The Study of Military History

How do you study military history? How often have I been asked that question, and how often have I found that all the enquirer wanted to learn was how to pass an examination? If that is all you want to do don’t bother to read any further, for I am afraid that I don’t know any short cuts, I don’t know of any substitute for work. But if you want to enrich your mind with the military experience of the ages, if you want to broaden your professional knowledge and enhance your capacity to command, if you want to really understand the nature and climate of war, the following paragraphs may be of some interest to you.

We cannot escape our past. Our whole culture—the way we think, the way we look at ourselves and others, our institutions, are the product of our national experience.

Military history is the story of the profession of arms, of the influence that profession has had on the general course of events, of the contribution it has made to our national life. We need to know something of the history of our army, of its exploits, for that history conditions our professional outlook. It explains why we find it best to do things in our own particular way, and it constitutes the basis of our form of discipline.

Military Experience

So far we have talked in general terms. Can military history do more for us than that? To begin with, let us forget the expression military history and think in terms of military experience.

Now the knowledge that every professional person has is not built up entirely from his own experience. Far from it. Law, particularly Common Law, is a code which has been built up from centuries of experience of many men. Medical knowledge is a compendium of the things that have been found out about human anatomy by all the doctors of all the ages. Doctors don’t wait to find out everything from their own experiences. When a doctor, or a group of doctors, engaged in research make a discovery they usually publish the result. All other good doctors accept this finding and apply it to their patients.

In other words, the doctors are learning from the experience of others. Should the soldier do less? As a rule a bad doctor kills only one patient at a time, but a bad soldier can get a great many men killed for nothing.

So let us think of military history as the study of military experience.

Actually, whether we know it or not we are continually using this experience. If we did not use it our ideas on many things would never advance.

For example, before and during World War I British doctrine held night attacks to be more or less impossible. It was held that control was too difficult and direction too hard to maintain. Few night attacks were undertaken by the British on the Western Front. After the war this doctrine was maintained.

Then when the war histories came out an officer named Liddell Hart noticed the frequency with which the early stages at least of the most successful attacks had taken place in fog. Liddell Hart pursued this idea, and found that nearly all the big and successful British and French attacks had taken place under foggy conditions. On the German side the phenomenon was even more striking. Of their six attempts to effect a major breakthrough in 1918, only three were successful and they were shrouded in fog.

Liddell Hart then asked, ‘If the most successful attacks were those which took place in fog, an accident of the weather which had not been planned for, would not night attacks be equally successful?’

The War Office nibbled at the idea cautiously and more attention began to be paid to night operations.

When Brigadier Pile (later General Sir Frederick Pile), who was at that time commanding the troops in the Canal Zone in Egypt, heard about Liddell Hart’s finding he said, ‘If troops can attack in dense fog when they are not expecting it, they ought to be able to attack at night when they are expecting darkness.’ He then proceeded to prove that it was all a matter of thorough training, and night attacks became accepted.

This change in tactical doctrine resulted directly from the study of experience in World War I.

But the results did not stop there. If night operations became fairly general, there would be plenty of occasions on which one would want some light, perhaps temporarily. Perhaps one would want darkness up to a certain moment and then have the light switched on.

The tacticians stated their requirement and the engineers turned up with the answer— artificial moonlight.

So, from a study of the experiences of World War I there evolved two things—a new tactical concept and artificial moonlight.

That, I think, is a fair example of the practical application of military history. Of course, those are not the only things we can learn from World War I. The students picked out a few other useful tactical ideas, and they learned a lot about administering very large armies in the field.

We need to look at the failures as well as the successes. We need to find out the real cause of all the useless butchery, the real cause of all the shockingly bad generalship that characterized most of the operations on the Western Front.

Why were most of the generals such poor, pedestrian soldiers? What had happened to the heirs of Wellington, Frederick, Napoleon? Was it their training or the lack of it? Was it the prevailing professional outlook? Was it because too much emphasis was placed on the wrong values? For example, was there too much emphasis on sport and social activities and not enough on serious work and study? Or was it because they had failed to learn from military experience?

It was probably a combination of all these things, but it is at least certain that they had failed to read correctly the lessons of the American Civil War and the South African War.

They were still seeking victory in terms of the Napoleonic concept as expounded by Clausewitz. This formula postulated the massive assault as the essential ingredient in the recipe for victory. But they failed to take into account the principal lessons of the American Civil War, namely:

• The breech-loading rifle and the spade, used in combination, had made the defence too strong to be overthrown by Napoleonic methods.
   
• And since the American Civil War the machine-gun had enormously increased the strength of the defence.  
   
• They ascribed the American failure to employ cavalry in shock action to amateur leadership instead of to the real causes—the breech-loading rifle and the carbine, and trenches.

The result of this failure to learn from the experience of the employment of these new weapons and methods was the terrible battles on the Somme and in Flanders. The effects on Great Britain’s man-power and national economy were enormous and far-reaching. It was on these stricken fields that Britain’s decline as a front-rank world power began, though the full effects were not felt until later.

And all this because her officer corps had failed to read the lessons of recent wars and to see therein the changes demanded by the introduction of new weapons. They did not have to speculate. The things experience had demonstrated had actually happened. Actual experience had demonstrated what would certainly happen in the future unless counter-measures were devised.

Let us take an Australian example of the misreading of experience. In the Palestine campaign of World War I the Australian Light Horse Regiments were mounted infantry armed with the rifle and bayonet. They were not armed with the sword or lance. They were not trained or armed for the mounted charge. But at Beersheba one brigade did undertake a most successful mounted charge. And at a couple of other places the British Yeomanry, who were armed with the sword, successfully charged the enemy.

After the war, on the strength of these isolated actions, we arrived at the conclusion that despite the fire-power of modern weapons, trenches and barbed wire, the mounted charge was still a feasible proposition. The argument that led to this conclusion violated the rules of simple logic because:

• It failed to take into account the special conditions obtaining at the time of the successful charges.  
   
• It failed to take into account the negative side of the question—all those occasions when a mounted charge would certainly have failed, and even the occasions when charges actually did fail.

This superficial examination of the available evidence, plus unsound logic, led us to arm our Light Horse Regiments with the sword. They were still carrying the things right up to the outbreak of World War II. Worse still, they were thinking about trying to use them.

From these examples it follows that close study of experience in the sphere of weapons and devices—new weapons, new machines, new means of transport, etc.—can help us very much in the development of tactical doctrine, organization and administrative methods.

What about the art of war, of strategy, of tactical insight, of leadership? It is in these fields, perhaps, that we can extract the most value from military history. It is in these fields that we really do need experience, and it is just these fields that first hand experience is so hard to get in peace. We can get this experience only by the study of military history.

If we become involved in a great war the army is going to expand very rapidly. Promotion is going to be correspondingly rapid. Some of our officers are going to find themselves in positions of great responsibility in the field, or writing staff papers which may influence governmental decisions. We need not find ourselves in those positions entirely devoid of experience. By the constant study of military history we can acquire the experience which we shall need very badly.

I hope to show presently that the acquisition of this experience need not be all hard work, in fact a good deal of it can be a recreational pursuit.

How do we Study Military History?

Now, how do we study military history? Two things are essential, namely:

1. The wise choice of study material. I should like to leave that till later and go on to the second essential. 
    
2. The development of a critical approach.

When you begin any piece of serious study, as distinct from the recreational reading which I shall mention presently, first think yourself into a highly critical frame of mind. Challenge everything; accept nothing without thinking about it.

For example, an Official History says something like this—’The Divisional Commander ordered—etc., etc.’ Before you go any further think about that order. Think it out for yourself. Was it a sound plan? Did it take all the essentials of the situation into account? If you had been in his place, what plan would you have worked out?

Another example of challenge, of the refusal to accept statements at their face value, is to be found in the Australian offensives on Bougainville and in the Aitape-Wewak area. The necessity of these offensives was queried in Parliament, and one of the arguments put forward to justify them was: ‘To commit any troops to a passive role of defence ... is to destroy quickly their morale, create discontent, and decrease their resistance to sickness and disease.’ From this are we to assume that troops committed to an arduous offensive under severe climatic conditions are bound to have a higher morale and to be healthier than troops engaged in defence? It is true, as a generalization, that the offensive generates higher morale than the defensive. But is it true in particular cases? And do you have to mount a full-scale offensive to maintain morale, or would a modified form of the offensive be sufficient? The formation on New Britain did not undertake a big offensive; it seems to have successfully maintained morale and the offensive spirit by aggressive patrolling.

Morale is an attitude of mind. In defence the correct attitude can be fostered by means short of full-scale attack. Take the 9th Australian Division for example. Besieged in Tobruk, the division maintained morale and the offensive spirit by ‘giving away’ the deep and commodious Italian dugout in favour of fighting trenches, by deep patrolling, and by establishing their dominance over no-man’s-land—’Our front line is the enemy’s wire, no-man’s-land belongs to us.’ After being shut up in the fortress for months on inadequate rations, the troops might have been a bit on the lean side, but they were still full of fight. And their health was surprisingly good—until, on relief, they got in amongst the fleshpots of Egypt.

Beware of generalizations. Ask yourself, always, is this statement true of this particular situation, of these particular conditions? Unless you cultivate the habit of asking yourself these questions you will degenerate into a mere mechanic, and a bad one at that.

In the beginning this takes up a fair amount of time. But as you gain in experience you will find that you do it almost subconsciously. One side of your mind is taking in the written facts, the other side is working on the problems. And that is just the sort of mind that successful commanders have and that all officers need.

Don’t forget to apply the same critical approach to the administrative side of war.

Learn to read between the lines, particularly the lines of the official histories. Official historians expect their professional readers to be able to read between the lines. For example in speaking of Singapore, the War Office history says, ‘Many stragglers were collected in the town and sent back to their units.’

What does this statement suggest?

In an advance stragglers are to be expected. Men become detached from their units for quite legitimate reasons. We provide for them by establishing stragglers’ posts to collect them and direct them back towards their units.

But when we get large numbers of stragglers behind a defensive position, and a long way back at that, it suggests that units have been broken up or that there has been a breakdown of discipline somewhere. And that in turn suggests that the general situation had reached the stage when a lot of people had lost confidence, when morale was at least beginning to break down.

Once you have started to develop this critical, challenging approach you will be on your way to acquiring the habit of sorting out fact from fiction. Our history is full of great military myths, most of which we thoughtlessly accept at their face value.

Take, for example, the story of Dunkirk. This episode has so captured public imagination that authors are still making money writing about it. It has come to be generally regarded as a glorious page in our military history. And so it is so far as courage, fortitude and discipline are concerned. But is this picture good enough for the professional soldier? Ought he not to see Dunkirk as a military operation stripped of all the glory? Looked at with the cold eye of the critical student, Dunkirk is seen to be what it actually was—a shocking military defeat which came within a hair’s breadth of bringing Britain to her knees.

At the time Dunkirk was represented to be a glorious feat. This was fair enough because in it the British people found the spiritual strength to carry on the war. To that extent the soldier was justified in supporting the myth. But privately he needs to have a good hard look at the generalship—on both sides of course— which brought about this terrible disaster to British arms.

Each year in Australia we celebrate Anzac Day. How many of us look beyond the bands and the flags, and analyse the operations? If you want to ascertain how not to mount an amphibious operation, or any operation at all for that matter, you will find all you want to know in the real story of Gallipoli.

Sometimes these myths grow after the event. Sometimes they are deliberately created at the time and ever afterwards are accepted as truth, too often even by soldiers.

Take for instance the myth of the ‘Spanish Ulcer’. Wellington’s campaign in Spain was imposing a tremendous strain on the British people. The Government explained that the campaign was imposing a still greater strain on Napoleon, that the ‘Spanish Ulcer’ was ‘bleeding him white’.

In actual fact the campaign was having far more damaging effects on Britain than it was on France. It is extremely doubtful if Britain could have continued the war much longer for the long-suffering public had very nearly had enough when Napoleon abdicated and retired temporarily to Elba.

We are often advised that the best way to study military history is to test the decisions, plans and actions by applying to them the principles of war. In my opinion this is a bad line of approach for the following reasons:

• It restricts the scope of our inquiries from the very beginning.  
   
• It channels our thoughts along pre-determined lines, which is the thing to be avoided at all costs.  
   
• In the world today there are several lists of principles, lists which differ from each other in substance and in emphasis. Which one do we take? Our own has been changed at least twice in my lifetime.

Suppose we reverse the process. Suppose we set out to test the validity of our list in the light of experience. I think that would be slightly better because it will at least half open our minds to some original thinking. However, the object of our study is not to test the validity of this or that principle, it is to cultivate our minds, to fill them with the wisdom of experience. I suggest that the best way to do this is to set out to discover some principles, some constantly recurring patterns for ourselves.

We know that throughout nature similar causes always produce similar effects. If we can discover in the military sphere some recurring chains of cause and effect, some constantly recurring patterns, we will have learned much from experience. We will also be struck by the frequency with which the rules or principles established by these recurring patterns are violated. And we will be struck by the fallacious arguments put forward in support of each violation.

One of the clearest patterns that emerges from military history is the one which demonstrates the evils of failure to concentrate upon the attainment of the aim. Time after time, war after war, large forces are sent on missions which cannot possibly further the attainment of the aim. At the worst they jeopardize, or even prevent, the attainment of the aim because they weaken the main effort. At the best they are a wanton waste of human life. This pattern seems to apply at all levels of activity. In the field of strategy there is the example of the Mesopotamian Campaign in World War I.

Closer to home we have our own Solomons and Aitape-Wewak campaigns in the later stages of World War II. The real war against Japan had moved 1000 miles to the north. The Japanese forces left behind in these areas were isolated and helpless. They could do absolutely nothing. Why on earth did we engage in costly offensive operations to clean them up when they could have been safely left to wither on the vine? We could have collected the lot with scarcely a battle casualty when the main Allied forces brought about the collapse of the Japanese main forces.

My own reading over the last few years leads me to believe that we ought to have another principle of war in our list—the Principle of Command. It seems clear enough that the organization and maintenance at all times of a proper system of command is vital. By system of command I mean not only the commander, but the means, staff, signals, etc., to enable him to exercise command. At any rate the evidence demonstrates that neglect or failure to organize a proper system of command has frequently been the primary cause of failure at all levels. We are all familiar with the arguments about the organization of the high command. It is astonishing how often we come across failures to adhere to this principle further down the scale. In World War II in the Middle East alone there were at least four major failures of this kind. The chaos which prevailed in the later stages of the withdrawal from Greece, and probably the loss of several thousand men, was directly caused by the failure of GHQ to establish a proper command in the Peloponnese. And they had available the means of doing it. In all probability the real cause of the loss of Crete was the failure to provide the commander with the means of exercising command. Here again the means were readily available. A corps headquarters was actually on the island. It was taken off and sent to Palestine where it remained unemployed while

Crete was being lost for want of some good staff work. It remained unemployed while the first phase of the Syrian operations degenerated into a fiasco caused by a patently imperfect organization of command. After the battle of Gazala the whole structure of command in the Eighth Army was broken up, and remained broken up until Montgomery came along and promptly put it together again.

Throughout history we find time and time again a commander winning through the exploitation of the ‘Line of Least Expectation’. That is to say, he found and used a line of approach which the defender had neglected to guard because he thought it to be an impossible one. We could produce a long list of examples of this. What would we learn from such a list? I think it suggests that we ought always to make sure that the impossible is in fact impossible—and then keep an eye on it.

Methods of Study

Methods of studying military history will vary to some extent with each individual, but I suggest that in all cases there are two essential requirements for success.

1. A critical, challenging approach.
    
2. A mind alert to discern recurring patterns, recurring chains of cause and effect.

Although method will vary with the individual, I think the following preliminary steps are necessary whatever method we pursue.

1. Be quite clear about the political aim of the war.
    
2. Be quite clear about the national strategy by means of which the political aim is to be secured.
    
3. Be quite clear about the aim of the campaign you are about to study:
   1. How does it fit into the national strategy for the winning of the war as a whole?
   2. How does it contribute to the overall aim?
       
4. Study the features of the theatre of operations, particularly:
   1. The terrain.
   2. The weather.
   3. The people (friendly, hostile, or neutral).
   4. The communications.
   5. Resources, including foodstuffs, skilled and unskilled labour, etc.
   6. Climate for effects on health. These four points constitute a firm base for our study of the campaign.  

Now the actual method of study. Each individual must find the method that suits him best. One method I would suggest is to set about it as though you were preparing a series of lectures on the campaign. Actually write the lectures, remembering that each lecture has a time limit. This limit forces you to concentrate on essentials, to discard the irrelevant detail. When you have written a series of lectures which give an intelligible account of the campaign, and a running commentary, you will have learned a lot about it.

Now all this sounds like hard work and so it is. Unfortunately there is no substitute for work. However, there is another very important side of military history—the study of the human factor in war—which need not be so frightening.

The basic material which the soldier uses in his profession is human nature—men and women. He must know how people react to the stresses of war, and how they react to danger and adversity, to triumph and disaster.

Where do we find the Material?

Where do we find the material for the study of the human factor in war, of the actions, emotions and thoughts of ordinary men and women and of the art of leadership? Fortunately this part of our study need not be hard work. It can indeed be a recreation. Nearly everyone reads for recreation. Why not systematise this recreation and turn it to good account by reading for pleasure books with a direct or indirect bearing on the subject?

What sort of books should we read to give us an insight into the human factor? Well, we can read the heavy tomes with the psychological slant but we can hardly call them recreational. I think we will get on far better, we will acquire a deeper and more lasting knowledge of human beings at war if, with our minds always alert to pick out the lessons, we read:

• Biographies.  
   
• Appropriate novels.

It is unnecessary to labour the value of biographies, but it is desirable to add a word of caution. The author is sometimes apt to be carried away by his admiration of the person he is writing about, to make out he was always right, to make him into too much of a paragon of all the virtues. And the autobiographies, the books written by the actors themselves, very often suffer from the same defect. They seldom admit they were wrong and, writing from hindsight, they are usually able to prove that they were right. So read these books with a critical eye. Don’t let yourself be carried away by the author’s plausibility or eloquence. With this proviso these books are a very valuable source of information, and are generally quite easy to read.

Historical and War Novels

Now the novels. Don’t despise the novelist, but make a distinction between the author who writes merely to spin a good yarn and the author, the serious novelist, who writes because he has something to say, some important comments to make. It is probably true to say that the novelist and the dramatist have done more to directly influence the development of thought and ideas than all the philosophers. While it is true that the philosophers and the thinkers produce the basic idea, it is the novelist and the dramatist who ‘put it across’ by translating it into terms which ordinary folk can understand and appreciate, into terms of universally experienced human emotions—love and hate, courage and cowardice, hope and despair. Consider, for instance, the tremendous influence of the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Up to the time of its publication there was a chance that the issues which divided the Northern and Southern States of America could have been settled by wise statesmanship and public forbearance. Its publication made the Civil War virtually inevitable. It focused all the issues upon a single point— slavery. It enraged the South and it inflamed the North. In far away Europe, particularly in England and France, it created a public opinion which compelled the governments to drastically modify their policies of active sympathy towards the Southern cause.

World War I produced a crop of novels which profoundly influenced the course of events over the two following decades. With few exceptions all these books expressed the violent revulsion of the common man against the stupidity and futility of the dreadful blood-baths to which they had been subjected on the Western Front. You can learn all about the strategy and the tactics of the Western Front in half a dozen printed pages, for there was precious little of either to write about. But if you really want to understand, if you want to find out what the war was like from the point of view of the fighting man, read novels like All Quiet on the Western Front, Not So Quiet, Her Privates We, War by ex-Private X, Covenant With Death, etc. Read the poetry of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, and plays like Journey’s End. Above all, read C.E. Montague’s Disenchantment. Every officer ought to have this little volume of beautifully-written essays. He ought to keep it by his bedside and read a few pages every night. That will keep his feet on the ground and his head out of the clouds.

From these books you will learn more about the real nature of World War I than from all the learned volumes of strategy and tactics put together. You will learn about the incredible imbecility of the worst vintage generals in all history, of the shocking staff work, of the sheer ineptitude of military leadership all the way down the chain of command. You will understand why the people who make and unmake governments in democratic countries cried out in revulsion ‘To hell with brass hats and red tabs, to hell with generals, we shall have no more of that nonsense’. And when you have understood that you will understand the motive force behind the policies of disarmament and appeasement which led step by step to World War II.

In Service circles it is fashionable to blame the politicians for this disastrous disarmament policy. Anyone who has given thoughtful attention to the literature of World War I would know that this view fails to trace the chain of cause and effect back to its origin. The politicians were simply reflecting public opinion. That public opinion had been created by the war itself. It had been expressed, focused and consolidated by the literature of the war. Some of the writers, C.E. Montague for instance, went right to the heart of the matter—the downright ineptitude of the military leadership and the reasons for it—others saw only the result. If the soldiers had conducted their business more efficiently, as they did in World War II, the literature would have had quite a different tone. In the ultimate analysis of cause and effect the soldiers were responsible for the wave of pacifism which swept the democratic world after the war, not the writers or the politicians. They only expressed the public opinion which the soldier had created.

The novels of World War II reflect a totally different feeling because the field leadership at any rate was infinitely better. The value of these books lies in the presentation of the cold facts in a way which enables us to grasp the ‘feel’ of the thing in a very vivid manner. For example, we may read that the Allies sent to Russia by the Arctic route so many tanks, aeroplanes, trucks, so many millions of tons of shell, that so many ships were sunk, so many lives lost. All good stuff for a planner to know, but it leaves you stone cold, it raises no feeling at all. But if you read HMS Ulysses you will have a very good idea of what the cold statistics meant to the Allies in terms of human values—in terms of human courage, resolution and suffering. And if you read David Forrest’s The Last Blue Sea you will learn more about the impact of the jungle on young troops than all the text books can give you. If in the pursuit of your profession in peace or war you forget those human values, all the rest of your knowledge will go for naught. Those values are your indispensable tools of trade.

The Documentary

There is another, though rarer, type of book which presents both the technical and the human aspects of war in an easily digested form. I don’t know the literary term for this kind of work. It resembles a documentary film which presents the dry facts of some particular aspects of life, or some particular persons or events, by clothing them with human values, reactions and emotions without passing into the realm of true fiction. The characters, instead of being creatures of the writer’s imagination, are real people, people who have actually lived and whose actions have influenced the course of history. Instead of simply giving us the bare, and often unimpressive facts, the writer brings them back to life, recreates the scenes and the scenes and the actions he wants to present to us. Treated in this way by a skilful writer, the facts we are seeking become more vividly impressive, more easily remembered and more easily read.

This form of literary expression has been brought to near perfection by a school of American writers. In the sphere of military history perhaps the leading exponent is Bruce Catton, whose magnificent works on the American Civil War vividly depict its strategy and tactics, the personalities, and the varying degrees of abilities of its leaders, the reactions of the troops to the ebb and flow of victory and defeat. All the great lessons are there, timeless as time itself—the results of half measures, of indecisiveness, of bad staff work, the influence of selfishness and personal ambition, the little things that go wrong and cause great disasters, the over-riding importance of the human factor with all its strength and frailty. These things always have been and probably always will be, the factors which determine the issue of victory or defeat.

In his book A Stillness at Appomattox, Catton gives us an almost exact representation of one of the major problems of the atomic battlefield—the exploitation of the hole punched in the enemy’s defences by a nuclear explosion. The Union army faced the Confederates in strongly fortified lines at Petersburg. When several assaults had failed a Union engineer suggested driving a tunnel under a vital point in the Confederate works and blowing it up. That part of the programme was an immense success—what was probably the biggest explosion in any war up to that time blew a huge gap in the Confederate line. The rest was a pitiable fiasco. Through the neglect of elementary principles, through the failure to do simple things which could reasonably be expected of a junior subaltern, experienced generals failed completely to exploit the opportunity. It is remarkable how monotonously disasters occur through the failure to do simple, elementary things. History may not repeat itself, but by Heavens, the mistakes of history do. Are some of us going to make the same mistakes on an atomic battlefield?

Recently an Australian author, Raymond Paull, made a very creditable attempt to give us in this documentary form the story of the early stages of the war on our own northern approaches. His Retreat From Kokoda is, I think, the first military classic this country has produced. Despite certain attempts to discredit this book, it is chock full of lessons which are of the utmost importance to the Australian Army. More recently an Englishman has given us the story of the destruction of the Normandie Dock at St Nazaire in The Greatest Raid of All. While this book lacks something of the power and sweep of the other works referred to, it could almost be regarded as a text book on the organization and conduct of an amphibious raid.

Some years ago, during a wet spell on a holiday, I picked up a book with the unpromising title Prepare Them for Caesar. Up till then Julius Caesar had been for me a shadowy, academic figure. In the book he came alive, a very human figure. Reading it I found what Wavell tells us to seek. I began to understand why men followed Caesar, why his soldiers stuck to him when his cause seemed hopelessly lost.

The great merit of these books—the novels and the documentaries—lies in the fact that they do not require hard study, they are truly recreational. Nevertheless every one you read adds a little more to your knowledge of war. Subconsciously your trained mind will be at work criticising, evaluating, picking out the lessons great and small, lessons which are more likely to stick because they are expressed by living, human characters instead of cold, inanimate print in a text book. Subconsciously the climate of war, the vision of men and women in action from the cabinet room to the forward area, seeps into your soul and becomes a part of your being. A sympathetic understanding of human nature will be created in your mind, an appreciation of its grandeur and its frailty, its varying motives, its hopes and ambitions and fears, its cruelty and its compassion. It is not sufficient for the soldier to be aware academically of the various facets of human nature. He must have a far deeper awareness than that. The best way to acquire that essential awareness is to read the works of good writers whose talent enables them to present human beings in a way which touches our hearts as well as our minds.

Conclusion

The officer who studies military history along the lines of recreational reading and analytical research will benefit in three ways:

First, he will develop a mind rich in the experience of war in all its aspects. The climate of war will become an integral part of his subconscious being. Without consciously thinking about it he will have a cultivated awareness of the pitfalls which strew the path of the commander and the staff officer, and he will be able to see the possibilities and the dangers of any situation or any course of action.

Secondly, he will develop the power of analysis—the power of breaking up the problem into its component parts, balancing one against the other, and arriving at a sound solution.

Thirdly, it will fill his mind with knowledge of human beings in combat, and that is essential knowledge for the soldier.

I have recommended two types of literature. Each type complements the other. The official histories give you the bare facts, the skeleton. The biographies, novels and the documentaries clothe the bare bones with the flesh of human beings in action.

Finally, remember that unless your critical analysis of fact is not tempered with sympathy and compassion you will never learn anything about humanity.