The Command of the Air

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER III BUT THAT WILL not be the case, because, even if no new developments have taken place on land, on the sea, or under the sea, there has been a new development in the air-one which, because the air is over land and sea alike, tends to change war as a whole and also those of its aspects peculiar to land and sea warfare. This new development is the existence of the air arm, which, since it was born about the time the World War began, did not greatly influence that war. To get an immediate realization of the radical change the air arm is making in the characteristics and forms of war, we need only consider that it has suddenly upset the characteristics which were fundamental to war ever since man first began fighting man. As long as man was earth-bound, all human activities, including war, were localized on the surface of the earth. War has always been the result of a clash of two wills-one the will to occupy a certain territory; the other, the will not to let it be occupied. Every war has therefore consisted of movements of and clashes by forces deployed on the surface; one force trying to break through the opposing force to seize the land beyond it, the other trying to repel the attackers in order to protect its own territory. The forces thus aligned on the surface had two purposes: one struggling to break the enemy force to reach its objective, the other struggling to protect the objective sought by the first. This has been the fundamental character of war from its origin up to the present day; and such were the essential functions of the forces deployed on the surface up to the time of the World War, which presented the most formidable example of this fundamental character and the functions of the opposing lines of forces. The 178 Probable Aspects of Future War 179 ability to leave the surface and fly in the air, which man now possesses, has changed the character of war and curtailed the functions of surface forces, because the character of the war and the functions of the forces originated in the fact that war was restricted to the surface. In other words, there is no longer any need to break through the enemy's lines. to reach an objective. The lines no longer protect what is behind them. If you stop to consider the new state of things caused by the appearance of the air arm, you will realize that it is bound to produce a radical change in the forms and characteristics of war. Armies and navies have lost the ability they once had to protect the nation behind them. That nation now lies open to enemy aerial attack regardless of the existence and location of its army and navy. The battlefield can no longer be limited; it now extends to all the lands and seas of all the nations in the war. No longer can a line of demarcation be drawn between belligerents and nonbelligerents, because all citizens wherever they are can be victims of an enemy offensive. There will be no place where life and work can go on in comparative safety and tranquillity; the countinghouse will be just as exposed as the trench-perhaps more; imminent danger will hang over everyone and everything. Many people think the air arm is only an improved weapon based on a new invention, as firearms were based on the invention of gunpowder, or as steamships took the place of sail after the invention of the steam engine. These people are mistaken. Never before in all the history of humanity has there appeared a war arm which can be compared to the air arm. The difference between the stone thrown by primitive man and the projectile fired by the famous Bertha is simply a difference of performance, not of kind. Between primitive man and Krupp's stretches a series of improvements in giving force to the propulsion of a projectile. But all these improvements have been along the same line of thought; and as long as we move along the same line of thought we have evolution, but never revolution. Between the triremes and the great steamships there is nothing but a series of improvements in methods of propelling a floating ship. Ever since man 180 The Command of The Air began to fight, war has been waged with identical means...