible and that, therefore, the preparations of this character made in expectation of the war will become useless.... ”

“ Aeroplanes, zeppelins, artillery, various types of trench mortars, mining, machine-guns, poisonous gases, liquid fire, and the many other means of killing and disabling our enemies have rendered this war the most horrible and terrifying in history. Yet it is rare at the front to see officers or men exhibit cowardice. With few exceptions all face death in its many forms with a smile on their lips, bearing at the same time indescribable hardships of mud, dirt, lice, work and weather with unbeatable stoicism. ”