Imagining future war: the West's technological revolution and visions of wars to come, 1880-1914

IMAGINING FUTURE WAR

Praeger Security International Advisory Board Board Cochairs Loch K. Johnson, Regents Professor of Public and International Affairs, School of Public and International Affairs, University of Georgia (U.S.A.) Paul Wilkinson, Professor of International Relations and Chairman of the Advisory Board, Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, University of St. Andrews (U.K.) Members Eliot A. Cohen, Robert E. Osgood Professor of Strategic Studies and Director, Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, The Johns Hopkins University (U.S.A.) Anthony H. Cordesman, Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy, Center for Strategic and International Studies (U.S.A.) The´re`se Delpech, Director of Strategic Affairs, Atomic Energy Commission, and Senior Research Fellow, CERI (Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques), Paris (France) Sir Michael Howard, former Chichele Professor of the History of War and Regis Professor of Modern History, Oxford University, and Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military and Naval History, Yale University (U.K.) Lieutenant General Claudia J. Kennedy, USA (Ret.), former Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Department of the Army (U.S.A.) Paul M. Kennedy, J. Richardson Dilworth Professor of History and Director, International Security Studies, Yale University (U.S.A.) Robert J. O’Neill, former Chichele Professor of the History of War, All Souls College, Oxford University (Australia) Shibley Telhami, Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development, Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland (U.S.A.) Jusuf Wanandi, co-founder and member, Board of Trustees, Centre for Strategic and International Studies (Indonesia) Fareed Zakaria, Editor, Newsweek International (U.S.A.)

IMAGINING FUTURE WAR The West’s Technological Revolution and Visions of Wars to Come, 1880–1914

Antulio J. Echevarria II

War, Technology, and History Robert Citino, Series Editor

PRAEGER SECURITY INTERNATIONAL Westport, Connecticut • London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Echevarria, Antulio Joseph, 1959Imagining future war : the West’s technological revolution and visions of wars to come, 1880–1914 / Antulio J. Echevarria II. p. cm. — (War, technology, and history, ISSN 1556–4924) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978–0-275–98725–1 (alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0–275–98725–6 (alk. paper) 1. War—Forecasting. 2. Military art and science—History—19th century. 3. Military art and science—History—20th century. 4. Technology and civilization—History. 5. War in literature. I. Title. U21.E28 2007 355.0209’034–dc22 2007000056 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright © 2007 by Antulio J. Echevarria II All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. ISBN-13: 978–0-275–98725–1 ISBN-10: 0–275–98725–6 ISSN: 1556–4924 First published in 2007 Praeger Security International, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.praeger.com Printed in the United States of America

The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 I would like to express my appreciation to Arthur B. Evans and Philippe Willems for their invaluable assistance in obtaining the illustrations by Albert Robida. I would also like to thank the editors of Strand Magazine for their assenting to my use of the illustrations from H.G. Wells’ ‘‘Land Ironclads.’’

To my wife, Laurie, and our four children, Rachel, Grace, Matthew, and especially James, who was not there for the first one.

Contents Series Foreword Introduction 1. The Times

ix xiii 1

2. The Future Then

13

3. War Before the Great War

27

4. War and the Future

41

5. Wars on Land

57

6. Wars at Sea

69

7. Wars in the Air

81

Conclusion

95

Notes

101

Index

115

Series Foreword Military historians can be a contentious, feisty lot. There is little upon which they agree. The importance of attrition vs. maneuver, the relative qualities of ‘‘deep battle’’ and ‘‘Blitzkrieg’’, the command abilities of Patton and Montgomery: put two military historians in a room and you’ll likely get three opinions on any of these questions. And yet, there is one thing that unites military historians across the spectrum. Virtually everyone within the field recognizes the crucial role that technology has played in the development of the military art. Indeed, this is almost axiomatic: the very first man who picked up a club against his neighbor was wielding ‘‘technology’’ of a short. The outcome of wars has been profoundly affected by the technological context in which they were fought From spoke-wheeled chariots to the M1A1 tank, from blades of Toledo steel to the AK-47, from primitive ‘‘bombards’’ to the MOAB (’’mother of all bombs’’), the problem of technology has stood at the forefront of military history. Beyond that unifying proposition, however, problems can still arise in analyzing the precise role of technology. Consider for a moment the impact of the Industrial Revolution. Just as it transformed society, economy, and culture, it changed the appearance of war beyond all recognition. It was the age of the mass army, ‘‘railroads and rifles,’’ and the telegraph. The growth of industry allowed military forces to grow to unheardof size. In 1757, Frederick the Great triumphed over the French at Rossbach with an army that totaled 22,000 men; at Ko¨niggra¨tz in 1866, well over 400,000 men would be contesting the issue, and Austrian casualties alone, some 44,000 men, would be approximately twice as large as

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Frederick’s victorious host at Rossbach. The railroad allowed these hordes to move, quite literally, 24 hours per day, and the problem of the slowmoving supply column that had bedeviled military operations from time out of mind seemed to have been solved. Moreover, the introduction of the telegraph meant that armies could be kept on a tight leash, even by commanders hundreds of miles away. For each advantage of the new technology, however, there was a corresponding difficulty. It was soon clear that commanding and controlling the mass army was a huge, nearly insurmountable problem. It is generally agreed that Napoleon I had serious problems in this area in 1812, and that he was at his best with armies that totaled 85,000 men or less. It was foolish to expect an army of several hundred thousand men to maneuver nimbly across the countryside, wheel like a company, and whack the opponent a surprise blow in the flank. In fact, getting them to maneuver at all was a stretch. The telegraph was a modern marvel, true, but the vision it offered of total control of far-flung operations turned out to be a mirage. Tied to a static system of poles and wires, it was far more useful to the defender than to the attacker, and it was nearly useless in any kind of mobile campaign. The mass army, then, was a huge body with a small brain, and had a very difficult time doing much more than marching straight ahead and crashing into whatever happened to be in front of it. At that point, a mutual slaughter began. The other great technological advance of the era was introduction of new firearms—the rifled musket, or simply ‘‘rifle.’’ It dramatically improved the range and firepower of infantry, and the 1860s would see another breakthrough, the breechloader, which greatly increased rate of fire. With long-range rifles now in the hands of the defenders, assault columns could theoretically be shot to pieces long before they struck home. In place of the old-style assault, there now arose the firefight, with extended skirmish lines on both sides replacing the formations of line and column. It was an ‘‘open order revolution’’, the logical culmination of tactical developments since the French Revolution. Open order tactics, however, rarely allowed enough concentration of fighting power for a successful assault. Both sides lined up and fired. There were casualties, enormous casualties, often for little gain. It was the great conundrum of the era. Clearly, technology was not so much a solution to a problem on the nineteenth century battlefield; it was more like the problem itself. These are the issues that will form the heart of Praeger’s new War, Technology, and History series. Books in the series will focus on the crucial relationship between warmaking and technological advance in the past 200 years. During that period, new machines like the rifle, the railroad,

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and the telegraph (in the nineteenth century) and the machine gun, the airplane, and the tank (in the twentieth) have transformed the face of war. In the young twenty-first century, the U.S. Army has been emphasizing the ways in which information technology can have an even more radical transformative impact. Historically, armies that have managed to integrate these new technologies have found corresponding success on the battlefield, and their victories have as often as not come at the expense of those who have failed to ground their warmaking doctrine squarely in the available technology. The question is, therefore, much wider than a simple list of technical ‘‘specs’’ for various weapons. Books in the series will link technology and doctrine—that is, the weapons and the manner in which they were employed on actual battlefields of the day. The series is intended for a wide readership, from buffs and wargamers to scholars and ‘‘operators’’—military officers and policymakers. It is hard to argue with the notion that technological change has held the key to understanding military history, and in our contemporary era of information management and smart weaponry, technology continues to change the face of battle. Questions remain, however. Is technology our master or our servant? Are there limits to its usefulness? Does it alter the nature of war, or is war based on timeless, unchanging principles? These are a few of the themes to be explored by the authors—recognized experts all—in this new series. It presents no party line or previously agreed-upon point of view. Nor does it offer any simple answers to any of these questions. Welcome to War, Technology, and History. Robert M. Citino, Series Editor

Introduction Nothing we imagine is absolutely impossible.

1

David Hume, 1739

This book explores the principal images of future war that appeared in fiction and nonfiction writing during the quarter-century before the Great War. If, as dictionaries would have us believe, imagination is the ability to form images or ideas, then this work is a critique of the veritable grist of Western society’s imagination before 1914. Images and ideas are the raw material that the millworks of imagination break up, grind down, and combine anew. As Enlightenment philosopher David Hume said nearly 300 years ago, being able to imagine something means it is conceivable, and thus might exist. The thing imagined would have to be examined more closely to determine if it actually could exist. But, in short, if something is imaginable, it is conceivable. By extension, because the future wars described by writers and pundits before 1914 were imagined, they are conceivable, and only further investigation can determine whether the wonders they feature could, in fact, exist. Assessing what those writers imagined, and why, is the aim of this book. In the 25 years prior to the Great War, popular publications in the United States and Europe were literally teeming with ideas about the future. Speculating about ‘‘things to come’’ became a favorite pastime and a profitable business for turn-of-the-century writers and thinkers of all persuasions. New genres, such as science fiction, or ‘‘scientific romance’’ as it was called then, came into being, creating opportunities for writers while also stimulating the popular imagination. A publishing

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boom in the latter part of the nineteenth century led to the creation of more outlets—books, magazines, and newspapers—for expressing, sharing, and debating ideas than hitherto. In addition, rising literacy rates meant there were more readers to impress than ever before. The ‘‘first great age of the future,’’ as historians have rightly called this period, was 2 undoubtedly also the ‘‘first great age of the imagination.’’ If the era was rich in imagination, it had every reason to be. Rapid and far-reaching change—from inventions such as the automobile to the emergence of new economic and social structures and avant-garde movements in art and literature—transformed the body and soul of Western 3 society in less time than it takes a generation to mature. The speed and breadth of change naturally prompted the public to wonder what else the future might bring. Still, as the celebrated futurist and science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke once wrote, when too much imagination is exer4 cised, it often leads to ‘‘frustration and failure.’’ As this book will show, some of the era’s prognosticators were guilty of exercising too much imagination, and their ideas could never have been realized. Yet, the opposite was also true. If some luminaries exercised too much imagination, others expended too little. The renowned American astronomer and mathematician Rear Admiral Simon Newcomb (1835–1909) once famously announced that ‘‘aerial flight is one of that great class of 5 problems with which man can never cope.’’ Similarly, another American astronomer, William Henry Pickering (1858–1938), proclaimed that com6 mercial air travel was ‘‘wholly visionary’’ and utterly impractical. Unfortunately for Newcomb, the Wright brothers’ flight at Kitty Hawk ‘‘coped’’ with the problem of flying within months of his statement. For his part, Pickering would live to see commercial air travel actually occur. Both fall victim of what Clarke called a ‘‘failure of imagination,’’ the inability to see what might be done. Its corollary is a ‘‘failure of nerve,’’ 7 the inability to see what will be done. The period’s military thinkers also tend to fall into the category of failing in imagination; they are commonly said to have fared rather poorly at envisioning future war, either shunning new technologies, such as the machine gun, submarine, and aircraft, or failing to appreciate their poten8 tial. Instead, it was non-specialists, amateurs, who were considered more imaginative, and who thus had better sense of what the next war would bring. In truth, few military thinkers wondered about long-term changes in warfare, though many had a reasonably developed sense of how the conduct of war had evolved historically. Nor were they entirely wrong about what warfare would look like within the next three to five years.

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The imaginations of the amateurs, in contrast, did capture many of the features of future warfare, even if those features did not appear until half a century later. Yet, the practical short-term held much less interest for them. They needed to strike a sense of awe among their readers, to satisfy the growing appetite for fanciful tales, and to outdo the competition. The long-term future offered more opportunities for that, and for the imagination to roam free. In other words, military thinkers and their civilian counterparts rarely tried to predict what future war would look like. Instead, they sought to persuade their readers to accept a specific argument; so, the future, for both groups, was a means rather than an end. In many respects, the way in which imagination served the prognosticators of the day had to do with whether one was optimistic or pessimistic about change. And readers will discover that this theme runs throughout the book; indeed, it might prove useful for viewing how change affects other societies. In the decades before the First World War, optimism and pessimism were not so much at odds as they were necessary complements. Pessimists were sometimes aggressively optimistic, and optimists doggedly pessimistic. Optimists saw a brighter future, but a bleaker present, while pessimists envisioned a darker future, but a more appealing present. Which is the truer pessimist—the author of a futuristic novel who posits human evolution leading ultimately to two races, with one regularly preying upon the other, or the general who sees in war the purification, through blood, of society and the state, and, thus, upholds violent conflict as a means of transitioning to a better future? In the end, optimists wanted what pessimists wanted, to define the contemporary world on their own terms, to control change. The former wanted to do so to make tomorrow’s world better, the latter to keep it from becoming worse. Using this optimist-pessimist lens, thus, might make looking backward the equivalent of looking ahead. This book consists of seven chapters. Chapter 1 (The Times) describes in broad strokes the dynamism of the day, how it affected cultural and political attitudes, and how it physically set the stage for the expansion of the era’s imagination. Chapter 2 (The Future Then) discusses how optimists and pessimists regarded the future, what change meant to them, and how they responded to it. Chapter 3 (War before the Great War) lays out the concrete changes that took place in armed conflict from the FrancoPrussian War (1870–71) through the Boer War (1898–1902) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05) to the eve of the Great War. This chapter provides a basis by which to compare the actual conduct of war in this period to the way it came to be imagined. Chapter 4 (War and the Future)

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reveals how the future of war came to be seen as separate and distinct from the war of the future. Chapters 5 (Wars on Land), 6 (Wars at Sea), and 7 (Wars in the Air), discuss images of conflict as they related to the principal domains of combat. Readers will find that some of the images covered in this book were not necessarily those that were the most prominent in the quarter-century before 1914. In fact, in some cases, the images and ideas might have been little more than marginal. Yet, they are included here because, to capture the imagination of the era, it is important to explore not only the most popular views, but also those that might otherwise have languished in obscurity.

1 The Times We are chameleons, and our partialities and prejudices change places with an easy and blessed facility, and we are soon wonted to the change and happy in it.

1

Mark Twain, 1906

By the time Mark Twain penned these words, Western society had already exchanged partialities and prejudices several times to accommodate change. It had little choice. By 1906, not only had the Wright brothers shown that humans could actually fly, several aeronautical records had already been broken and re-broken in rapid succession. Steam-powered ships had all but replaced sailing vessels, and the launching of the first 2 dreadnought battleship was only months away. Cinema houses and telephones were becoming more evident in all major cities, and subways and streetcars, having made their debuts in the 1880s, were now practically commonplace. Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity had been published a year earlier, though its revolutionary implications for the world of Newtonian physics were yet to be felt. The Spanish painter Pablo Picasso had just finished his famous portrait of American writer Gertrude Stein, and was about to bring a new form called Cubism to the fore; meanwhile, the Austrian avant-garde painter Gustav Klimt had inspired an art movement called the ‘‘Viennese Secession’’ with his uninhibited exploration of sexuality, regeneration, love, and death. The French science-fiction author, Jules Verne, had just died, and the first commercial radio broadcast had just occurred. The Moroccan crisis of 1905-06 had just ended, setting the stage for other diplomatic crises, and ultimately for a general war in Europe. The Labour Party had just been established in Britain, and Social

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Democrats in Germany had recently won a record number of seats in the Reich’s parliament. New magazines in the United States, such as Collier’s and McClure’s, dedicated to investigative journalism, or ‘‘muckraking,’’ had just achieved a combined circulation of 3,000,000, an all-time high. How happy Western society was with such rapid and far-reaching changes, and their myriad implications, was another matter. Had change not come so abruptly and been so pervasive, communities might have had time to become ‘‘wonted’’ to it, as Mark Twain said. Being ‘‘happy in it,’’ or at least content, might then have been possible. However, it did not happen that way. The 30 or so years leading up to the Great War were some of the most dynamic in the history of Europe and the United States. Change was more evident in this period than in any previous one. The new mechanical devices and innovations which Mark Twain elsewhere referred to as ‘‘modern inconveniences’’ would prove to be much more than that. PROGRESS & TURBULENCE The Industrial Revolution had helped Europe’s economies grow at a steady pace since the end of the eighteenth century. However, in the decades before the outbreak of war in 1914, Europe’s industrial production, and attendant capacity for wealth, skyrocketed; steel production alone grew by 350 percent in Britain, almost 1,500 percent in Germany, and 3 more than 8,600 percent in the United States. Coal output also soared, rising by a factor of 650 percent in Germany and 250 percent in Britain. Trade increased by 250 percent in Europe, and jumped by 400 percent in 4 the United States. The growth of railways essentially tripled in Europe, and nearly quadrupled in the United States, even as the use of waterways and macadam roads increased. From 1889 to 1913, the gross national product of the United States tripled; the Germans saw theirs double, while 5 the French and British noticed theirs grow by two-thirds. Throughout the eighteenth century and most of the nineteenth century, Europe’s population growth remained steady. However, in the last half of the nineteenth century that changed dramatically. Between 1880 and 1914, Europe’s population rose from roughly 300 million to 450 million, an increase of 50 percent. From 1890 to 1913, the population in the United States increased from 63 million to more than 97 million. In Britain the change was less pronounced, from 37 million to 46 million, while in Germany the population went from 49 million to 67 million, an 6 increase of almost 75 percent. The overall expansion of Europe’s population is staggering, especially considering some 12 million Europeans

The Times

3

emigrated to the United States during this time. Reasons for the upsurge include improvements in agricultural production and transportation of food stuffs, better hygiene practices, construction of water drainage and sewerage systems, and increased inoculation against disease, especially smallpox, and advances in medical science, such as the use of sterilization. Not surprisingly, most of this growth was concentrated in urban areas, where the demand for labor continued to rise. From 1880 to 1914, London’s population grew from five million to seven million, while the population in Paris increased from two million to three million during the 7 same timeframe. Urbanization was most dramatic in Germany, where 90 percent of the population increase occurred in the cities; Berlin’s population exceeded two million by 1910, making it the third largest city in 8 Europe and the fifth largest in the world. As a result of the unprecedented scale of late nineteenth-century urbanization, the ranks of the working class swelled. By the end of the century, industry workers could achieve considerable political influence by leveraging their labor. Once workers were organized and led, they used strikes and demonstrations, which too often resulted in violence, to increase awareness and compel reforms, such as standardized work hours, employer liability, and wage and disability compensation. The middle classes in Europe and the United States, which enjoyed markedly higher levels of literacy and education than previously, also grew tremendously. Between 1890 and 1910, illiteracy in the United States, even with a rapidly expanding population base, decreased from 13 to 8 percent, and attendance at primary and secondary public schools climbed from 54 to 59 per9 cent. By the end of the nineteenth century, illiteracy was the exception rather than the rule in Europe, with Britain, France, and Germany reporting literacy rates at near 100 percent. Higher education was also on the rise. Between 1890 and 1913, attendance at universities more than 10 doubled in France, and nearly tripled in Germany. The rise in literacy was, indeed, at an all-time high, which in turn increased the demand for popular reading material. Established periodicals, such as the Saturday Evening Post (1821), Harper’s (1850), and the Atlantic Monthly (1857) in the United States, Blackwood’s (1817), Punch Magazine (1841), and Pall Mall (1865) in Britain, and Deutsche Revue (1835) and Kladderadatsch (1848) in Berlin, were now joined by a rash of new publications, such as Puck (1876), Cosmopolitan (1886), Scribner’s (1887), Collier’s (1888), and McClure’s (1893) in America and Strand (1891), The Idler (1892), and The Nation (1906) in Britain. Germany’s turn-of-the-century satirical equivalents were Simplicissimus (1896) based in Munich and Der Wahre Jakob (1898) centered in Stuttgart. In many

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cases, these journals, which literally numbered in the thousands, did more than provide political satire, comic relief, or escapism in turbulent times. The class of so-called muckraking journals is credited with having impelled the enactment of laws governing child labor, workers’ compensation, and pure food standards, as well as exposing the threat posed by oil and tobacco monopolies, and incidents of graft and corruption among public officials. These publications also popularized science, bringing news of technological advances, as well as the latest theories an speculations, to a general audience. Many of these journals and magazines ceased publication in the 1920s and 1930s, indicating the extent to which the public’s attitudes shifted after the disillusionment of the First World War, and how quickly one generation’s interests could give way to another’s. And there was indeed much for such magazines to write about in the way of modern innovations. Inventions such as the typewriter (1873), telephone (1876), phonograph (1876), electric street car (1879), steam engine (1884), Maxim machine gun (1883), magazine rifle (1884), bicycle (1895), motorcycle (1885), automobile (1885), subway (1890), wireless telegraphy (1895), cinema houses (1895), quick-firing artillery (1897), dirigible (1900), airplane (1903), dreadnought (1906), and radio broadcasting (1906) had radically altered Western business, leisure, and military activities, though it was not until they were mass produced that their impact was truly felt. When they were, they simply came on too fast for many. They began to proliferate before anyone could judge whether they would really aid the ‘‘Progress’’ of humanity, or only contribute to its moral degeneration. Modern conveniences, or inconveniences as Twain preferred, such as the telephone, wireless, telegraph, newspapers, pamphlets, and cablegrams created problems as well as opportunities. To some, the ‘‘delicacy, intricacy, and nuance of language’’ was threatened by such forms of communication. The quiet intimacy of personal communication seemed to be fading. People felt compelled to express themselves in the fewest possible words. Newspapers seemed to make public opinion ‘‘simultaneous’’ and turned rational individuals into unthinking ‘‘mobs.’’ Some complained that newspapers represented ‘‘the mob spirit, a vast, impersonal, delirious, 11 anarchic, degenerating, and disintegrating force.’’ True, literacy and education were on the rise, but, in the eyes of some, the vast expansion of schools seemed merely to ‘‘democratize’’ education, reducing it to the 12 lowest common denominator. The publishing boom and the rise of popular magazines provided space for another genre to expand, futuristic or science-fiction writing. Although the term science fiction was probably coined in the early

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1850s, it would not gain common currency until the late 1920s. In fact, the genre itself extends as far back as the early sixteenth century. Yet, readerships were relatively small and technological progress comparatively slow, and so the genre was hardly an influential one. With all the technological innovations made possible by the Industrial Revolution, however, that changed. Technological innovation tends to give rise to speculation, and speculation in the late nineteenth century was proving to be a lucrative business. Jules Verne (1828-1905) set the stage for the marketing of such speculation through ‘‘scientification,’’ the mixing of fact and imagination, with his Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), From the Earth to the Moon (1865), 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1870), Clipper of the Clouds (1886), and his collection of fiftyodd novellas or short stories, known as Les voyages extraordinaires (The 14 Extraordinary Voyages). The latter work, sometimes referred to as encyclopedic fiction, essentially popularized science, conveying what was known at the time about geography, astronomy, oceanography, and geology through entertaining stories. Verne was certainly not the first, but he was perhaps the most famous writer, to use fiction as a vehicle to educate the public. The British writer H.G. Wells (1866-1946) took scientification, or ‘‘scientific romance’’ as it was also called, to yet another level, incorporating not only the state of science into his works, but emerging political views as well. An avowed but moderate socialist, Wells’s most important scientific romances published before the First World War includeThe Time Machine (1895), War of the Worlds (1898), and The War in the Air (1908). The former, which portrays a world far into the future (A.D. 802,701) with an underground race called Morlocks feeding on the child-like surface-dwelling Eloi, is as much about the wonders and risks of new technology as it is about the possible direction of human evolu15 tion, and the need for broad political and social reform. It was through this genre, perhaps more than any other, that the future was portrayed most widely and vividly, and hence it will figure prominently in subsequent chapters. The era’s underlying tension between optimism and pessimism was perhaps nowhere more evident than in art and literature. New forms were rapidly introduced, with Post-Impressionism, Expressionism, and Cubism being the most notable. Artists were probably more plentiful and more prolific in this era than in any hitherto. Common themes were alienation, loss of individuality and identity, decadence, eroticism, and a yearning for a return to the idyllic life of the simple peasant. Realism depicted the majesty and power of nature and of the human subject. The

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many forms of modern art attempted to capture the dimensions of time and movement, and the realities of the subconscious. The focus was less on subjects frozen in time, and thus preserved perfectly for all time, and more on capturing the physical and psychological aspects of those subjects; movement and perspective superceded, or redefined, perfection. Henri Matisse’s (1869-1954) Portrait with Green Stripe (1903) is as much about depicting the effects of light moving across the subject’s face as it is about capturing the conflicting poles of her inner self. The ‘‘green stripe’’ divides her face. To the left is a yellow-green complexion, suggesting youth, beauty, sex, suspicion, and even envy; to the right are rough, unblended pink-white strokes, radiating energy, love, constancy, perseverance, age, and wisdom. The traditional assumption that only one perspective could reveal the truth gave way to the modern desire to explore all subjects from multiple perspectives, including, as far as possible, the unconscious. Picasso’s (1881-1973) portrait of Gertrude Stein can be seen in many ways, one of the most striking of which is from a psychological perspective—with one of her eyes half-closed, discerning something distant, perhaps far in the future, and the other wide-open, appreciating something immediate, compelling, and unexpected. Gustav Klimt’s (1862-1918) Judith, completed in 1901, links death, beauty, and sex; holding the severed head of Holofernes, an Assyrian general whose army had besieged a Hebrew city, Judith is just as seductive after the bloodletting as she is evidently seduced 16 by it, as entrancing as she is entranced. The psychological perspective is aroused in us as much by the symbols in the background and those that adorn her as her half-closed eyes, which are suggestive of sexual afterglow. The modern tendency to embrace such use of perspectives is especially evident in Cubism, a celebrated first example of which is Picasso’s self portrait, which he rendered in 1907. In the portrait, the lines outlining Picasso’s face are bold, blunt yet ill-defined, suggesting a man always on the verge of movement; his eyes are wide, alert, all-encompassing. The figure’s personality comes across as bright, determined, unsettled, and uncompromising. What Picasso attained for painting, the Russian composer and conductor Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) accomplished for music. Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring (1913) embraced a new form that used ‘‘off rhythms’’ and dissonance to express contemporary sentiments and movement through space and time. The opening performance of his Rite of Spring in Paris in 1913 is said to have provoked fist-fights among the audience. If innovation characterized modern painting and music, it certainly did not overlook drama and literature. From George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) to D.H.

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Lawrence (1885-1930) to the American Ezra Pound (1885-1972), drama, literature, and poetry broke existing barriers in terms of content, and took up new forms. Shaw’s classic Pygmalion (1913) was a light-hearted exploration of social and personal conventions and expectations that also challenged accepted notions of class, honor, and love. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers (1913) was an autobiographical exploration of the binding nature of sexual conventions while exposing the trials of working class life. Pound’s Ripostes (1912) experimented with free verse, and inspired the ‘‘Imagist’’ movement, an endeavor to capture delicate imagery in precise wording; he also coined the phrase, ‘‘Vorticism,’’ to describe another movement he inspired that had attempted to incorporate Cubist dyna17 mism into poetry. In virtually all the fine arts, modernism and futurism went hand-inhand. A number of artists published futurist manifestos, reflecting a cer18 tain preoccupation, if not obsession, with rapid movement and change. Painters attempted to capture movement, while musicians and composers looked to recreate the irregular noises of modern urban life. Sculptors and architects sought to use the materials of the age—steel, glass, cardboard, reinforced concrete, and textile fibers—to create works that were as 19 representative of modern life as they were anticipatory of the future. Modern art, in essence, defined itself as a search for forms more genuinely expressive of the times, just as the age in general attempted to redefine itself within and against a sea of change. In short, modern art was in many ways more about experimentation and innovation than about meaning. As Picasso later remarked, ‘‘People want to find a ‘meaning’ in everything and everyone. That’s the disease of our age, an age that is anything but practical, but believes itself to be more practical than any 20 other age.’’ Modern art thus rejected the general public’s concerns with meaning and substance, though meaning nonetheless exuded from the artists’ works, their choice of subjects, of colors, and of what to include and what to omit. Science, too, challenged traditional assumptions. Albert Einstein’s (1879-1955) special theory of relativity, published in 1905, shattered previous conceptions of time and space. Hitherto, Newtonian physics rested on three principal assumptions: time and space were absolutes, measurable and understandable in the same way by all; the atom, the basic particle of the universe, was indivisible; the state of nature was one of balance, or equilibrium, where energy is transferred from one mass to another by universal laws of cause and effect. Einstein’s special theory of relativity essentially said that observers moving at different speeds will see and measure objects in the universe differently, depending on their

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positions and rates of movement. Since the earth itself is a moving body, all our observations of the universe depend not upon absolute standards of space and time, but on the earth’s position and movement relative to the other celestial bodies. Furthermore, the discovery of X-rays by Wilhelm Roentgen in 1895, of radioactivity by Henri Bequerel in 1897, and of the electron by J. J. Thompson in 1897 exploded the notion that the atom was indivisible, indicating instead that it was composed of many smaller particles, always in motion, within a relatively vast amount of 21 space. By implication, then, time and space are not absolutes, but always relative to the observer, and the natural state of the universe was not one of equilibrium, but rather of turmoil and change. NERVOUSNESS & ANXIETY Rather than becoming accustomed to the rash of change that rippled across existing economic and social structures and the fields of science, technology, and the arts, modern society was diagnosed by the pundits of the day as having a case of extreme nervousness and anxiety. In the United States in 1881, the accomplished American neurologist George M. Beard, published the most influential examination of the effects of 22 the ‘‘modern’’ age, American Nervousness: Its Causes and Cures. Beard argued that nervousness, which he described as a deficiency of vital nerve or life force, had increased dramatically, particularly in urbanized areas. The primary cause of this nervousness, he claimed, was ‘‘modern civilization,’’ defined by the use of ‘‘steam-power, the periodical press, the tele23 graph, the sciences, and the mental activity of women.’’ Outward signs of nervousness included: ‘‘hysteria, hay-fever, sick-headache, inebriety, and some phases of insanity.’’ However, increasing wealth, new inventions, and changing social customs could provide opportunities for American society to adapt. With a blend of optimism and pessimism characteristic of the age, Beard predicted that the ‘‘physical future of the 24 American people has a bright as well as a dark side.’’ His views were widely publicized throughout the 1880s in such periodicals as North American Review, Atlantic Monthly, Appleton’s Journal, Yale College Courant, and the Virginia Medical Journal. Beard’s thesis was quickly picked up in Europe. In 1892, Sir James Crichton-Browne, a prominent neurologist and member of the British Medical Association, declared: ‘‘The increasing rush and worry of our existence, the railway, the telegraph, the herded aggregations of human 25 beings in cities, conduce to nervous complaints.’’ The remedy, according

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to Chrichton-Brown, was simple—modern citizens must participate more in dangerous sports and adventures. This cure came, curiously enough, from an academic, whose life was given over primarily to study and reflection. Three years later, in France, Gustave LeBon, a writer who popularized modern science for the general reader, published The Psychology of the Crowd. The book became an instant success, and was translated into 16 languages. LeBon argued that modern civilization was undergoing a period of profound intellectual and material transformation comparable to that which occurred just before the fall of the Roman Empire. The intellectual transformation consisted in the destruction of those ‘‘religious, political, and social beliefs in which all the elements of our civilization are rooted.’’ The material transformation was the creation of ‘‘entirely new conditions of existence and thought as the result of modern scientific and industrial discoveries.’’ In short, modern society was in a state of ‘‘transition and anarchy,’’ with the ideas of the past only half destroyed and those of the new era only half formed. Consequently, mob or herd mentality, the power of the crowd, was likely to rule sovereign, pushing individuals who lacked their own intellectual or moral compass, this way 26 and that. Similar sentiments were echoed in Germany. In 1902, the German social psychologist Willy Hellpach declared nervousness to be the ‘‘sick27 ness’’ of the modern era. He argued that human feelings were constantly ‘‘dominated by contrast,’’ pulled between opposite emotive poles ‘‘between desire and reluctance,’’ which created a state of nervous exhaustion in the modern, civilized individual. The cure, Hellpach believed, was further economic and spiritual development. Numerous scientists, scholars, and other pundits, not only in Germany but throughout Europe, felt the same way; nervousness and a soulless attitude of crass materialism seemed to 28 have infected modern society. Even academic elites could not resist feeling that the ‘‘whole of society’’ had fallen into a state of irreversible 29 decay. At about the same time, John H. Girdner, an American M.D., published Newyorkitis, a tongue-in-cheek social commentary that revisited Beard’s thesis of 20 years earlier. Girdner was a popularizer of medicine and a regular contributor to Munsey’s, a human-interest magazine with a purported circulation of some 700,000. In Newyorkitis, which was as much a critique of urban society as it was of the citizens of New York, he gave renewed voice to the popular concern about the fast-paced and ‘‘artificial’’ nature of city life. As a cure, Girdner advised the broadenening of one’s

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mind to gain an increased awareness of the importance of national and spiritual evolution through greater exposure to cultural activities. Yet culture, as we have seen, was in a crisis of its own. The remedies offered for the maladies of modern nervousness and anxiety, thus, amounted to renewal, both in a psychological as well as a physical sense. Individuals were to renew their spiritual sides by reaffirming their values and beliefs, and by expanding their intellectual horizons through the opportunities afforded by cultural activities. They were to strengthen their physical health by engaging in strenuous exercises, and by embracing adventure. Unfortunately, as we have seen, modern art was not interested in renewing the spiritual health of society, but in exposing its darker side, or in forcing the use of new perspectives. Instead of affording spiritual renewal, art tended to fuel emotional anxiety. The same could be said for higher education and philosophy, which became preoccupied with the moral decline of society. As a matter of fact, physical activities—sporting events—did increase in this period. The modern Olympics began in Athens in 1896, followed every four years in Paris, St. Louis, London, and Stockholm. Baseball became a national pastime in the United States with the first official playoffs held in 1884, and the first World Series in 1903. Professional football’s first game took place in 1892. Youth movements, emphasizing personal fitness and the development of ‘‘character,’’ among other virtues, sprung up throughout Europe and the United States; in 1907, British Lieutenant General Robert Baden-Powell founded the British Boy Scout movement, the forerunner of the American Boy Scouts, which was incorporated in 30 1910. Yet, as Mark Twain wrote about the human tendency to acclimatize to change, neither Beard’s remedies nor the others seemed to have had any visible effect. If anything, the pace and breadth of change were accelerating, making adjustment even more difficult. The spirit of the times remained captured by a combination of heady optimism and profound anxiety. On the one hand, ‘‘Progress’’ had brought an increase in knowledge and education, significant prosperity and wealth, modern conveniences, and advances in the medical sciences. However, wealth was anything but evenly distributed; violent protests and strikes had become more frequent. Moreover, while increased leisure and prosperity became the tangible fruits of progress, they also generated feelings of guilt and antipathy. Scientists such as Einstein and Planck made revolutionary advances in physics, yet they also undermined and ultimately destroyed its traditional foundations.

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The age saw material progress increase at an astounding rate, yet modern conveniences came with associated inconveniences. As celebrated sociologist Georg Simmel reported, modern life left one awed by the ‘‘clamorous splendor of the scientific technological age,’’ but also with a 31 ‘‘lack of something at the center of the soul.’’ In the years preceding the First World War, change was both welcomed and feared. No field of human endeavor was left untouched. So it was with a precarious blend of optimism and pessimism that individuals and communities moved into the future, however boldly or cautiously, and fashioned their destinies.

2 The Future Then I hold that man is in the right who is most closely in league with the future. Henrik Ibsen, 1882

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As we saw in the previous chapter, optimists and pessimists alike embraced change, though in different ways and for different reasons. The former tended to see change as evidence of progress toward a better future, and downplayed the problems it caused. The latter, contrary to popular belief, did not seek so much to prevent change as to engineer it toward more agreeable ends. Both optimists and pessimists turned to prophesying the future, which consequently became something of a cottage industry. A sea of pamphlets, novels, short stories, and journal articles, all forecasting wondrous—or disastrous—things to come, flooded the public domain. The future was on everyone’s mind. However, the great paradox of the future is that it is always on the verge of arriving, but never actually does. It simply cannot. To do so, it would have to become the present, which by definition it cannot be. Thus, the future both is, and is not. It exists in one’s imagination, but not in one’s experience. It is forever just out of reach, forever just one step ahead of the here and now, and it is always ideal, perfect in what it is, whether good or evil. The present is, thus, always less than the future. In one respect though, the present always trumps the future: it is the only place where anything actually happens. Consequently, it is impossible for individuals to be in the ‘‘right’’ if, as Henrik Ibsen said, they must be ‘‘in league’’ with the future, that is, allied with something that can never occur. Of course, what Ibsen meant by the future was simply what he thought would, or should, happen given certain

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circumstances and trends, and most of his contemporaries regarded it the same way. Strictly speaking then, the future is really many futures, with as many possibilities as there are individuals forecasting it. How they envisioned the future depended greatly on how they interpreted the signs and events of the day, and that in turn depended very much on their individual backgrounds, their pasts. This chapter takes a closer look at the pasts, and in some cases the consequential futures, of many of the writers, civilian and military, who, in the last quarter-century or so before the Great War, told the world what was to come. Certainly there are more than two ways to imagine the future; yet, at the end of the day, only two basic images emerge: one where things are better than in the present, and one where they are worse. These views do not always fall neatly within optimistic or pessimistic lines, however. As might be expected, some individuals changed camps with greater facility than others. Nor are the attitudes of optimism and pessimism themselves mutually exclusive. Still, they are a reasonable place to start. As change accelerated and grew more pervasive after 1880, Western societies began to project that change, even if only unconsciously, into tomorrow, and into tomorrow’s tomorrow. As they did so, they envisioned futures that resembled a utopian non-world, where life was much better than in the present, or a dystopian no-place, where it was much worse. UTOPIAN HOPES Unquestionably the most renowned utopian in the United States at this time was the American lawyer and writer Edward Bellamy (1850–1898). In a brief but productive literary career he published several novels as well as a host of short stories, which decried contemporary economic and 2 social injustices. His most popular and successful work was the utopian novel, Looking Backward: 2000–1887 (1888), which sold over 200,000 cop3 ies in the first two years of its publication. The book’s originality is suspect, with obvious parallels regarding another utopian novel, The Diothas (1883) by John Macnie, and the nonfiction work of the Danish e´ migre´ and leader of American Socialist Party, Laurence Gronlund (1846–1899), author of The Cooperative Commonwealth (1884), among 4 other works depicting the outlines and aims of socialism. The main character of Looking Backward, young Julian West, is put into a Rip Van Wrinkle-like sleep by a mesmerist, and wakes up in the city of Boston in the year 2000; this future city has become a virtual economic and social paradise. A guide takes West on a tour of this utopia, which in many respects resembles the world portrayed by Sir Thomas More (1478–

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1535) in his classic satire Utopia, published in 1515. More’s choice of the term utopia was deliberate, as it is a play on the Greek words ou ‘‘no’’ and eu ‘‘good,’’ combined with topos ‘‘place’’ or ‘‘land,’’ meaning ‘‘noplace’’ or ‘‘good-place.’’ His book attempted to show what society might look like if everyone lived according to Christian principles and common sense; however, at the end of it, he admitted that people’s behaviors were not likely to change. Hence, the ‘‘good-place’’ he described was actually ‘‘no-place,’’ and the book thus draws a stark contrast between what is and what ought to be. Bellamy’s utopia, not surprisingly, has a more modern air and purpose than More’s Renaissance-era masterpiece, even if the former cannot compare to the latter in terms of sophistication and eloquence. Bellamy’s work demonstrated how science, rationality, common sense, technology, and an abiding spirit of brotherhood could generate a widespread ‘‘moral and material transformation,’’ and bring about a better tomorrow. Of course, if all these qualities were actually in place to build a better future, the present itself would already be quite agreeable. Modern-day commentators have remarked on some of Bellamy’s ‘‘hits’’ with respect to technologies like the automobile, telephones that provide wake-up calls or pipe music into homes, and a sort of personal credit card that is valid internationally. Some of these technologies also feature prominently in Bellamy’s short stories. In ‘‘With the Eyes Shut,’’ for instance, he describes ‘‘phonographed books and magazines’’ and ‘‘two-pronged ear trumpets,’’ which today’s readers will recognize as audio books or books-on-tape with head5 phones. He also refers to a new device called an ‘‘indispensable,’’ which is worn at the side and which keeps track of one’s appointments and serves as a message receiving and recording device; the parallels with today’s personal data assistants (PDAs) and blackberrys are obvious. Alas, Bellamy’s main character awakens at the end of the story only to find that all the technological wonders he had imagined were but the products of a dream. As is often the case with utopian works, the dividing line between personal liberty and state authority was vague, or—as some feared—nonexistent because the former was dictated by the latter. Bellamy ends the novel with Julian West suffering an attack of guilt for not having done anything to bring this astounding revolution about, a clear admonition for readers to begin taking part in the positive transformation of society. Still, the novel went a long way toward popularizing socialist views for the apparent purpose of winning over the intellectually uncommitted. A number of ‘‘Bellamy Clubs’’ soon appeared in the United States for the purpose of discussing the book and its ideas. Looking Backward also evidently inspired the publication of some fifty or so utopian novels over

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the following decade. Those include Robert Cromie’s A Plunge into Space (1890), a utopian portrayal of life on Mars; Chauncey Thomas’s The Crystal Button (1891), which predicted a technological utopia featuring monorails, airships, and solar energy in twenty-fifth century Boston, the same locale as Bellamy’s Looking Backward; Gabriel Tarde’s Underground Man (1896), where an ideal world is constructed under the earth’s surface; Godfrey Sweven’s Riallaro: The Archipelago of Exiles (1901), which describes a scientific island utopia called Limanora; as well as William H. 7 Hudson’s ecological utopia, Green Mansions (1904). Not all reactions to Bellamy’s work were positive, however, even among other utopians. In 1890, the British writer, artist, and early pioneer of socialism, William Morris (1834–1896), published another utopian novel, News from Nowhere; it featured a similar Rip Van Wrinkle-like 8 slumber, with the protagonist also waking in the future. Morris, who by this time had already been working with Engels in forming the Socialist League in England, intended News from Nowhere partly as a correction of Bellamy’s views, which in some respects did not go far enough, and in others went much too far. Even socialists like Morris, who wanted to reform society, could hold anti-modernist views. ‘‘Apart from the desire to produce beautiful things,’’ he once said, ‘‘the leading passion of my life 9 has been and is hatred of modern civilization.’’ Morris rejected Bellamy’s emphasis on science and technology, and stressed elimination of the divisions between social classes and between artists and craftsmen. Probably due to the influence of Engels, he laid out a potential, if more detailed, path by which the socialist revolution might take place, while most utopians, whatever their political agendas, avoided such details. Morris became a driving force behind the ‘‘Arts and Crafts’’ movement in Britain, which sought to replace the impersonal and crude assembly-line manufacturing of decorative products with handmade craftsmanship and artistry. Even hard-line socialists such as Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) and August Bebel (1840–1913) had their utopias. Engels’s Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (1880, 1892) attempted to establish a sustainable demarcation between utopian and scientific socialism; the former envisioned better worlds based on socialist principles, whereas the latter sought to 10 develop blueprints for getting there. However, Engels’s book seems only to have enjoyed influence among some of the movement’s groups, and certainly not outside socialist theory itself. Bebel, who along with Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) founded the German socialist party in 1869, published many pamphlets advancing a utopian desiderata; that agenda included the creation of a classless society, the elimination of rank and privilege, and the guarantee of liberties by the consolidation of capital in

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the hands of the state. One of his better-known pamphlets, Women and Socialism (1879), which some scholars believe influenced Bellamy, proclaimed that the ‘‘abolition of private ownership of the means of production’’ and the conversion of all property to social property would bring about a ‘‘new society’’ where exploitation of individuals and ‘‘swindling 11 and cheating,’’ among other evils, would cease. Other period socialists include: the British writer George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), who joined Britain’s Fabian society, which tried to implement socialist principles through reform rather than revolution, when it was founded in 1884; H. G. Wells, who in 1903 also joined the Fabian society, and evidently attempted to take it over; and the French socialist Jean Jaure` s (1859– 1914), whose essays in Etudes socialistes (Socialist Studies, 1902) are models of utopian writing. Utopian hopes also underpinned pacifist ideals. The Austrian Bertha von Suttner (1843–1914), a pacifist of renown and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1905, revealed such hopes in many of her writings, especially her enormously popular novel Ground Arms! (1889); the book emphasized the arbitrary cruelty of war, but suggested that humanity had turned the corner with modern values, which placed a premium on 12 peace and brotherhood. Suttner, raised in an essentially aristocratic home, was well educated, and for the first half of her life embraced traditional values, which she associated with the glorification of war and individual sacrifice. Later in life, she was evidently influenced by Charles Darwin’s theories of natural selection and Herbert Spencer’s ideas concerning ‘‘survival of the fittest,’’ that is, the most capable of adapting; consequently, she came to equate progress with peaceful social evolution. She and her husband eventually became involved in several peace associations in Europe, and her subsequent writings and public lectures strove to promote the work of those organizations. She also helped institute a peace periodical in 1892, and purportedly was instrumental in setting up the famed Peace Conference of 1899, which took place at The Hague. Among other things, it persuaded Alfred Nobel to establish the Peace Prize to rec13 ognize and award efforts to move toward worldwide peace. Suttner could change her modus operandi from utopian to dystopian with apparent alacrity, however. In 1891, she published, The Machine Age, which in typical dystopian fashion forewarned of the evil that would befall modern society due to the growth of rabid nationalism and the blinding irration14 ality of Europe’s industrial arms race. Another boost to utopian hopes came with Ivan Bloch’s weighty, multi-volume The Future of War in Its Technical, Economic, and Political Aspects (1898); Bloch (1836–1901), a Polish banker and railroad financier,

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argued that war must, and therefore will, be abandoned by heads of state 15 because it no longer made sense. Its costs now far outweighed its benefits, and that ratio was not likely to change in the near future, given the advance of modern military technologies. Bloch, a Jew who purportedly converted to Calvinism, was educated in Warsaw, and married into wealthy entrepreneurial circles. As an entrepreneur, he helped finance the construction of railroads in Russia, and was also instrumental in developing a pension system for railroad workers in Russia and Poland. He wrote a number of monographs and pamphlets defending capitalism as an economic system, and advocating further construction of railroads to enhance agricultural and industrial development in Russia. In the 1880s, he published a five-volume work that came to the defense of Russian Jews who were under attack for allegedly criminal behavior, and for supposedly stymieing economic development. To counter such accusations, Bloch delivered a veritable mountain of statistics, which showed that communities in which Jews lived were actually among the more law-abiding and prosperous of Russian society. As Suttner’s and Bloch’s works were circulating Europe and the United States, providing support for newly emerging anti-war movements, the British author and pacifist Sir Norman Angell (1872–1967) joined the pacifist cause with his most important work, Europe’s Optical Illusion (1909); the book was later expanded and republished as The Great Illusion (1910), sold over two million copies, and was translated into 25 lan16 guages. Angell, born into a British middle-class family with considerable means, was educated in England, France, and Switzerland, and spent a number of years in the United States working odd jobs, from ditch17 digger to mail carrier. By century’s end, he had written columns for major newspapers in London, Paris, St. Louis, and San Francisco. He became acutely sensitive to the blinding power of nationalism and military chauvinism while covering the Dreyfus affair in France (1898) and the Spanish-American War (1898–99) in the United States. His broad background helped fashion a wonderfully cosmopolitan perspective, which, as his works suggest, if married with reason rather than prejudice, could lead Western societies toward a more peaceful and prosperous future. Angell was knighted in 1931, and received the Nobel Peace Prize two years later. Utopian hopes certainly did not require envisioning a specific nonworld, wherein a better life might be lived. Henrik Ibsen, for one, did not fashion a perfect no-place for the spiritual delight of the mind’s eye; however, he did identify the future with certain undercurrents, some of

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which he helped inspire, all of which attacked the myopic and cruelly oppressive nature of traditional values. His dramatic masterpieces, such as A Doll’s House (1879), Ghosts (1881), and An Enemy of the People (1882), may ultimately have been more influential than so many socialist pamphlets and manifestos. A Doll’s House, in particular, created such a stir that Ibsen was compelled to change the original ending, in which the protagonist, Nora, comes to the realization that her husband is not worthy of her admiration and affection: she must leave her artificial world, her doll’s house. The revised ending had wife and husband come to a reconciliation in order to preserve the sanctity of marriage. Shaw’s Arms and the Man (1894) accomplished the same excoriation of Victorian hypocrisy, but through the therapeutic medium of comedy. The heroine, the Bulgarian lady Raina, comes to recognize the false, posturing heroism of her betrothed for what it is; she renounces him, and declares her love for the more practical and sincere Servian soldier, Captain Bluntschli, who famously carries chocolates rather than pistol cartridges when on campaign, for as he explains, the sweets are imminently more useful. The German writer Theodor Fontane (1819–1898) came round to a similar disillusionment with Victorian values in his later years, though his weapons of change were romance novels, such as Confusions and 18 Entanglements (1888) and Effi Briest (1896), rather than dramas. Confusions and Entanglements is the story of how restrictive social conventions and expectations prevented two young lovers—a poor sewing girl and a Prussian cavalry officer—from enjoying happiness together. The officer is forced to choose between love and social obligations, and opts for the latter, marrying within his class and living a superficial but socially accept19 able life. Effi Briest, which has been hailed as one of the six best novels of all time, is about the ruinous cruelty of social norms. 17-year-old Effi, energetic and immature, is married off to a Prussian count twice her age, who had previously pursued the affection of Effi’s mother, but had been found socially unfit. Effi soon finds her life with the count, who travels a great deal, to be socially desolate, since his family and acquaintances shun her. She eventually falls for the seductive advances of a womanizing officer, and becomes pregnant in the course of the liaison. Her secret is not revealed until years later, and her life, her parents’ and the count’s, are irreversibly ruined by the resulting scandal. In the end, her parents come to the realization that their own decisions, though in keeping with the customs of the times, contributed to their daughter’s unhappiness and ultimate demise. However, that realization, as Fontane showed, was still a long way from acknowledging the need for change.

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DYSTOPIAN FEARS In many ways, movement toward a brighter future required acknowledging the existence of a darker present, and oft-times an even darker past. Yet, an equally valid and popular approach was to portray the future as gloomier than the present, thus underscoring the need for positive change now. If utopian themes were popular in the period’s literature, so were dystopian ones. Works representing this approach include Ignatius Donnelly’sCeasar’s Column: A Story of the Twentieth Century (1890), which portrayed a world where capitalism made life miserable for the working class. Similar fears are found in Jack London’s The Iron Heel (1907), which portrays a future dominated by socialism. H.G. Wells’ classic When the Sleeper Wakes (1899), revised and reissued as The Sleeper Awakes (1910), clearly borrows from both Looking Backward and Ceasar’s Column to portray a capitalistic dystopia which, despite the well-meaning efforts of a 20 powerful magnate, simply cannot be reformed. In contrast to these futurist visions, Upton Sinclair’s (1878–1968) masterpiece, The Jungle (1906), which exposed the inhuman conditions of the working class, might be considered a dystopia of the times. In 1911, at least one author, a Canadian professor and popular lecturer by the name of Stephen Leacock (1869–1944), parodied the thematic device of falling asleep for a few hundred years to wake up in a brighter, 21 more wondrous future. In his short story, ‘‘The Man in Asbestos: An Allegory of the Future,’’ he wrote: ‘‘It seemed unfair that other writers should be able at will to drop into a sleep of four or five hundred years, and to plunge head first into a distant future and be a witness to its mar22 vels. I wanted to do that too.’’ However, his story was not about a better future, as was Bellamy’s and Morris’s, but a more dreadful one. Leacock’s sleeper, whom he never names, finds a future in which individuals no longer keep track of time, where death, food, and change have been eliminated. Education occurs through brain implants, work is unnecessary, everything important having been done already, nourishment occurs through a pill, all clothing is made of the same gray, asbestos material, which lasts forever, the sexes have blended into one, and neither the elderly nor children are anywhere to be found. In this future era, the ‘‘Great Conquest of Nature’’ and the ‘‘Victory of Man and Machinery’’ has brought about a world in which all activity is avoided, it being ‘‘dangerous’’ to the brittle frames of the asbestos people. Horrified at what humanity has become, the sleeper cries out for his ‘‘old life of danger and stress, with its hard toil and its bitter chances, and its heartbreaks. I

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see its value!’’ He awakens from his nightmare to the sound of a voice in the corridor shouting for him to quit his ‘‘blatting’’ and ‘‘come down to earth,’’ which was Leacock’s way of scolding all utopian dreamers. Military writers were hardly above using dystopian themes either. The Prussian officer and military writer Colmar von der Goltz (1843–1916) at times portrayed a darker tomorrow, though the remedy in Goltz’s case was far different from that of Suttner or Bloch. His most important work, The Nation in Arms (1883), was published in numerous editions and in several languages; it essentially said that winning modern wars would 23 require the militarization of the whole of society. Goltz entered Prussian military service in 1861, and attended the Berlin War College three years later, a posting reserved for only the most promising of young officers. He saw action in Prussia’s war with Austria (1866), and was later assigned to the general staff; he served on the staff of the second German army during the war with France (1870–71), taking part in a number of major engagements, which included the counter-guerrilla campaigns in the Loire valley. Afterward, he was assigned to the Berlin War College as an instructor, and wrote several books about various aspects of modern war. Goltz also saw service in Turkey, where he spent some 14 years training and re-equipping the Turkish army. The Turks performed well enough in the Greco-Turkish war of 1897 that Goltz was hailed as a national hero, and subsequently promoted to the rank of lieutenant general. With the Kaiser’s dismissal of Count Alfred von Schlieffen as chief of the German general staff in late 1905, Goltz fully expected to be named his successor. However, the Kaiser selected another officer, ColonelGeneral Helmuth von Moltke, also known as Moltke the younger, whom he found more affable. Goltz’s disappointment was profound, but shortlived, as he continued to write prolifically and energetically, even engaging Suttner in a debate in the pages of Deutsche Revue, a popular journal of the day. He was promoted to Field Marshal in 1911, and when the Great War broke out three years later, he acquitted himself well in every command he was given; he apparently succumbed to typhus in 1916, but the circumstances of his death remain unclear. Dystopian themes also found their way into a relatively new genre: science fiction, or scientific romance, as it was often called at the time. Jules Verne may be remembered as the most popular science-fiction writer of the nineteenth century, but he was by no means the first. Another Frenchman by the name of E` mile Souvestre (1806–1854), a successful, if unrenowned, novelist and playwright, preceded him. As a young university student, Souvestre studied first to be an engineer, then a lawyer, and finally took up literature. He became editor of La Revue de Paris, and later

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accepted a professorship in Paris. His first play, performed in the French Theater, was a complete failure, but his novels were instant successes. In 1851, he received an academic prize for his Un Philosophe sous les Toits 24 (An Attic Philosopher). In 1846, Souvestre published the dystopia, Le Monde tel qu’l sera (The World as it Shall Be), but it was not translated into English and did not receive wide circulation, except in France, until many years later; Harper’s Magazine ran a selection of passages from the book in its January 1856 25 edition, but did not attribute the work to its rightful author. Souvestre’s writings are said to be explicitly moralistic, and this is certainly true of The World as it Shall Be. The story takes place in the year 3000 A.D., with a young couple, Marthe and Maurice, taken on a tour by Monsieur John Progre`s. However, the future they find is far less pleasant than the present from which they came. They discover a world where humans were ‘‘enslaved to the machine; where self-interest took the place of love;’’ 26 where Christianity had been debased by vulgar passions. In short, unrelenting progress had destroyed the best of humanity, and elevated its worst. Verne could hardly avoid being influenced by Souvestre’s work. Educated in a boarding school, Verne initially studied to become a lawyer, writing only as a hobby. He took employment as a stockbroker when his father withdrew his financial support in reaction to Verne’s increasingly enthusiastic pursuit of writing. Verne met accomplished French authors Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870) and Victor Hugo (1802–1885) in Paris, each of whom purportedly offered him words of advice regarding his writing. However, his most profitable alliance was with the publisher PierreJules Hetzel, whose influence changed Verne’s style profoundly, making it more appealing to the general public. Sad endings became happy ones, tragic incidents became humorous, and political messages surrendered to pure entertainment. Although Verne’s works achieved considerable renown, and are wellregarded even today, those of another Frenchman, Albert Robida (1848– 1926), surpassed them in originality, wit, and wonder. Robida, a career illustrator and writer, penned some 60,000 illustrations, influencing sev27 eral artists, and authored dozens of books and short stories. He even 28 parodied several of Verne’s works, especially Extraordinary Voyages. While Verne’s stories featured new machines based on established scientific principles and extrapolated from technologies already available, albeit in rudimentary form, Robida invented new devices, such as the ‘‘telephonoscope’’ (modern television), without the fetters of science, and only the limits of his wit to guide him. His was perhaps the most entertaining

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imagination of the nineteenth century, and his facility with prediction was constrained only by his skill as an illustrator. His demonstrated flair for illustration enabled him to dispense with long, wordy descriptions of the mechanical wonders of the future, and render them in pen and ink for the reader’s amusement. Scholars have called him the person who most accurately predicted the shape of things to come in the twentieth century, and ‘‘one of the great originators of modern science fiction, the first icon29 maker of the future.’’ If indeed true, the case for the superiority of outof-the-box thinking is made. Robida is said to have shown a penchant for satire even in his youth; by 1873, he had founded his own satirical journal, La Caricature. A decade later, he published the first of a trilogy of satirical, futuristic novels, The Twentieth Century (Le Vingtie`me sie`cle), which portrayed everyday life in 1950s France. That book would be followed in 1887 by War in the Twentieth Century (La Guerre au Vingtie`me sie`cle), and in 1891 by The Electric Life (La vie ´electrique), which was a sequel of sorts to The Twentieth Cen30 tury, though it featured different characters. By placing The Twentieth Century 70 years into the future, Robida set it just beyond the probable lifespan of most of his readers, thereby keeping it just over the horizon, and allowing his imagination free reign. The novel features a young but flighty heroine, He´le`ne Colobry, who journeys to Paris at the behest of her warder, the millionaire Raphael Ponto, to find a career; all He´le`ne’s attempts end in humorous disasters, however, as she has neither the psychological constitution nor the will to pursue a career. She finds happiness at last when she marries Ponto’s son, giving the novel a decidedly anti-feminist ending. The twentieth-century world portrayed by Robida actually featured full political and social equality for women, though that does not seem to bring them greater happiness. If Robida’s heroines have more foibles than admirable qualities, so do his heroes, who are often depicted as vain and self-indulgent. It is not the purpose of satire, after all, to lavish praise, but to lampoon. For Robida, the world of tomorrow will be suffused with technological marvels, such as aircabs, underground tubes, large-screen televisions, video telephones, and radio; middle-class families will even own one or two airships, and park them in air garages above their homes. Naturally, the people of the twentieth century do not marvel at the technological wonders around them, but instead are preoccupied with their own lives. Still, the concerns of tomorrow will be those of today: romance, fulfillment, fame, and fortune. The times may well change, but people will not. Scientific and technological progress will march on relentlessly, inexorably, bringing more conveniences, but also greater challenges. Robida

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alludes to ‘‘test tube’’ babies, genetic engineering, ecological problems, and industrial pollution, thus raising, but not resolving, a number of ethical and moral issues. It is not so much that material progress will outpace moral development, but that the two will have to co-evolve, like the fox and rabbit. This message is especially evident in War in the 20th Century (about which more will be said in chapter 4), in which Robida introduces many terrible weapons, and suggests progress will bring both good and bad, neither of which will alter the basic nature of humanity, nor cause the world to end. If humanity does in fact have a darker future in store for it, Robida seems to say, it will hardly notice. H.G. Wells was perhaps the most well-known of the nineteenth century’s English writers of scientific romance. Born into a lower-middle class family of little means, he was a gifted writer and free-thinker who published in almost every genre. Educated in London at the Normal School of Science (later Royal School of Science), Wells lost his scholarship in 1887 for failing to pass geology; nonetheless, he later became president of the Royal College of Science Association. His views took a socialist turn early on, the utopian principles of which are reflected in many of his 31 works, especially his dystopias. By 1900, Wells had established a reputation as a visionary, if not a revolutionary. Scholars remain divided over whether he was pessimistic or optimistic about the future, as his works show strong tendencies in each direction, though the latter generally appear only as brief flashes. He once confessed that fiction ‘‘can never be satisfactory’’ as a serious forecast of the future because it is always too ‘‘polemical, cautionary, or idealistic.’’ He thus added nonfiction works to his repertoire, the most important of which, for turn-of-the-century readers, was his Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought, which—considering the tone of the work—might better have been called The Complaints of Mr. Wells Regarding the Present Condition 32 of Things. Deliberately or coincidentally, Anticipations actually contains all the polemical, cautionary, and idealistic shortcomings Wells purportedly sought to avoid. Nonetheless, Anticipations did make many imaginative forecasts of things to come, particularly in the domains of locomotion, urbanization, society, democracy, war, language, culture, and of a new governing order, 33 a New Republic. Wells argued that advances in science and technology had begun to change the world from the ground up—socially, intellectually, spiritually, physically, and politically. ‘‘Invention runs free,’’ he declared, ‘‘and our state is under its dominion.’’ He saw science and technology, respectively, as method and means, a ‘‘process of vigorous and

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fearless criticism’’ joined by ideas of all sorts of machines and mechanisms. Socially, Wells believed that the world was moving away from a ‘‘static social organization toward a violently progressive one.’’ All the old classes had blended into one ‘‘grey mass,’’ the ‘‘land-owning gentlemen’’ of old were being consumed by the development of a breed of ‘‘irresponsible wealthy people,’’ of ‘‘shareholders.’’ The ‘‘uneducated inadaptable peasants and laborers,’’ people who had ‘‘failed to ‘catch on’’’ and thus were rendered ‘‘unemployed’’ and ‘‘parasitic’’ by machinery, were dwindling and falling into ‘‘the Abyss,’’ or being kept alive only by the ‘‘philanthropic amusements of the irresponsibly wealthy.’’ In the meantime, the middle class of the old order had become a segregated body of mechanics and engineers which was ‘‘neither passively wealthy’’ nor ‘‘helplessly thrust out of the process.’’ These mechanics and engineers had, through their daily repairing and mending of technology, the opportunity to develop an appreciation for the kind of ‘‘scientific education’’ and continuous ‘‘intellectual training’’ that would make them ‘‘adaptable’’ to the ‘‘physiological process of mechanical progress’’ that was transforming the world. The state that failed to cultivate this class would find itself with an ever-increasing ‘‘contingent for the Abyss’’ and unable 34 to compete with other states. Intellectually and spiritually, Wells saw the great trend of ‘‘shattering and recasting of fundamental ideas’’ that had characterized the nineteenth century as continuing into the twentieth, giving way ultimately to ‘‘a period of ethical reconstruction.’’ The new century, and its so-called New Republic, would have ‘‘no positive definition of God’’ since it would have ‘‘no possibility of knowledge of the real being of God.’’ Its citizens would ‘‘understand quite clearly’’ the doctrine of Free Will and that the exercise of choice is the ‘‘very condition of existence.’’ The lantern of ‘‘arbitrary first principles’’—vague ideas of equality, self-sacrifice, purity, chastity, and original sin—that guided humanity in the darkness would be unnecessary in the ‘‘new illumination’’ that would see humanity ‘‘in the light of modern science.’’ The New Republicans would embrace the wisdom of euthanasia, sterilization, a common-sense doctrine of marriage and divorce, and the idea that the world has ‘‘a purpose greater than 35 happiness.’’ Politically, Wells argued that democracy was little more than a ‘‘transitory confusion.’’ It arose, ‘‘not as eloquent persons have pretended,’’ but through the decline of ‘‘old ruling classes’’ brought about by the advance of ‘‘mechanism and industrialism.’’ The ‘‘new intelligent elements of the state’’ were at first not prepared to take advantage of this situation. However, the twentieth century would see, either through war or the threat of

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war, the emergence of a ‘‘really functional social body of engineering, managing men, scientifically trained, and having common ideals and 36 interests,’’ who would run the state wisely and efficiently. The theme of a scientific, ruling elite capable of orchestrating not only human prosperity, but salvation, in fact, runs through many of Wells’s works. It is somewhat surprising, then, that in so many of his writings his own science is wrong, or not in evidence. Verne once said of Wells, quite accurately: ‘‘We do not proceed in the same manner. It occurs to me that his stories do not repose on scientific bases. No, there is no rapport between his work 37 and mine. I make use of physics. He invents.’’ As this chapter has shown, utopians and dystopians competed for readers, followers, and advocates. Each sought to add to their constituencies. They projected into the future their own likes and dislikes. Both called for change, but on their own terms. Their collective aim was not so much to put oneself ‘‘in league with’’ the future, as Ibsen urged, but to shape it in a particular way. Both views, thus, reflect profound dissatisfaction with the present. Dystopians were pessimistic about the future because they wanted a better present. Utopians were optimistic for the same reason.

3 War Before the Great War Ah! The last war. . .one half of Europe rushed upon the other half . . .the whole world was pulled in. . .fleets of ships battled on all the oceans. . .on all sides there was lightning, entire army corps disappeared amidst a clap of thunder. . .guns carried long miles, and threw shells which in exploding swept acres of ground bare, and asphyxiated and poisoned all around. Balloons also threw bombs from the very heavens, setting towns alight as they passed. . .and that was the last battle. . .the conviction came to all that war was no longer possible.

1 E´mile Zola, Work, 1901

In truth, few in the early twentieth century held the conviction that war was becoming ‘‘impossible,’’ as E´mile Zola suggested above, including the great writer himself. Yet many did suspect that the next major war in Europe, when it came, would differ radically from any armed conflict of the past. Even the most self-possessed officer had to wonder at what the still dimly visible face of modern war might look like. New weapons and machinery introduced between 1880 and 1914, combined with ongoing improvements in existing weapons, gave rise to veritable streams of speculations about the future of war, as well as of the war of the future. The views of optimists and pessimists alike took ironic turns. Optimists remained hopeful that a major war could be avoided, but became increasingly pessimistic about the ruinous costs of such a conflict, should it occur. Pessimists continued to believe that war was the inevitable lot of the human species, but grew optimistic about the possibilities of winning it, and about the kind of future it would bring. As we shall see in this chapter, modern weaponry—machine guns, magazine-fed rifles, quick-firing artillery, heavy artillery, airships,

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airplanes, and submarines—posed problems as well as solutions for military thinkers. Why, for instance, would modern firepower, which all agreed had reached new levels of destructiveness, give an advantage only to the defense? Could not the attacker also make use of this greater firepower to overcome the defender? Did not the effectiveness of firepower depend on other factors, such as tactics, leadership, and morale? If firepower was essentially neutral, would it not be wise to seek an advantage in moral or psychological factors? For many, these were the central questions of the day. The wars of the present, especially the Second Boer War (1899–1902) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05), suggested that neither the fears of the optimists nor the hopes of the pessimists were entirely misplaced. THE EVER-EXPANDING DEADLY ZONE The period between 1880 and 1914 was characterized not only by the invention of numerous modern conveniences, but also by the appearance of a host of new weapons and munitions of all types, which proved more effective than anyone had imagined just a few decades earlier. When soldiers regarded the impact of new weaponry on warfare, they tended to think in terms of how it would affect the principal task of the attack— crossing the ‘‘deadly’’ zone, the area in front of the defender’s positions covered by the concentrated fire of his weapons. In the Napoleonic era, the deadly zone barely extended to 150 meters due to the limited range and accuracy of the period’s musketry. Artillery firing grape or canister rounds could devastate any troop formations within a range of 600 meters, but as a direct-fire weapon it was not always in position to fire on an advancing enemy during the final assault. 60 years later, during the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71), the deadly zone had grown to between 300 to 400 meters due in part to the greater accuracy of rifles such as the French chassepot and Prussian Needle gun. The fact that these weapons were breach-loaders, which meant they could be loaded from the rear of the barrel instead of the front, enabled soldiers to lay down a much heavier volume of fire in front of their positions. Infantry engagements resulting in 25 to 50 percent casualties for the attacker were not uncommon in the war of 1870–71. At the battle of Vionville (August 16, 1870), one Prussian battalion lost all its officers and over 600 men, 73 percent of its strength, in a single assault. Another regiment lost 1,054 officers and men, 42 percent of its strength, during the same assault. Other Prussian battalions lost between 45 and 50 percent of their strength while assaulting the nearby village of Flavigny. By the end of the

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day, Prussian units had suffered some 15,780 casualties, and the French 2 13,760. One of the reasons for such high casualties was that the French augmented the rifle-fire of the chassepot with that of the mitrailleuse, a volley-fire weapon similar in function and design to the American Gatling gun. It was initially intended to protect French artillery from the annihilating effects of short-range infantry fire. However, its value in crushing 3 an infantry attack was soon discovered, and exploited. Its chief disadvantage was that it had a high profile, which made it easy for German artillerists to spot, and to concentrate their fire against. By the mid-1890s, the depth of the ‘‘deadly’’ zone had more than tripled, expanding to between 800 and 1,500 meters due to the appearance of machine guns, longer range, more accurate magazine-fed rifles, and improvements in artillery technology. The Maxim machine gun, probably the best automatic gun of its kind, had a rate of fire of between 480 to 600 4 rounds per minute and a range of more than 2,000 meters. The magazinefed Mauser Model 98, for example, was introduced into the German army in 1898 and would remain its standard infantry rifle through the end of the Second World War. It could range to 2,000 meters and had a higher muzzle velocity and a flatter trajectory than its previous incarnation, the Model 88. Breakthroughs in recoil mechanisms created a new generation of artillery pieces, the ‘‘quick-firers.’’ The most famous of these was the French 75mm gun, ‘‘Mademoiselle Soixante-Quinze’’ (Miss Seventyfive), fielded in 1897, which could fire between 20 and 30 rounds per minute. Improved munitions, such as long-range shrapnel, made each of those rounds much more effective. From 1890 to 1914, therefore, military professionals found themselves confronted by the prospect of fighting on an ever larger and ever more deadly battlefield. Just what all this meant for the future of warfare, however, was less certain. One of the clearest examples of this uncertainty was the Second Boer War. The British army suffered humiliating defeats at the battles of Stormberg, Magersfontein, and Colenso during the opening months of the war. At Stormberg, a British force of some 3,000 troops went up against 2,300 Boers, but fell victim to bad maps and long-range rifle fire. The British lost some 90 men killed and wounded, and 600 prisoners. At Magersfontein, a British force of 4,000 elite Highlanders lost 950 men killed or wounded, while inflicting only 300 casualties on the Afrikaners. At Colenso, the British advanced with 18,000 men against some 8,000 Boers, a better than two-to-one advantage. However, one brigade took frontal and flanking fire from concealed Boer riflemen, and the advance quickly collapsed, with British losses reaching more than 1,100 men killed, wounded, and

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missing, and—most humiliating—the loss of 10 guns; Boer casualties 5 amounted to less than 40 men. Still, while rifle and artillery fire had unquestionably become much more effective, the percentage of casualties the British suffered in these three battles, known infamously as Black Week, was much less than so many Germans units had incurred in the Franco-Prussian War. Whereas German losses often ranged from 25 to 50 percent, British losses averaged between three percent (Colenso) to 23 percent (Magersfontein). In part, this difference can be explained by the Afrikaners’ lack of artillery, and by their apparent reluctance or inability to drive home an advantage against the better disciplined British. But also, Boer rifle fire tended to be more discriminating; officer casualties ran as high as 60 percent among the lead British companies. However, when the British were able to identify Boer positions, not easy in the rough terrain of the veld, they could pin the Afrikaners down with artillery fire, in which they had a distinct advantage. In that way, the British could maneuver successfully, even in the face of the Boers’ long-range rifle fire. Had Boer artillery been equal to that of the British, higher casualties might have occurred. In contrast to the Boer War, the Russo-Japanese War featured trained armies on both sides, each equipped with magazine rifles, machine guns, and early types of quick-firing artillery. The Japanese and Russian rifles were about equal in range and rate of fire, though the latter probably had greater knockdown power. The Japanese Arisaka 13-pound field gun had a range of 5,200 meters, while the Russian M1902 three-inch gun could fire a 13-pound shell to 6,300 meters. The Japanese were armed with the Hotchkiss machine gun, while the Russians had the slightly better Maxim gun. Also, a new piece of communication technology—the tele6 phone—was used for the first time in a military role. Overall, the Russians had a slight qualitative edge in rifles, artillery, and machine guns. Yet, that edge did not prove sufficient for victory, for the soldiers of the Imperial sun prevailed. The decisive differences came down to tactics and grit. Even in the face of the ever-increasing effectiveness of modern firepower, both sides used bayonet assaults frequently, and successfully. Rifles, machine guns, and artillery inflicted staggering losses on assaulting infantry. Yet, in the hands of the attacker, that firepower could also be used to keep the defenders’ heads down long enough to move one’s infantry close enough for an assault. Regardless of the losses inflicted by firepower, it often proved necessary to use the bayonet either to root out the defender, or conversely to drive off the attacker.

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Fierce hand-to-hand fighting took place on numerous occasions. In the last week of July 1904, the Japanese laid siege to the city and fortress of Port Arthur, a siege that would not end until January 2, 1905. The battle for this port city in many ways presaged the set-piece, trench warfare that was to beset western Europe a decade later. The defenses of Port Arthur were arrayed in a series of three concentric rings of fortifications and entrenchments, all in various states of repair. The first ring of fortifications included positions along the heights of Big Orphan and Little Orphan hills, Crooked Hill, and 203-Meter Hill. The second ring consisted of a series of entrenchments and fortified positions running roughly along an old Chinese Wall, and the inner ring consisted of some aged strong points, not likely to hold up to the onslaught of modern weaponry. The Russian commander, General A.M. Stessel, had some 42,000 men, 646 guns (mostly older variants), and 62 machine guns at his disposal. Against this force, the Japanese brought about 80,000 men and 474 guns under the command of General Maresuki Nogi. It took two days of heavy bombardments, repeated assaults, and hand-to-hand fighting for the Japanese to take Big Orphan and Little Orphan hills; the casualty ratio was 7 roughly four to one in favor of the Russians. Assaults against the second ring of defenses took place again and again. The pattern became familiar. Extended artillery bombardments were delivered by the attacker, followed by infantry assaults directed against key areas of the defense. The defender’s artillery, which had remained under cover during the attacker’s bombardment, would come to life and fire on the assaulting infantry, while the defender’s infantry would climb out of their holes, re-claim their fighting positions, and pour rifle and machine-gun fire into the advancing infantry. The attacker’s artillery would then shift fire onto the defender’s artillery, knocking out some of the guns and forcing the others to pull back under cover. The infantry assault might then gain some ground, perhaps taking a key position or two, before being hit by a counterattack from the dogged Russians. The fighting ebbed and flowed; redoubts and fortifications changed hands several times. Firepower mattered tremendously, but so did initiative, quick reactions, skill, and numbers. The Russians often clung stubbornly to their positions and had to be rooted out with the bayonet. The Japanese pounded 203-Meter Hill until it had been 8 ‘‘crushed into a shapeless jumble of stones.’’ Yet, they still had to resort to a bayonet assault and hand-to-hand fighting to wrest the position from the Russians; similarly, Russian counterattacks with cold steel were often the difference in saving fortifications and defensive positions from falling to the Japanese. The months-long defense of 203-Meter Hill cost the

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Russians some 3,000 men, while the Japanese lost about 12,000; the proud Japanese 1st Division was practically bled white. The defense of Port Arthur took on all the characteristics of a classic battle of attrition. The attackers fired massive amounts of artillery at key positions, followed by waves of determined infantry. As one Russian correspondent wrote, ‘‘it was hardly a fight between men. . .it was the struggle of human flesh against iron and steel, against blazing petroleum . . . 9 and the stench of rotting corpses.’’ Gradually, the defenders were worn down, even though their rate of loss was four times less than that of the attackers. Russian losses in men and guns could not be replaced. The point finally came when the defenders could no longer reinforce or retake key positions, and the attackers’ superior numbers finally told. Yet, the Russo-Japanese War also featured battles of maneuver. The battle of Sha-ho (September 1905) was one of classic maneuver and counter-maneuver. The Russians, who possessed some 261 battalions, 10 attempted to outflank a smaller Japanese force of 170 battalions. The Russian attack broke down due to lack of reconnaissance and poor coordination. The Japanese counterattacked, and the fight took on the character of a series of meeting engagements, small battles of encounter where victory went to the side that took the initiative and seized key terrain. In such battles, the bayonet proved less useful than firepower. The task was less to root the enemy out of prepared positions than to pin him down with superior firepower at long range. Both maneuver and countermaneuver eventually broke down, however, into a stalemate, with both sides exhausted and digging in to hold their positions. The Russians had lost 41,000 casualties, and the Japanese half that. Yet the losses were due less to the superiority of the defense than to the inability of commanders on both sides to orchestrate the battle properly, to control operations over the vast distances involved (more than 60 kilometers), and at the necessary pace. Modern battle appeared to require subordinate commanders to exercise more initiative and freedom of action than either side was willing to permit at this point. Clearly, improvements in firepower had made the defense stronger in general. Attacks had become extremely costly, and required perhaps greater physical and mental preparation. Yet if fire and movement were well-coordinated and supported with strong reserves, attacks could still succeed, even in the face of a determined defense. As one German observer pointed out, the artillery-infantry team was most effective when it worked like ‘‘hunter and hound.’’ Either the infantry, like the hound, flushed out the enemy to be destroyed by artillery, or the artillery kept the defenders’ heads down to facilitate the approach and final assault of

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the infantry. It was also clear that infantry soldiers had to have more than marksmanship in their repertoire; they needed physical and psychological training for close-in, trench-style fighting. The bayonet was by no means obsolete, as many modern historians would claim later. Instead, it and the spade had acquired new importance. Whereas in the past the threat of cold steel might have been enough to break some units, now soldiers preferred to stay in their fortifications and entrenchments rather than expose themselves to the effects of modern firepower. So, along with the growing importance of firepower, the bayonet became just as essential for rooting the defender out of his positions. CHALLENGES IN NAVAL WARFARE The challenges posed by new technology were not limited to land warfare. Actual and anticipated improvements in self-propelled torpedoes, steel cruisers, and underwater mines, for instance, threatened to restrict the movement and influence of capital ships, heretofore the foundation of naval power. This threat proved to have some foundation when Russian self-propelled torpedoes sank two Turkish ships, one ironclad and one wooden gunship, in the Russo-Turkish war (1877–78), and in 1880 when 11 Peruvian torpedo boats sank two Chilean warships. Perhaps more important, the Turks had kept their fleet bottled up at port for fear of losing any more ships to torpedo boats; thus, a superior fleet had been neutralized by the torpedo threat. Improvements in the range and accuracy of self-propelled torpedoes occurred almost every year thereafter. Steel cruisers began to appear in force in the 1880s; they were relatively fast compared to the larger ironclads, and armed with several light or medium guns and torpedo launchers, all of which made them ideal for commerce raiding. As a result, naval theorists such as Admiral The´ophile Aube (1826– 1890), minister of the French navy and leading proponent of France’s Jeune E´cole (Young School) of naval thought, saw the return of guerre de course, or raiding, as a viable form of war at sea. In short, Aube and other officers of the Jeune E´ cole advocated a naval strategy for France that avoided major battles between fleets. They believed that investing in underwater mines, torpedo boats, light cruisers, and possibly submarines, rather than the much more expensive capital ships, would ultimately prove more cost-effective for protecting France’s sea lines of communication and commerce, and for attacking those of the enemy. Mines and coastal artillery would protect one’s harbors, while torpedo boats would harass capital ships and keep them from creating an effective blockade;

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the faster cruisers would slip by the slower battleships to attack and disrupt an adversary’s shipping lanes. The French government embraced Aube’s approach initially, as it seemed to offer a way to challenge the larger British navy while avoiding the cost of building and maintaining a large battle fleet. However, while the Jeune E´cole had an international following, the French navy ministry changed hands 30 times in 30 years (1870–1900), with the result that no French naval strategy really achieved a firm footing. The same rationale of maintaining the smallest viable fleet possible was followed for a time in Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Spain, with the result that by the 1890s each lagged considerably in battleship construction. In direct contrast to the French Jeune E´cole, the British reacted to the defensive challenge posed by torpedoes and cruisers by investing more in steam as the basic means of propulsion for future battleships with the aim of increasing their speed and reliability. The British also began equipping battleships with a complement of small-caliber guns for close-in defense against torpedo-boats, and built torpedo-boat ‘‘destroyers’’ to protect capital ships. In addition, they began constructing a new class of armored cruisers to bridge the gap between the greater firepower but slower speed of battleships, and the lighter cruisers and destroyers. They also developed a class of mine-sweeping ships to help counter the underwater-mine threat. Other powers soon followed the British example, and the battleship was clearly in vogue again by the mid-1890s. This popularity coincided with a series of technological innovations between 1895 and 1905, which seemed to make attacking more advantageous than defending, at least with respect to surface vessels. Improvements in gunpowder and fire-control systems increased the range and accuracy of naval gunfire by a factor of four, and the mounting of quickfiring artillery on ships provided an effective means for countering the threat from torpedo boats. Lighter steel and more efficient steam engines also increased the range and speed of ships, thereby adding to maneuverability. Equipping ships with improved wireless communications enabled commanders to exercise better control at sea. In short, additional technological developments helped resolve, or rather avert, what might have become a crisis in naval warfare by transforming battle fleets of capital ships into an integrated system of heterogeneous vessels. The result was that by 1905, long-range naval operations, formerly in jeopardy, had once 12 again become a reality. The battle of Tsushima (May 27–28, 1905) during the Russo-Japanese war seemed to confirm that large-scale naval battles were still possible. In a clash lasting just under 24 hours, the Russians lost all of their 14

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battleships and cruisers; the Japanese lost only three torpedo boats. The Russians had an advantage in heavy guns, while the Japanese, with four battleships and 25 cruisers and light cruisers, had the edge in speed. The Japanese gunners were better trained and more than twice as accurate as their Russian counterparts. And the Japanese Admiral, Heihachiro Togo, used the better speed and maneuverability of his ships to good effect. It was thus the well-coordinated combination of fire and maneuver, not one at the expense of the other, that carried the day. Although torpedo-boat production trailed off in the 1890s after the heyday of the Jeune E´cole, another defensive threat, this time an underwater one, emerged to take its place. Although the Confederate H.L. Hunley’s attack on the U.S. Housatonic in January 1864 was the first time a submersible craft sank an enemy ship, the next quarter century saw little but failed attempts to build a self-propelled vessel that could remain 13 underwater for any length of time. While numerous underwater vessels had been developed and tested, many successfully, before the Hunley’s attack, problems with propulsion, steering, and armament impeded the submarine’s ability to threaten larger, more powerful surface ships. That began to change when electric battery-powered submarines, such as the French 30-ton Gymnote, launched in September 1888, appeared; these were far superior to steam-driven submersibles, which quickly became filled with gases and vapors. Installing rechargeable engine-generator combinations in submarines, as John P. Holland did in the United States, gave the vessels greater range, approximately 30 miles undersea on each charge. Converting from gas to diesel engines eliminated the explosions that plagued the American models. The invention of the torpedo gyroscope in 1896 allowed the range of torpedoes to double from 1,000 yards to 2,000 in 1900; by 1904, the range had extended to 3,000 yards. In that year, Britain’s Admiral Fischer predicted the range of the torpedo would 14 soon reach 5,000 yards. Between 1900 and 1914, the French navy commissioned 76 submarines, Britain had 88 by the time the war began, the United States 32, and Germany 28. The submarine had transformed from a fad to a legitimate threat. Just 18 months after the battle of Tsushima, the British took naval warfare to yet another level with the launching of the H.M.S. Dreadnought. Until then, a state-of-the-art battleship displaced some 13,000 tons, and was typically armed with four 12-inch guns (along with several smaller quick-firing guns for close-in defense) with a range of 6,000 yards. But the Dreadnought was almost 50 percent larger, displacing nearly 18,000 tons, and was armed with two and a half times as many guns, 10 12-inch guns, each capable of ranging more than twice as far, to 13,000 yards.

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Moreover, a new type of steam-turbine engine allowed Dreadnought to reach speeds of 21 knots, two to six knots faster than existing battleships. Consequently, over the next eight years, battleships, cruisers, and destroyers virtually doubled in size, speed, and firepower. As an example, a stateof-the-art destroyer in 1905 displaced less than 500 tons, was armed with a few three-inch quick-firing guns, and some small-diameter torpedoes. By 1914, destroyers displaced nearly 1,000 tons, could reach speeds of 35 knots, and were typically armed with four four-inch guns and several 21-inch torpedoes. Thus, the race was on to build ever larger and faster gun boats. In contrast to land warfare, at sea the laws of physics made it much easier for speed and maneuverability to keep pace with firepower. AIR WARS? Although lighter-than-air balloons had been used for reconnaissance and observation as early as the late eighteenth century, they were not very successful because steering and communication difficulties imposed significant limitations upon their use. Nonetheless, by 1879, France had developed permanent balloon units for the purpose of aerial reconnaissance. Five years later, Germany followed suit. In the early 1880s, the introduction of electrically-driven propellers gave balloons better navigation capabilities. A number of inventors, such as Hiram Maxim, had already built simple machines that could become airborne, rise about a 15 meter, fly for a distance, and land. As we shall see, such accomplishments spurred a flurry of interest in the popular imagination. However, these machines were not ‘‘airplanes’’ in the sense that aviation pioneers in the nineteenth century had defined them. An airplane had to be able to take off under its own power, and the pilot had to be able to control the craft’s ascent and descent, and to steer it left and right. Enthusiasm began to wane in the mid-1890s when the anticipated ‘‘conquest of flight’’ failed to take place as rapidly as expected. In 1900, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin (1838–1917) rekindled that interest somewhat when he successfully flew a gas-powered, hydrogenfilled aluminum airship, or zeppelin, across Lake Constance on July 2. Zeppelin’s airship, the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin 1, or LZ 1, made additional 16 flights in October of the same year, reaching speeds of 17.5 knots. In 1903, the Wright brothers piqued public enthusiasm again when they conducted the first successful flight of an airplane. The French and German military establishments displayed keen interest in self-powered air vehicles almost from the beginning, and the Russians and British were not far

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behind. Aircraft appeared to provide a means by which to bypass the deadly zone vertically, to acquire intelligence about the enemy’s defensive preparations, and possibly to strike directly at the heart of an opponent’s will to resist. However, parliaments and war ministries, concerned with minimizing development costs and prioritizing competing financial requirements, proceeded slowly. Ironically, while one aeronautical record after another was broken between 1905 and 1913, particularly by the French who led aviation development in nearly every category, both airships and fixedwing aircraft had difficulty meeting design specifications laid down by military procurers in Europe and the United States. For instance, the German army’s requirements were for a vessel capable of remaining airborne for a minimum of 24 hours, and with an operating range of 700 km (420 17 miles). Yet, Zeppelin’s airships would not meet these requirements until late 1908. Indeed, the story of the airship is one of a series of successes and disasters, with the latter far outnumbering the former. Of the 19 Zeppelins built from 1900 to 1913, 12 crashed, and two were shot down by antiair18 craft fire in 1914. LZ 1, which had flown successfully in July and October of 1900, was scrapped later that year when Zeppelin liquidated his company due to lack of funds. Eventually, money was raised for further development, and the knowledge gained from the LZ 1 was put into the production of an improved model, the LZ 2, built in November of 1905. Unfortunately, it was destroyed by a storm less than two months later. The LZ 3 was flown in October of 1906, and enjoyed a successful eighthour flight, but that was not enough to meet military requirements. The LZ 4 was then constructed with the goal of being able to fly for at least 24 hours; it was first flown in June of 1908, but burst into flames later when strong winds lifted it from its moorings and caused it to crash. Throughout the pre-war years, the Zeppelin design remained vulnerable because of the highly flammable nature of the hydrogen gas that gave it lift, and the fragility of the craft’s airframe. Initially, von Zeppelin’s airships appeared to have greater speed, stability, and range than the rather flimsy fixed-wing aircraft that flew at Kitty Hawk in 1903. His LZ 3 made several successful flights in October and November of 1908 as part of an effort to heighten public interest and raise money. A certain attitude of ‘‘Zeppelinitis’’ appeared to seize the German 19 public, and Zeppelin himself became something of national hero. The German army purchased LZ 3 and LZ 5 from Zeppelin in 1909, and experimentation began in earnest with these aircraft. However, by 1910, experimentation and testing showed that airships were very vulnerable to fire

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from howitzers and anti-balloon guns; consequently, military interest in the expensive Zeppelins began to decline, though innovations in their development and production would continue throughout the war. By the time the war broke out, the German army had seven Zeppelin-made airships available for service, four in the west and three in the east, as well as a number of dirigibles manufactured by a rival company. Airplanes, on the other hand, seemed to offer more promise. By way of illustration, German investment in fixed-wing aircraft increased from 20 36,000 reichsmarks in 1909 to almost 26 million by 1914. A report published in 1913 by the U.S. Secretary of War compares major aeronautical 21 appropriations for that year in U.S. dollars (see Table 1). During the invasion of Libya in 1911–12, the Italians used a few airplanes to conduct aerial bombardments with hand grenades. The maneuver caused a panic at first, but it was soon discovered that alert sentries and timely, well-directed ‘‘anti-aircraft’’ fire could keep small numbers of aircraft at a safe distance. The Balkan Wars of 1912–13 saw similar aerial assaults, but these, too, were easily countered by ground fire because they were not conducted in massed formations. Nonetheless, each of these conflicts demonstrated that aircraft could have a combat as well as a reconnaissance role in the next war; thus, they would require the mounting of appropriate weapons for air-to-air and air-to-ground fighting. In the autumn of 1913, the Germans conducted the first large-scale army-air maneuvers to include night-air operations. These maneuvers further clarified the roles of military aviation: reconnaissance, artillery observation, air-to-air combat, combat against ground troops, destruc22 tion of enemy installations, liaison, and troop transport. By the following year, long-range aircraft were already under development. Machine guns of various types had been mounted on airplanes, and the British had even successfully mounted a two-pound naval gun on an aircraft. One after another, the existing limits regarding fixed-wing aircraft were met, and exceeded.

Table 1 France Germany Russia England Italy Mexico United States

$7,400,000 5,000,000 5,000,000 3,000,000 2,100,000 400,000 125,000

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Table 2

France Russia Germany United Kingdom Italy Japan United States

Aircraft

Pilots

260 100 46 29 26 14 6

171 28 52 88 39 8 14

By 1914, the following numbers of serviceable aircraft and trained 23 pilots were reported (Table 2). These numbers varied almost daily, as new aircraft and pilots entered service. They also do not reflect the number of civilian aircraft and pilots belonging to the many national aviation clubs that existed, which would have been a ready source of experienced pilots and supplemental aircraft in time of war. Although military technologies had introduced several problems, even casual observers would have to conclude that war itself seemed far from impossible in 1914. What form it would take, and what images one might see when these various airborne and sea vessels clashed was a matter of speculation and conjecture. Of the various prognostications that preceded the Great War, those driven by the boldest imaginations were rarely the most accurate.

4 War and the Future Warfare does not make for the survival of the fittest or virile. . .the struggle between nations is no part of the evolutionary law of man’s advance. . .and that idea resides on a profound misreading of the biological law. . .

1

Norman Angell, 1911

By the time Norman Angell penned these words, Herbert Spencer’s doctrine of ‘‘survival of the fittest,’’ meaning survival of the most apt, had already been vulgarized almost beyond recognition. By that time, too, war scares had become a frequent occurrence in Europe, providing publishers with a demand for ‘‘war’’ literature, which they eagerly supplied; the naval arms race between Britain and Germany was in full swing, and the number of troops under arms in each of the Continental armies had risen to unprecedented levels. Europe seemed primed for war, both psychologically and physically. For Angell and some of his contemporaries, though, either war had no future, or humankind did not. There was no middle ground. The destructive power of modern weapons meant a general war would bring economic and social ruin. For others, such as Prussian General von der Goltz, war’s future seemed quite likely to resemble its past. Societies had not yet proven capable of resisting the temptation to resort to arms to settle disputes, and the recent Boer and RussoJapanese conflicts provided little reason to believe that tendency would reverse itself any time soon. Still, the question of whether war had a future, which was quite different from asking what that future might look like, was a prominent one. And the first part of this chapter will address it. The second part relates how those writers who had gotten beyond, or never bothered to ask,

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whether war had a future, actually set about imagining it. Of particular importance is the budding community of science-fiction writers who, in the rash of technological innovations that beset the West, found much to stir the imagination. THE FUTURE OF WAR The optimism of pacifists knew no bounds, except when it came to the future of war. Suttner’s efforts to convince the world that it had the power to change were as tireless as they were ultimately ineffectual. But she could not know that then. Indeed, she would not know it throughout the course of her life, which came to an end barely one month before the July crisis that touched off the Great War. Suttner attempted to appeal to compassion and to a sense of morality in order to undermine traditional views of war. She portrayed war, not inaccurately, as an arbitrary and brutal destroyer of lives and property; victims become victimizers in a vicious cycle of action and reprisal born of fear and rabid nationalism. The innocent and ignorant are hurt and killed in war, all for the sake of petty disputes among heads of state, or a misplaced and outdated sense of honor. War’s ravages reached beyond the battlefield and laid waste to the physical and psychological lives of noncombatants; hence, no grievance between states, no territorial dispute, nor slight of honor could justify its use. War was morally wrong because it unleashed the cruel and baser side of humanity, rather than cultivating its higher qualities. And for one who subscribed to the doctrine of Progress, the higher qualities were the ones which ought to go forward. Suttner’s best-seller, Ground Arms (1898), played up the heartbreaks, miseries, and injustices brought on by war; it put the traditional glorification of war in opposition to ‘‘new’’ or modern attitudes, which portrayed the former as false and unnatural, created by the myths of history. The protagonist is a young countess, evidently patterned after Suttner herself, who loses her husband, a hussar officer, in Austria’s war against France and Italy (1859). She then marries another officer, a reluctant warrior who abhors war but does his duty; he is wounded in the Austro-Prussian war (1866), resigns his commission, and joins the Red Cross. However, the war brings cholera to the countess’s home, which claims her sister and father. The countess and her husband then find themselves in Paris at the start of the Franco-German war (1870), where the husband is wrongly accused of being a spy and executed. The novel ends on a hopeful note, however, with the countess’s son claiming that the world is entering

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a ‘‘new era’’ in which feelings of brotherhood might prevent the tragedy of war. Suttner was correct in one sense. New attitudes about war and honor were emerging, though they were still very much in their infancy. Ibsen, Shaw, Lawrence, and others, as we have seen, were all part of a vanguard of writers and other artists who actively challenged traditional Victorian values. Ironically, it took the Great War itself and its horrors to turn a minority view into a majority opinion. Also, while it may be right to say Suttner’s efforts were ineffectual, it would be wrong to say she had no effect. Her central message is certainly echoed in the writings of Jane Addams (1860–1935), the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, who wrote: ‘‘We may admire much that is admirable in this past life of courageous warfare, while at the same time we accord it no right to dominate the present, which has traveled out of its reach into a land of 2 new desires.’’ Other noted pacifists, such as the American Jeannette Rankin (1880–1973), a suffragist and member of the U.S. Congress who voted against entering the First World War, certainly followed her in spirit, if 3 not in fact. While Suttner appealed to human compassion, Bloch and Angell resorted to logic. Bloch’s Future of War purportedly inspired Czar Nicholas II to post his now famous peace declaration, which in turn generated 4 the momentum for the Hague Convention of 1899. The book brought together a wealth of data, actually much more than the average reader could bear, and essentially lent statistical support to the anti-war arguments, which thus far lacked it. Although, as we shall see, Bloch’s own argument crumbles under close scrutiny, his work nonetheless caused 5 quite a stir, and was still considered authoritative many years later. Bloch insisted that recent material and cultural developments had rendered war counterproductive as a political tool. He delivered his argument in four parts, working from the ground up, that is, from the level of military tactics and technologies, to logistical demands, to morale, and, finally, to the political implications of all three combined. The first part argued that the destructive power of modern weaponry had rendered offensive maneuver all but impossible. Magazine rifles, smokeless powder, machine guns, and quick-firing artillery created insuperable difficulties for the attacker, requiring him to possess an eight-to-one numerical advantage, and to employ flank attacks. Yet, the massive size of modern armies combined with the strategic mobility afforded by railways meant that the defender could always counter such attempts. Consequently, conflicts would rapidly and inevitably degenerate into protracted wars of attrition.

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The logistical part of Bloch’s argument attempted to show that the costs of such protracted conflicts would quickly drain national treasuries, and strain societies to the point that uprisings and revolutions would invariably ensue. Perhaps more than any other work at the time, Bloch’s Future of War promoted the idea that a general war meant certain and far-reaching economic and social ruin. Bloch’s third argument repeated the popular myth of the day, namely, that civilized persons had become too nervous to endure the strains of modern war: ‘‘The modern European,’’ he declared, ‘‘feels more keenly and is much more excitable and 6 impressionable than his forefathers.’’ War, whether long or short, was thus also unsustainable from a psychological standpoint. In the fourth part of the argument, or summation, Bloch declared: ‘‘War as a means of settling international disputes by might, if not by 7 right, was a thing of the past.’’ A clash between modern powers, ‘‘if carried on in accordance with the old principles,’’ would end ‘‘in the slaughter of millions, whereas if waged on the only lines possible to-day, it will 8 drag on for years, and never culminate in a decisive action.’’ With the publication of this immense opus, and its controversial, if not pessimistic, thesis, Bloch emerged as the most important prophet of war’s imminent futility. The entire machinery and apparatus of war had become so distended as to render war itself obsolete. Yet a closer look at Bloch’s argument reveals the one-sidedness of his reasoning. Whereas Bloch asserted that an eight-to-one ratio was necessary to launch a successful ground attack, this was not the case in the recent Boer war, of which Bloch was aware. Also, that same conflict showed that tactics had already evolved to the point that proper infantryartillery coordination could get soldiers across the ever-expanding deadly ground. The problem, as the First World War would later show, was not really in crossing the deadly zone, which military forces would do repeatedly during the war, though sometimes paying a heavy price, but penetrating beyond it. While Bloch was right to point out the destructive power of new military technology, and the problems it posed, he discounted the possibility that even newer technologies might appear in the not-too-distant future that would help solve those problems, as they had in naval warfare. Wells, for instance, proposed just such a technological solution in his story, ‘‘The Land Ironclads,’’ which we will discuss in the next chapter. Bloch’s technological world, in other words, was static: a precondition for Bloch’s case, therefore, was that technological innovation had reached its pinnacle. He also failed to account for two important factors regarding the psychological dimension of warfare: first, he assumed that there was no cure for enervating ills of modern living, and overlooked the likelihood

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that military leaders would take measures to counter those ills; and, second, he failed to account for the irrational element in war, namely, that states might still accept the challenges and risks associated with waging modern war because they feared the alternatives were worse. One of the best contemporary critiques of Bloch’s massive opus was rendered by the German historian Hans Delbru¨ck, who wrote: ‘‘Considered from a scholarly point of view, one can say little in favor of [Bloch’s] work.’’ It is a ‘‘rather uncritical and unsatisfactorily arranged collection of data, embellished with pictures, but treated amateurishly and burdened with massive amounts of detail which contribute nothing 9 to the problem.’’ Even with these obvious shortcomings, it is hardly surprising that Bloch’s Future of War became something of a Bible for pacifists and socialists. Here, finally, was at least the appearance of the evidentiary support needed to show why war had no future, unless society itself had none. Although few, other than Delbru¨ck, evidently read the six-volume work in its entirety, its basic message appeared in condensed and more readable form in popular journals, such as the Deutsche Revue and North American Review. As is often true of controversial writers, it was popular to cite Bloch, even if one had not read him. Norman Angell’s famous work, The Great Illusion (1910), took note of the inanity of the European arms race, particularly the naval competition between Britain and Germany. The book’s central argument was that war between modern, industrialized powers would not provide the economic benefits that many assumed it would, because wealth came not from conquered territory, but trade. In short, going to war interrupted trade; hence, war was rarely in the interest of any state: ‘‘the idea that addition 10 of territory adds to a nation’s wealth is an optical illusion.’’ Angell also attempted to challenge the argument that the ability to wage war was proof of a nation’s right to exist, that the political life of nations was a continuous struggle for existence; he maintained, instead, that such beliefs belonged to a ‘‘stage of development out of which we have passed.’’ He argued that economic and political frontiers did not necessarily coincide any longer: economic prosperity came from trade with, rather than extracting tribute from, or colonizing, other nations; expansion of political frontiers only jeopardized that trade, or resulted in little or no net gain due to the need to increase military expenditures. Also, ideological struggles transcended or, better, ignored national boundaries; they were the stuff of parties, groups, or individuals. Whatever the precepts or aims of these ideologies, states need not go to war over them. War is not about survival of the fittest, as militarists claim, but of the less fit. It

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is for those unwilling to see that the present and, thus, the future were about economic development, rather than ‘‘primitive instincts’’ and ‘‘old prejudices.’’ Angell’s cosmopolitan background clearly influenced his vision of the future of war: war was counter-productive and outdated, a reflection of fears rather than hopes. It was only a tool of policy when it served ignorance; enlightened policymakers, on the other hand, must come to see the poverty of the logic that drove armed conflict. Were all heads of state only half as enlightened as Angell encouraged them to be, the Great War would never have occurred. Yet, as Shakespeare once said, albeit in an altogether different context, ‘‘Therein lies the rub.’’ The leading socialists of the day took a similar stance in condemning war, but for altogether different reasons. Bebel and Liebknecht maintained that war had little utilitarian value; in fact, Bebel’s, Not a Standing Army, but a People’s Army! (1898) appeared in the same year as Bloch’s Future of War, arguing that the next conflict would not be the glorious struggle so often portrayed in romantic literature, with one side winning gallant 11 victories over the other. Instead, it would be a technological-industrial brawl that would eventuate only in a wearisome ‘‘stalemate and blood12 letting.’’ The solution was simple enough in theory: avoid offensive operations, eliminate standing armies which tend to indoctrinate citizens with decrepit and obsolete values, and establish a militia-style citizen force, which would be more than adequate for defense. The problem would be in execution. Nonetheless, Bebel’s pamphlet reflected the views of most of Europe’s socialist movements, which, among other things, desired to weaken the status and influence of military elites by placing the respon13 sibility for national defense directly in the hands of the citizenry. However, an alternative was offered in 1898 and 1899 by the German socialist Eduard Bernstein (1850–1932), who proposed a reformist rather 14 than revolutionary approach. Bernstein’s theories took root across Europe, particularly among members of Britain’s Fabian society, and especially with one of its later luminaries, the Nobel Laureate Bertrand Russell (1872–1970). An accomplished philosopher and mathematician, Russell’s philosophy offered a pragmatic yet principled blend, in his own 15 mind at least, of ‘‘relative political pacifism’’ and reformist socialism. He considered war an evil, but acknowledged it was not always the worst evil. War could be justified if it were the lesser of two evils—if, for instance, it could protect democratic societies from the threat of totalitarianism, as in the case of World War II. Russell’s view, albeit in a diffused and adulterated form, is now perhaps the majority opinion among democratic populations; it acknowledges the middle-ground between the

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absolutes of Suttner’s anti-war ideals on the one hand, and von der Goltz’s militaristic values on the other. Such militaristic values were not hard to find in military publications before the Great War. Goltz’s Nation in Arms is a classic example, but it is far from the only one. British Colonel F. N. Maude’s, War and the World’s Life (1907) expressed similar ideas, as did Lord Roberts’s Nation in Arms and American Homer Lea’s Valor of Ignorance (1909), though Lea’s unique military career was not with the U.S. Army, but rather as a 16 military adviser to Sun Yat-sen. Robert’s Nation in Arms, though a collection of essays covering many topics, was at bottom an argument for using the army as a school of the nation, a means to inculcate recruits with the virtues of self-discipline, loyalty, and service to arrest Britain’s general moral decline. Goltz’s Nation in Arms describes in broad strokes how political, cultural, and technological developments had profoundly altered the nature and conduct of war. Wars had become more technological, more dependent on industrial might, more expensive, and eminently bloodier. The rise of nationalism made combatants less willing to compromise and arrive at a negotiated settlement: war was moving more and more toward its absolute form. The picture Goltz painted of contemporary and, by extension, future war was bleak, but by no means pessimistic. War was, as ever, a great national duel. Victory in modern war required the physical and psychological retooling of society. Martial virtues such as discipline, selfsacrifice, loyalty, and love for the fatherland were more valuable than ever, especially to combat the moral ‘‘sickness’’ of complacency brought about by the enervating stresses of modern living and the effete and cowardly ideas of pacifism and socialism. The nation’s young minds and bodies had to be trained, educated, and conditioned for the great life-or-death struggle of the modern duel. The armed forces, the army in particular, were to serve as the ‘‘school of the nation,’’ which in turn justified elevating the military’s position within society. Military necessity must take pri17 ority in foreign and domestic affairs. War, in short, would not be denied its future; it remained to be seen, however, whether society would step forward and claim its. The only pessimism one detects in Goltz’s prescription for war and the future was his suspicion that political leaders lacked the clarity of vision to see what, for him and those who thought along similar lines, was so patently clear. For Goltz, Maude, Lea and many others, the idea of universal, if not eternal, peace was not only a vain one, it was potentially dangerous. As the venerated elder Moltke had written in 1880: ‘‘Eternal peace was a dream, and not even a good one. . .war is an integral part of the

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divine order of things. . .the fate of humankind, the inevitable activity of 18 nations.’’ War and human strife brought out something noble in humankind, something that would die if the ideals of peace were widely and firmly embraced. More than a theorist, Goltz was also an activist who attempted to live the message he propounded; hence, he endeavored to instill in Germany’s youths some of the martial virtues of which he wrote, as in fact did many British, American, and French officers. Goltz, for instance, became chairman of the Young German League, an organization of several smaller youth groups, which by 1914 claimed a member19 ship in the tens of thousands. Similarly, across the Channel, British General Sir Baden-Powell founded the British Boy Scout movement, the forerunner of the American Boy Scouts, for the express purpose of reinstilling martial virtues in Britain’s youth, now feared lost. The celebrated motto ‘‘Be Prepared’’ went much further than exhorting the young scout to be ready for any situation; it meant ‘‘BE PREPARED to die for your 20 country.’’ These, of course, were precisely the values Suttner had condemned as archaic, and saw as inimical to genuine social progress. In 1904, she and Goltz squared-off in a brief debate in the pages of the popular German periodical,Deutsche Revue, over the future of war and of humanity. Goltz opened with the assertion that war was a form of social and political activity caused largely by the forces of nationalism and racial identity, and thus was an inevitable part of the life of nations: ‘‘A world without war was just 21 as inconceivable as a world without nations.’’ Suttner countered that the probability of mutual destruction in industrial-age warfare meant that armed conflict had become obsolete as a means of settling international disputes. Goltz had the final word, replying that war, however demanding, had not yet been abandoned by anyone, and that people must remain 22 ‘‘realistic’’ about the possibility of banning war. Goltz’s views were pessimistic in that he believed human nature would always find recourse to war. Whereas Bloch and Angell took the position that war was no longer cost-effective, Goltz warned that powerful motives, such as nationalism, made it more difficult than ever to avoid. In short, pacifists and socialists were openly pessimistic about Europe’s ability to survive a general war; however, they were unrealistically optimistic about the chances of creating a community of nations willing to renounce armed conflict. At the same time, military practitioners were pessimistic about the likelihood of ridding the world of war, but they were optimistic about being able to win the next one, however dreadful it might be. Yet, both arguments were demonstrably one-sided. The former overlooked, or wished away, the propensity of states and peoples for

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overcoming difficulties, technological or otherwise, when it came to national endeavors, particularly the waging of war. The latter assumed that the costs of fighting wars, however dear, would always be worth paying. Achieving victory in war was, for them, deeply a matter of honor, the preservation of which brooked no limits, and spared no costs. FUTURE WAR As warfare was unfolding along the dimly lit paths described in the previous chapter, the forecasts of pundits and other prognosticators proceeded along different lines altogether. While, as we have seen, some debated whether war itself had a future, others plunged headlong into the task of imagining the next great war. In many of these instances, however, little effort was made to ground the forecasts in actual events, or to verify apparent trends. Popular journals and magazines endeavored to take advantage of the public’s evidently growing appetite for war literature, both fiction and nonfiction. These endeavors affected an air of great urgency, as editors of magazines hastily assembled committees of experts, whether truly qualified or not, to offer their opinions. The introduction to the serialized version of British Admiral Philip Colomb’s The Great War of 189-: A Forecast (1893), which first appeared in 1891–92 in the new illustrated weekly, Black and White, offers an example of how the public’s imagination was deliberately and profitably aroused: Authorities are agreed that a GREAT WAR must break out in the immediate future, and that this war will be fought under novel and surprising conditions. All facts seem to indicate that the coming conflict will be the bloodiest in history, and must involve the most momentous consequences 23 to the whole world.

Aside from Colomb, other authorities who collaborated on this project included accomplished military writers Colonel John F. Maurice and Captain F.N. Maude, and the renowned war correspondent Archibald Forbes. Unfortunately, as chapter three has shown, the ‘‘facts’’ about warfare changed frequently, due in part to the rapid pace of technological innovation; at other times, they simply pointed toward more than one conclusion. No matter: the editors of this periodical, and others like it, consciously decided to exploit such facts as there were in order to boost sales. The need to vend thus overtook the desire to inform, and the need to thrill quickly outpaced the desire to entertain. Colomb’s Great War of 189- sold well in Britain, was translated into several languages, and went

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through multiple editions. Other periodicals, such as Pall Mall, Blackwood’s, Pearson’s, Collier’s, Answers, and The Experimenter quickly picked up the theme of speculating about future war. While readers were driven perhaps by curiosity, a desire for adventure, or the nationalism of the age, the principal motive for publishers was to outdo the competition, rather than to capture what future war might really be like. Although clearly exploitive, Colomb’s Great War of 189- came very close to laying out the political framework of the Great War itself. As in 1914, an assassination of a royal dignitary in the Balkans sets off a chain reaction that pulls all the major powers into armed conflict. Bulgaria is attacked by Servia (Serbia), which prompts Austria-Hungary to attack Servia; that attack causes Russia to come into the war on the side of Servia. Russia’s attack causes Germany to enter the war on the side of AustriaHungary, which in turn induces France to declare war on Germany. Then, in a few actions inconsistent with the way the war would actually unfold in 1914, Italy seizes the opportunity to attack France, and Britain comes into the war on the side of the Central Powers, rather than that of the Entente. Fighting takes place from Vladivostok to Varna, from Paris to Warsaw, and from northern Africa to the Riviera. The combined British and German fleets prove superior to the Franco-Russian flotillas. The German army wins decisively in the east, but is defeated in the west, before Paris. These outcomes lead to a negotiated settlement, with the war lasting only about eight months. While a world war might have seemed the stuff of imagination in the early 1890s, in reality it was only about two decades away. The new genre of war literature quickly came of age. War stories and novels by authors both known and unknown joined an ever-growing market. Novels such as George Griffith’s Angel of the Revolution (1893), which depicts anarchists systematically toppling the archaic and oppressive gov24 ernments of Europe, became instant best-sellers. Edward Fawcett’s Hartmann the Anarchist; or, The Doom of the Great City (1893) replicated this theme in a tale relating the destruction of London by aerial bombard25 ment. William Le Queux’s The Great War in England in 1897(1893/94), which featured a cross-channel invasion by the French and Russians, combined with an uprising by the oppressed working classes, played on the 26 bigotry and fears of Britain’s middle and upper classes. It was followed by hisInvasion of 1910, with a Full Account of the Siege of London (1906), which put the Germans as the invaders this time, and became an exemplar of the burgeoning ‘‘scaremonger’’ genre that highlighted Britain’s alleged 27 lack of military preparedness. Thomas Ellis’s Zalma (1895) painted a picture of future conflict involving the use of biological warfare, namely

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anthrax, in an attempt to destroy Europe’s capital cities. Biological warfare also features prominently and decisively in Matthew Shiel’s The Yellow Danger (1898), which pits East against West in a devastating global 29 conflict. H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds (1898) was less a warning about the possible existence of a superior alien race than it was a call for more technological innovation and scientific thinking; in the book, humanity is saved from ruthless annihilation by a germ in the Earth’s atmosphere, which proves deadly to the invaders, rather than by the power of its own 30 intelligence. Louis Tracy’s The Final War (1896) was more ideological than technological in tone, picking up on the budding theme of a ‘‘war to end war,’’ which in Tracy’s view was to come about by means of a revi31 talized Pax Britannica. Erskine Childers’s Riddle of the Sands (1903) stirred invasion fantasies again, this time by positing a German foe; a young, adventurous yachtsman and his friend solve a riddle of strange goings-on along the coastline of Germany, exposing an invasion plot 32 and a British traitor. Of course, not all popular writers succumbed to the temptation to capitalize on the period’s war-scare mania. Alan Alexander Milne (1882– 1956), assistant editor of Punch magazine from 1906 to 1919 and creator of the Winnie the Pooh cartoon character, spoofed the spy-scare genre, and especially the books of Le Queux and to a lesser extent Childers, with 33 a short story entitled, ‘‘The Secret of the Army Aeroplane.’’ The (very) short story, which appeared in Punch in May 1908, involves two friends who take the law into their own hands and resolve to capture a German spy, which they do, despite plenty of evidence that the hapless victim they choose is anything but a spy. Still, the efforts of Milne and others notwithstanding, the war-scare genre took on a life of its own. As one eminent scholar noted: ‘‘The period from the 1880s to the long-expected outbreak of the war in 1914 saw the emergence of the greatest number of these tales 34 of coming conflicts ever to appear in European fiction.’’ The idea that a ‘‘Great War’’ would eventually break out among the major powers, and that this war would feature ‘‘novel and surprising’’ conditions, and perhaps be the ‘‘bloodiest’’ in history, quickly seized hold of the popular imagination. That hold grew ever stronger over the ensuing decades as each new advance in military technology and each new opportunity for saber rattling fueled the speculations of experts and amateurs alike. Undaunted by awareness of the actual progress of military technology, the public’s appetite for speculation only increased, and did so without the tempering influence of a discriminating taste. While Verne and Wells are still regarded as prescient today, some historians have credited Robida as the individual who most accurately

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predicted the shape of things to come. Certainly, in the realm of scientific romance and its associated subgenre of speculative war fiction, Robida’s work stands apart. His War in the 20th Century was richer in visual imagery than the works of either Verne or Wells. Robida’s illustrations tend to occupy one-half to three-fourths of each page. And well they should, for the illustrations offer the author an opportunity to enliven the tale much like the graphic novels of today. Otherwise, War in the 20th Century might have been forgettable, for Robida’s talent was more 36 in illustrating than writing. Actually, War in the 20th Century is utterly and deliberately absurd, a characteristic critics have hitherto overlooked. The characters and storyline are unreal in ways that would have turned the period’s romantic fiction on its head; everything takes either much more or much less time than it should, and the dialogue and events are teeming with nonsequiturs. Despite these qualities, Robida’s War in the 20th Century is not contrived enough to qualify as an anticipation of the ‘‘absurdist’’ 37 movement of the twentieth century. The story begins in the summer of 1945 with the multi-talented hero, Fabius Molinas, receiving mobilization orders requiring him to abort his planned vacation to the beaches of Norway. Molinas, as we discover through the course of the novel, is equally talented as an air-engineer, aircraft gunner, tank operator, submarine driver, torpedoist, master planner, tactician, and leader; he is also astoundingly lucky. We first find him in action on the French aircraft E´pervier (Sparrow Hawk), where enemy shrapnel kills or wounds the entire crew, save Molinas himself, who destroys a massive rolling blockhouse (Blockhouse Roulant) with a single shot from the aircraft’s cannon, which eventually disrupts a major enemy attack. Molinas is promoted on the spot for his coolness under fire, and put in command of one of the captured blockhouses. The French forces counterattack with aircraft and Roulants, routing a women’s ‘‘territorial brigade’’ which had been thrown into the fray as a stop-gap measure. The enemy then counterattacks at night with chemical weapons, and green gas clouds kill all soldiers and civilians in the vicinity, except Molinas, who had gone in search of rations and, as luck would have it, had become locked in an airtight cellar. There, he is able to survive the French aerial counterattack, an annihilating bombardment by a flotilla of divebombers, which obliterates the town and tosses Molinas skyward, to land safely, if awkwardly, in a nearby river. Enemy chemical troops show up for an evening swim, and Molinas dons one of their uniforms. With this newfound disguise, he later destroys a large chemical storage tank, thereby sabotaging the enemy’s attempt to inflict catastrophic casualties on the

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French troops with mines loaded with ‘‘poison gas, malignant fever bacilli, 38 glanders, dysentery, measles, and other maladies.’’ The enemy is laid waste by their own weapons (179,549 casualties!), but Molinas escapes with only a toothache. Molinas is promoted once again, and assigned to the mobile artillery. The men under his command are wiped out and replaced three times, but he escapes without a scratch and is promoted again. Molinas and his troops counterattack against a row of forts. The attack is led by a squad of ‘‘Me´diums—the most powerful mesmerizers and mind-benders in 39 Paris,’’ who put the forward line of enemy troops into a ‘‘paralytic state.’’ Some of the hypnotists are lost to a barrage of ‘‘brainstorms,’’ but in the end the enemy commander is persuaded by ‘‘magnetic suggestion’’ to surrender. Unfortunately, the rest of the squad of mesmerizers is blown to pieces in the final phase of the assault. More chemical and biological attacks ensue. The enemy later attacks with a vast submarine fleet, and Molinas is posted to the French navy and put in command of a small submarine torpedo vessel, the Potassium Cyanide. He and his crew toil for 72 hours straight without a break, disarming a series of underwater mines, blowing up seven enemy battleships, and severely damaging several others. Their little sub is disabled, and the men flee in diving suits for nine days, eventually returning to French lines only to be ordered immediately back into the water and into the action again; no rest for the courageous, and our hero does not want any! Molinas bravely completes his next mission, which should have been suicidal, going deep behind enemy lines to destroy the enemy’s communications before the decisive French counterattack. Afterward, he is ordered back to his original air squadron, where he is given command of the Voltiguer 39. A massive air battle takes place, wiping out everyone on both sides, save Molinas. Finally, he ends up falling onto a house in Mexico, and into love with a high-born senorita, just as a ‘‘glorious peace’’ is signed ending the war. Absurdly fantastic, Robida’s War in the 20th Century presents the reader with an unexpected turn at every juncture. It is consistent only in its inconsistency. We are given no compelling reason for the war other than ‘‘tariffs,’’ and that in the future ‘‘commercial treaties are imposed by gunfire.’’ Robida’s attitude toward the cause of the war is deliberately cavalier. We also are not told what political system is at work in France, or among her enemies. Nor is it clear what each side’s objectives are, except to defeat the other. The weapons of this war are a mix of old and new: the magazine rifle and the saber are in service alongside aircraft and submarines. The new weapons, far from being scientific

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extrapolations of existing technologies, appear in the story precisely because of their unlikelihood: rolling blockhouses too large to move, aircraft with cannons of such immense caliber the recoil alone would have sent them spinning out of control, chemical and biological bombs that appear to kill only the enemy, and mind-bending mediums. In these instances, Robida’s purpose is less to predict than to ridicule. It is interesting, and somewhat perplexing, that Robida’s projections into the future world should be considered predictions, which they are clearly not. He projected his imagination forward and conjured images designed to entertain, and perhaps even to titillate. His rendering of the women of the territorial brigade, the ‘‘inexperienced warriorettes’’ (guerrie`res inexpe´rimente´es) that Molinas’s blockhouse overruns, is erotically suggestive, though they look a bit like armed bellhops or cadets in their tight-fitting, double-breasted jackets. Sex sold even in Robida’s day. In Robida’s future world everyone had foibles, except for the hero Molinas himself, whose only foible was simply that he had none. In The Electric Life, in fact, the image of the mad scientist appears, the individual so obsessed with finding the next discovery or invention that he has lost his moral bearings. Whereas for Wells science itself was moral and ethical guide enough, Robida saw it as a double-edged sword, one capable of cutting friend as well as foe. The works of Robida were only part and, based on their explicitly absurdist tone, perhaps the most responsible part, of a growing genre that exploited the idea of future war for mass consumption. In marked contrast, Wells’s works were not as original as Robida’s, and 40 not nearly as original as one might suppose. It is perhaps inaccurate to describe him as a plagiarist, however, since what he actually did, in effect, was copy others’ ideas with the intention of showing that he could portray them with more flair, more imagination, and in a sense, more realism. Wells’s forecasts regarding future war were clearly influenced by the ideas of Bloch, whom he references by name, though he obviously rejected the Pole’s conclusion that military technology would render war obsolete. On the contrary, Wells argued that the rapid advance of science and technology, which every year results ‘‘in new branches of activity,’’ would lead to a war without ‘‘decisive victory, but [with] a vast diffusion of conflict.’’ Wars of the past were ‘‘showy, dramatic, emotional, and restricted,’’ a thing of ‘‘heroisms’’ in which ‘‘battles and campaigns rested in the hand of a great commander, standing out against the sky, picturesquely on horseback, visibly controlling it all.’’ Wars of the future, however, would be a ‘‘question of preparation, of long years of foresight and disciplined imagination.’’ They will be ‘‘less dramatic as a whole’’ and ‘‘more a monstrous thrust of people against people’’ with ‘‘no definite army, no

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controllable battle, and no Great General in the field at all,’’ only a ‘‘cen41 tral organizer’’ sitting at his telephonic command center. Wells envisioned three phases in such a war. The first phase would consist of thousands of dispersed marksmen, dueling day and night in firing zones up to 16 miles wide. Similar duels would occur simultaneously in the air and on the sea, until one side collapsed and the other was able to advance with ‘‘ironclad road fighting machines’’ protected by air cover into the enemy’s heartland. The second phase, the ‘‘business of forcing submission,’’ would consist of seizing the ‘‘vital apparatus of the urban regions,’’ that is, the water supplies, power stations, and the means for the distribution of food. Wells retained faith in a war of movement, where ‘‘the side that can go fastest and hit hardest will always win,’’ and he even believed that the ‘‘never-to-be-quite-abandoned bayonet’’ would have a role. His future war was a short, high-tempo affair, with disasters coming ‘‘swiftly and amazingly, blow, and blow, and blow, no pause, no time for recovery.’’ With the advance of science and technology, Wells saw war becoming more like an exact science, an activity with little room for error, fit only for ‘‘a new sort of soldier,’’ a ‘‘sober, considerate, engineering man,’’ a member of the ‘‘new class of educated and intelligent efficients.’’ To meet such challenges, the modern state would have to transform itself into one organic fighting unit, ‘‘one great national body’’ led by a corps of elite 42 soldier-technocrats. Future war, in short, required the mobilization of an entire nation. Wells continued to develop his scientific vision of future 43 war throughout many of his later writings. As we have seen, pessimists like Goltz tended to believe a future war was inevitable, but still winnable. Optimists like Angell, in contrast, felt that war was avoidable, and inescapably suicidal if it should occur. Both, therefore, regarded the development of new weapons with a great deal of interest, even if their analyses of the significance of those weapons served their political interests or agendas. Not surprisingly, each appreciated the implications of modern weaponry quite differently. Both actually had little difficulty believing that the ‘‘coming conflict’’ would be the ‘‘bloodiest in history, and must involve the most momentous consequences to the whole world.’’ Optimists held that these consequences would be prohibitively ruinous, while pessimists believed that the ruin itself would ultimately prove purgative, causing society to be reborn. Both, of course, were right.

The Great War of 189-, for all its scare-mongering, was remarkably accurate. Its authors depicted a chain of events, beginning with an attempted assassination of Bulgarian Prince Ferdinand (above), which pull the world into war. The similarities with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary, which sparked the First World War in 1914, are obvious. In contrast, Robida’s characters (below), flying effortlessly about twentieth-century Paris at night, need to worry more about fear of heights than the specter of war.

Two battle scenes from The Great War of 189-. Above: German cavalry descends upon battered and disorganized French infantry. Had a major war actually broken out in the 1890s, one might well have seen mass cavalry charges such as this. However, the key point the authors stressed here, and which their contemporaries often overlooked, is that cavalry should charge only when infantry could not offer organized resistance; to do otherwise meant certain destruction. Below: This clash between Russian and German infantry seems Napoleonic in scale. What the artist did not depict, however, were the fields of barbed wire and other obstacles the Russians had to negotiate—as would often be the case in the First World War—before they reached the German lines. Here, the Germans are in the process of counterattacking with the aid of searchlights and flares.

The real and the surreal; but which is which? The battleship depicted by Robida above is weighted down with more heavy guns than any vessel its size could realistically bare. But, the illustration below, from The Great War of 189-, portrays a British ironclad ramming a French one. The authors clearly added this incident for dramatic effect, for even by the 1890s the destructive power of naval guns was such that close encounters of this sort would rarely occur.

Robida’s illustration of Molinas’ E´pervier (above), and a cutaway showing its interior design (below). Robida took some care in balancing the vessel’s weight, placing the gun and its ammunition at opposite ends. It is doubtful that any airship with so much weight could have left the ground, or survived the recoil from a ´ pervier and the cannon of such size. Note the external similarities between the E French-made airship on the next page. Both resemble the French dirigible La France, which made a successful flight in 1884.

A taste of aerial warfare as depicted by the authors of The Great War of 189-. Here a French-made airship in the service of the Russians drops a ‘‘dynamite shell’’ on magazine stores in the village of Varna, Turkey. The explosion causes a conflagration, but neither the French nor the Russians have enough airships to turn the tide. Even by 1884, speculations regarding the potential of airpower were widespread, and were well ahead of its physical capabilities.

The destruction of the German airship Vaterland as described in H.G. Wells’ War in the Air. At a length of 2,000 ft, the Vaterland would have been nearly three and one half times as long as the Hindenburg. In the early twentieth century, the technology simply did not exist to make a vessel of such size stable in the air.

Robida’s sketch of a Blockhouse Roulant (above) resembles a combination of a self-propelled gun and an armored personnel carrier. Its similarity with twentiethcentury armored vehicles is unmistakable. Wells’ Land Ironclad (below) is, as its name implies, a veritable battleship on land; as mentioned, the weight of the vessel itself would have kept it from moving.

In Wells’ short story, ‘‘The Land Ironclads,’’ armies of rugged country-folk (left) are no match for seemingly less hardy, but more mechanically adept townspeople. ‘‘The Land Ironclads’’ was more than a story about brains over brawn; it conveyed the superiority of a new way of thinking about the world over an old one.

A combination of the old, the new, and the exotic. Molinas himself (above), ostensibly a warrior of the twentieth century, carries with him the most symbolic accoutrement of the nineteenth-century soldier, the saber. It appears to be Robida’s way of saying that the soldiers of the future will likely hold onto most of their martial traditions. The rocket-propelled aircraft (right) appears more like the spaceships of the distant future than the jet fighters of the twentieth century. The medium or mesmerist (below) was Robida’s jab at a late nineteenth-century Parisian fad.

Robida’s depiction of this massive mechanical gun (above), which was to fire chemical and biological bombs, is not too far removed from the many cannon that would bristle along the Maginot Line at the outset of the Second World War. This gun, like them, could retract beneath the surface and remain concealed from the enemy. Robida was one of the first to envision submarines being used on a large scale (below); the submarines’ windows, which look like so many fish eyes, would have been useless, since visibility below the water’s surface was virtually impossible for any significant distance. Robida’s drawings bear some resemblance to the French submarine Gymnote, launched at the end of the 1880s.

5 Wars on Land It is a bludgeon business when you come to close quarters. . .Fighting in the trenches is veritably a bloody affair.

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Capt. C.E. Vickers, ‘‘The Trenches,’’ 1908

By the time Captain Vickers’ story, ‘‘The Trenches,’’ was published, Europe’s major armies had essentially accepted the idea that the next war would involve a considerable amount of trench-style fighting. The bloody contests for possession of redoubts and fortifications during the Russo-Japanese war (1904–05) had convinced most military analysts of that. Firepower was clearly becoming increasingly important in modern warfare, and yet so was the bayonet and the spade. The ‘‘deadly zone’’ had expanded to roughly 3,600 meters, or just over two miles, since the 1890s. And the tactical problem of the day remained how to cross it. Military writers in Britain, the United States, France, and Russia acknowledged that modern weapons had more than doubled in range, and had more than doubled in volume of fire. As one British officer explained, modern firepower created three ‘‘belts’’ of destructive fire: the outer belt, from 8,000 to 12,000 meters, was dominated by the long-range fires of heavy artillery; the second one, from 3,600 to 8,000 meters, was covered by lighter, quick-firing guns and some heavy artillery; the final belt, the ‘‘deadly zone’’ proper, extended from the edge of an enemy’s defensive positions to 3,600 meters or so, and was virtually ‘‘a tornado of fire. . . 2 poured in by magazine rifles and machine guns.’’ The deadly zone, thus, had become even deadlier in recent years. Yet, crossing was increasingly seen as only half of the problem. The Russo-Japanese war had shown that an attacker could expect a vicious,

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close-in fight even after he had crossed the deadly zone and reached the defender’s positions. Trenches and fortifications not crushed by artillery fire would have to be taken by the bayonet. This realization raised great concern among military planners. Even if it were only partially true that urban living had sapped the psychological resilience of modern citizens, the human stock available for fighting in close quarters might not have the mettle for such fighting. What then? The challenge for military professionals, therefore, was how to avoid the protracted, self-destructive outcome posited by Bloch. This chapter examines how civilian and military writers conceived of future wars on land, and how many of them sought solutions to the tactical problem of the day.

VICTORY THROUGH MACHINES Not surprisingly, forward-looking science-fiction writers such as H.G. Wells took a technological approach to resolving the dilemmas of land warfare. Wells simply devised new military machinery and applied it to the realm of land combat. His now-famous short story, ‘‘The Land Ironclads,’’ which originally appeared in The Strand Magazine in 1903, constitutes his response to the problem of potential tactical stalemate 3 popularized in Bloch’s Future of War. In fact, the story opens with an explicit reference to Bloch: The young lieutenant lay beside the war correspondent and admired the idyllic calm of the enemy’s lines through his field-glass. ‘‘So far as I can see,’’ he said, at last, ‘‘one man.’’ ‘‘What’s he doing?’’ asked the war correspondent. ‘‘Field-glass at us,’’ said the young lieutenant. ‘‘And this is war!’’ 4 ‘‘No,’’ said the young lieutenant; ‘‘it’s Bloch.’’ The initial momentum of the conflict the young lieutenant and the war correspondent found themselves in had passed, and given way to a standstill of opposing trench-lines, with combatants nearly invisible to one another. When the war correspondent asks the lieutenant how he would press home an attack under such conditions, the latter replies with a somewhat distorted version of the military answer to the problem: ‘‘What would you do if you were the enemy?’’ said the war correspondent, suddenly. ‘‘If I had men like I’ve got now?’’ ‘‘Yes.’’ ‘‘Take these trenches.’’ ‘‘How?’’

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‘‘Oh—dodges! Crawl out half-way and get into touch with the chaps we send out. Blaze at ‘em if they tried to shift, and so bag some of ‘em in the daylight. Learn that patch of ground by heart, lie all day in squatty holes, and come on nearer next night. There’s a bit over there, lumpy ground, where they could get across to rushing distance—easy. In a night or so. It would be a mere game for our fellows . . .Guns? Shrapnel and stuff 5 wouldn’t stop good men who meant business.’’

The lieutenant has faith in his men, for they are not ‘‘devitalized townsmen,’’ as the invaders are, but outdoor types, healthy, rugged, and inured to hardship. The war correspondent points out that civilized men can call upon science; it was science, after all, that created the weapons of war now in use by both sides. The lieutenant ignores the remark. Eventually, the attack, by civilized men and their science, comes. It takes the form of a night attack by 14 black, tortoise-like monstrosities guided by searchlights. The rugged defenders try their best to hold, but the superior technology of the townsmen is too much for them. The defenders are routed; those who are not killed by the trench-defying ironclads, are captured and held at gunpoint until bicycling infantry can round them up, and herd them to the rear. The story is more than a retelling of the conquest of brains over brawn; it is indicative of Wells’ philosophy that science is the path of the future. It can triumph over prejudice and habit, and will always find a better way. The scientific mind is not only superior to grit, it is the ultimate expression of the human species. It is the quiet objective of evolution, both the means and the end toward a higher society. Wells’s ironclads were monstrous trench-busters, ‘‘something between a big blockhouse and a giant’s dish cover,’’ rather than the more familiar box-like tanks of the First World War, or the speedier, turret-armed ones 6 of the Second World War. The tanks of the latter conflict were typically armed with a main gun, a few machine guns, and a four- or five-man crew; they weighed from five to 70 tons, were 10 to 20 feet long, and had a speed of 10 to 30 miles per hour. In contrast, each of Wells’s ironclads was between 80 to 100 feet long, about 10 feet high, with numerous interlacing portholes for rifle barrels, and protected by 12-inch iron plating. We are not told the number of the crew, but each vehicle seems to hold a captain, several engineers, and many riflemen. Each rifleman had his own compartment within the machine, and operated a mechanized sighting device linked to a semi-automatic rifle, for which he naturally had ample spare parts at hand. These rolling blockhouses were steam powered, and moved on eight pairs of ‘‘pedrails,’’ or caterpillar feet attached to the

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rims of wheels, each about 10 feet in diameter; the vehicles apparently had a top speed of about 10 miles per hour. The captains of each vehicle communicated to one another by means of wireless. Although a self-styled man of science, Wells’ technological descriptions at best reflect general principles, suggesting how things might operate, rather than practical prototypes that might actually be transferred from the drafting table to the production line. The dimensions he offered for his land ironclad, for instance, would have resulted in a vehicle far too heavy to move on land under its own power. By comparison, the USS Monitor, a floating ironclad commissioned in 1862, displaced about 987 tons. It was 179 feet long, almost 42 feet wide, just over 10 feet high, but only had nine inches of armor at its thickest point (the cylinder-like pilot 7 house). It was thus twice as long as one of Wells’s blockhouses, but similar with respect to the other dimensions; hence, the overall weight of the land ironclad would have been no less than that of the Monitor, since the former had much thicker armor all around. One the heaviest tanks of World War II, the German King Tiger, weighed only 75 tons, and that weight contributed to significant engine and transmission problems; the land ironclad would likely have weighed more than 13 times that amount. It is also worth noting that Wells chose semi-automatic rifles for the vehicle’s armament, rather than machine guns, which were already appearing in increasing numbers each of the major armies. When the first tanks appeared in 1915, they featured two naval guns mounted on each side. Their primary role was to break through trenches by destroying machine guns, killing enemy troops or driving them from their positions, and tearing up barbed wire fencing and other obstacles. In fact, they were 8 sometimes referred to as ‘‘machine gun destroyers.’’ It is also somewhat curious that Wells chose steam to power his vehicles when the internal combustion engine was becoming more popular, and had already been applied successfully to motorized war cars developed by Frederick Simms 9 in 1902 and Paul Daimler in 1904. The Pedrail system, moreover, did not offer the cross-country mobility that Wells attributed to it, particularly for the vehicle weights described above. The monsters would have done little more than dig themselves deep into anything softer than solid rock. Although written two decades earlier than Wells’ ‘‘Land Ironclads,’’ Robida’s War in the Twentieth Century featured land vehicles that were closer, in principle at least, to the tanks of the Second World War and later. Robida’s Blockhouse Roulants might not have turned out to be any more mobile than Wells’ giant tortoises, for they were also monstrosities. Robida did not offer any dimensions for his armored machines, but he did provide illustrations, which suggest proportions. The rolling blockhouses

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had cannons mounted on them that resembled those found on modern tanks and self-propelled guns. They also functioned on the battlefield much like their modern counterparts, moving swiftly and in massed formations to overrun enemy troops, and to destroy hostile positions with firepower. Robida’s soldiers also cling to tradition, while embracing new technology. They wear uniforms not unlike those of the French army of the 1870s and 1880s, to include sabers while in combat. Robida’s soldiers, in fact, are never without their sabers, even when aboard airplanes or submarines. Ironically, even though Robida’s story is clearly designed to poke fun at certain practices, it offers a more realistic picture than Wells’ tale because the weapons depicted in the former have genuine vulnerabilities: everything can be destroyed by everything else. The land ironclads, by contrast, are only vulnerable to a lucky shot or to the rarest misfortune. Wells’ message is clear: when applied correctly, science is invincible. However, civilians were not the only ones to advance the idea of solving the problem of the infantry attack by inventing a new kind of machine. In 1908, British Captain Charles E. Vickers (1886–1908) published a story entitled ‘‘The Trenches,’’ which offered just such a machine, called the 10 ‘‘Snail.’’ Compared to Wells’ giant tortoise, Vickers’ machine was a trench-digger, not a trench-buster. His solution to the infantry problem was to employ a machine that could dig trenches quickly, like a mole, right up to the trench-works of the enemy, so that attacking infantry could approach the defender’s positions while under cover, and cutting directly into them if necessary. Thus, Vickers’ solution was the equivalent of fighting fire with fire. Vickers’ story is also about the hopelessly unimaginative and inefficient nature of a bureaucracy such as the British War Office, where he actually worked for a time. The chaps in the office take great amusement in rejecting any ideas that come their way, though there is in any case apparently no funding available for any new ideas. Vickers and his comrade in arms, Ernest Swinton (1864–1951), who were at least partially responsible for the development of the tank, both worked in the office, and both wrote stories for Blackwood’s, some in collaboration. After the war, The Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors (Tanks) identified Wells’ land ironclad as among the first treatments of the tank, though Swinton claimed 11 not to have been inspired by it. Indeed, Swinton was certainly aware of Wells’ tale, but may have been more influenced by Vickers’ story about the ‘‘Snail.’’ Although monstrous in conception, Wells’ land ironclad was actually closer in function to the ‘‘tank’’ that the British field-tested in 1915 and

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later employed in large numbers on the Western front, than that conceived by Vickers. Early in the war, Swinton was appointed as the British army’s official journalist, and published numerous articles and press releases under the pseudonym, ‘‘Eyewitness.’’ After observing the deadly effect that machine guns and shrapnel had on attacking infantrymen, he submitted a proposal for armored petrol tractors mounted on caterpillar treads. The proposal was first rejected by General Sir John French, but found favor with Winston Churchill of the Navy Ministry. A Landships Committee and an Inventions Committee were established, and specifications drawn up for the first prototypes. The first one, referred to as ‘‘Little Willie,’’ was tested on September 11, 1915. It was anything but a resounding success. Modifications to the original design resulted in lowering the center of gravity and extending the length of the vehicle, and thus its treads, for better traction. Two six-pound naval guns were added to the flanks. The new model, Mark I (Mother), was successfully tested in January and February 1916. The Mark I first saw service on September 16, 1916, in the vicinity of Flers-Coucelette. 49 of the vehicles took part, though 17 had mechanical problems and failed to participate in the attack proper. The British achieved tactical surprise, and a few kilometers of ground were taken. Mechanical difficulties continued to plague the tanks, however, and a German counterattack eventually drove back the British. By the end of the battle, the Germans had developed an effective countermeasure— concentrated artillery fire. As one British tank commander wrote: Bernstein’s tank was within reach of the German trenches when a shell hit the cab, decapitated the driver, and exploded in the body of the tank. The corporal was wounded in the arm, and Bernstein was stunned and temporarily blinded. The tank was filled with fumes. As the crew were crawling out, a second shell hit the tank on the roof. Birkett went forward at top speed, and, escaping the shells, entered the German trenches, where his guns did great execution. The tank was hit twice, and all the crew were wounded, but Birkett went on fighting grimly until his ammunition was exhausted and he himself was badly wounded in the leg. Then at last he turned back. Near the embankment he stopped the tank to take his bearings. As he was climbing out, a shell burst against the side of the tank and wounded him again in the leg. The tank was evacuated. Birkett was brought back on a stretcher, and wounded a third time as he lay on the sunken road outside the dressing station. Skinner came right to the edge of an enormous crater and stopped. He tried to reverse, but he could not change gear. The tank was absolutely motionless. The Germans brought up a gun and began to shell the tank. Against field guns he was defenseless if he could not move. With great skill

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he evacuated his crew, taking his guns with him and the little ammunition 12 that remained.

A more successful armored attack occurred on November 20, 1917, at Cambrai, where some 476 British tanks, more than 1,000 guns, 14 air squadrons, and six infantry and two cavalry divisions attacked along a front 10 kilometers wide. The attack, really one of combined arms involving infantry, aircraft, tanks, and artillery, drove the Germans back about six kilometers, capturing 8,000 prisoners, 100 guns, and three echelons of trenches in the vaunted Hindenburg Line. German counterattacks later reclaimed nearly all the lost ground, however. The tank was hardly the decisive weapon Wells’ ‘‘Land Ironclads’’ made it out to be. Nonetheless, it clearly had potential. Much has been made over whether Wells or Swinton should receive credit for ‘‘inventing’’ the tank. Yet, Robida’s rolling blockhouses were much closer to the tanks that appeared on the battlefields of the Second World War than were those imagined by Wells or Vickers. VICTORY BY GRIT AND INGENUITY While some looked for new technological innovations to solve the infantryman’s challenge, others sought the answer in new techniques, and in the greater quantity and quality of manpower. Well before Bloch made his prognostications regarding the tactical challenges facing the attacker, military writers had set about finding ways to cross the everincreasing deadly zone. In the early 1880s, General von der Goltz described the problem this way: ‘‘These days the defender sweeps the field clean with his weapons of precision within a thousand meters of his lines. A broad deadly zone, ten times as broad as was formerly the case in the 13 days of the smooth-bore rifles, must be passed by the attacker.’’ To solve this problem, Goltz argued that, in future wars, armies would have to take the field with superior numbers, greater quality of officers and men, better cooperation among all arms, and improved speed and mobility. A successful attack would demand ‘‘the greatest expenditure’’ of physical and psychological effort. An attacking army needed speed and ‘‘continuity of action’’ to keep the defender off-balance, so that he could not prepare his positions adequately. The attacker must not allow the defender to strengthen his defenses, to re-supply his depleted forces, or to reinforce his threatened areas. Armies could achieve speed to a certain extent by fostering grater cohesion and by developing leaders capable of making decisions rapidly. Officers at all levels had to have the freedom

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and ability to think and act independently, without waiting for orders. Along with speed and a more innovative officer corps, Goltz also advocated using open-order tactical formations, which exposed fewer men to 14 enemy fire and enabled units to negotiate difficult terrain more easily. As mention previously, a number of accomplished officers, such as Colonel J.F. Maurice and Captain F.N. Maude, collaborated on the writing of The Great War of 189-, which was published in book form in 1893. While the work clearly fell into the category of a ‘‘war-scare’’ novel, it nonetheless remained close to the technological and tactical conditions of the day, offering a likely account of how battle might have unfolded if war had broken out in the early 1890s. A speech delivered by the German Kaiser on the eve of war reflects an enlightened, and accurate, understanding of those conditions: Within the last few years the science of war has been completely revolutionized, and we are all now about to grapple with military problems which never taxed the powers of our predecessors. . .I do not require to tell you that the duties and functions of a commander are very different from what they were at the beginning of this century. . .now all that is nearly left to the modern commander-in-chief is to lead his forces up to the battle and then leave them to the charge of his subordinates . . .Forbidden by the nature and necessities of warfare, as now practiced, to be a tactician—such as Caesar, or Frederick, or Napoleon, or Wellington—the modern commander-in-chief must restrict himself to the task of strategy, and entrust his colonels and his captains with the duty of beating the enemy in detail. And as a modern battle must necessarily extend over a vast extent of front, it really resolves itself into a hundred separate combats, in which even company leaders become independent commanders . . .But though thus every colonel and every captain among you is now a commander-inchief, it behooves you to remember that, what with smokeless powder, magazine rifles of vast range, and other innovations, the conditions of 15 fighting have altered immensely even since Germany last took the field.

Indeed, the question of how smokeless powder and magazine rifles seem to have altered land combat figures prominently throughout the book. A night battle is described in which vast numbers of Russians advance in waves, firing as they do so, against shrapnel fire and entrenched German troops armed with rapid-firing, magazine rifles; the fire from the magazine rifles ‘‘incessantly tore through [the Russians’] 16 stolid ranks, mowing them down and massacring them by thousands.’’ Through sheer weight of numbers, the Russian troops press on until they encounter wire fencing and are stalled, while the Germans continue to

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pour more lead into their ranks. At last, the Germans rise out of their trenches, and counterattack. Bloody hand-to-hand fighting ensues, but the Russians first bend, then break, running back to their own lines while under constant fire from the Germans. By battle’s end, some 10,000 Russians have been killed or wounded, along with about 3,000 Germans. The message of the authors was clear: firepower now reigns supreme on the battlefield, but the bayonet, the willingness to come to close quarters, and ‘‘try conclusions with cold steel’’ is still an indispensable part of war. Similar results occur in other battles between the Russians and Germans. The former were always at a severe disadvantage because they were not fully equipped with magazine rifles, and they were not trained to fight independently and to exercise initiative. Yet, when the Germans encountered the French, the story was different. Casualties were always horrific. Still, the French used the Germans’ need to achieve a quick victory against them. The former enticed the latter to overextend themselves, then counterattacked. As a result, the Germans were bloodied considerably, and driven back. There is, in the German defeat, evidence of a return to outmoded tactics. As the war correspondent on the scene reports: And how bravely those Germans fought! And now, looking back in cold blood, how needlessly they were butchered! Exactly opposite where I stood, their infantry moved forward with even more than the precision of a parade; in little squads, shoulder to shoulder, with all the rigidity of a birthday review. I could even see the officers halting and actually correcting the alignment. Needless to say, these living targets were riddled through and through in the very moment of their pedantic folly. In the rear, too, came lines of men, gallantly moving forward to beat of drum, with that extraordinary, high-stepping pace which excites the ridicule of the Transatlantic visitor in Berlin. How the veterans of our [U.S.] Civil 17 War would have scoffed at this slave-driver’s discipline!

Why German tactics were more effective and more up-to-date on the eastern front rather than the western front is never explained by the authors. Yet similar disparities would occur in the First World War itself. While the German infantry regulations of 1906 prescribed using openorder formations with extended intervals, and coordinating forward movement with supporting fire, many subordinate commanders ignored them. The Prussian Guard, for instance, rigidly adhered to close-order formations well into the war, suffering egregious casualties as a result. A number of reserve units, in contrast, fared much better by employing the 18 procedures outlined in the regulations.

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The authors of the Great War of 189- also described great cavalry actions, though these usually occurred in areas where infantry and artillery fire were not available to lay low the horsemen. Otherwise, the encounter between horse soldier and modern firepower was always devastating to the former. As one war correspondent described an ambush of German cavalry by French horsemen, dismounted and firing from the cover of an orchard: ‘‘Magazine after magazine is unloaded, and thousands of bullets find an easy target in the seething, struggling mass [of cavalry], just now advancing so magnificently in all the pride of order and 19 victory.’’ The message of the authors was that the role of cavalry was much more limited, though not entirely eliminated. At first, both sides employed large cavalry units in the First World War. By war’s end, however, most of those units had given up their horses, and were fighting as infantry. The book also introduced a few new weapons. Wire fencing, in experimental stages at the time, was used to slow down attacking troops in the ‘‘deadly zone,’’ thus increasing their exposure to the defender’s fire. Various forms of barbed and concertina wire would, of course, be used extensively once the conflict entered into the stage of trench-warfare. An experimental lance-carbine combination was also mentioned in the book, but only in passing. A large dirigible, much like that flown by French aeronauts Charles Renard and Arthur Krebs in 1884, also dropped high explosives on the city of Varna; the authors, in fact, make a direct reference to the existence of a French ‘‘war balloon.’’ One bomb lands near ammunition magazines, producing ‘‘frightful detonations and explosions,’’ and 20 causing a ‘‘universal conflagration of that part of the town.’’ In the end, the new weapons do not produce a decisive advantage, as they are offset by other factors, most of them strategic. The war ends in a negotiated settlement among the contending alliances. Even a quarter-century after the Great War of 189- appeared in print, the seemingly relentless progress of firepower technology continued to oblige military professionals to search for better methods of driving home an attack. As former chief of the German general staff Count Alfred von Schlieffen noted in 1909, the tactical problem of the day had not gotten any easier: ‘‘How we, by means of modern weapons, can lay low and annihilate our enemy is not difficult to say. How to avoid annihilation our21 selves is a problem not so easy to solve.’’ Magazine rifles and smokeless powder were now joined by machine guns, rapid-firing artillery, and improved shrapnel rounds. Soldiers had become more invisible because of the adoption of drab-colored uniforms (except in the French army,

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which had opted for dark blue tunics and red pantaloons) and smokeless powder. Intervals between soldiers increased to compensate for the greater deadliness of the battlefield, and troops were encouraged to use all available cover when in an attack. Yet, that meant concentration and momentum, so critical to the attacker, were more difficult, and more costly, to achieve. The only way for infantry to advance in the more lethal environment of modern warfare, Schlieffen maintained, was by means of well-coordinated fire and movement. Attacking troops would have to use their own fire and that of supporting artillery to suppress the defender’s fire, and then move forward from one piece of cover to the next. Crossing the final space before the enemy’s positions might require digging successive lines of trenches, as in fortress warfare, and pressing forward trench by trench, even under cover of darkness if necessary. This process might take several days, as it had during the Russo-Japanese War. Accurate and timely artillery fire was the key. For this reason, Schlieffen pushed for howitzers, which could lob shells in a steep trajectory and drop them inside trench-works, not just near them, and heavy artillery which could 22 smash fortifications. Save for the emphasis on artillery, military establishments in Europe and the United States expressed similar views. All looked to increase the cooperation between fire and movement, and to incorporate more firepower into every aspect of fighting. They also expected junior officers and noncommissioned officers to assume more responsibility for decision-making in combat situations. When coordination of fire and movement was effective, combat troops usually made it across the deadly zone. When coordination was lacking or deficient, the result was usually a disaster. Successfully crossing the deadly zone did not necessarily lead to a breakthrough, however. Defensive zones were simply too deep. As the attacker consolidated and reorganized his forces and brought his artillery forward for the next phase, the defender was either launching a counterattack to keep the attacker off balance, or filing reinforcements into the second and third belts of the defensive zone. Instead of being able to exploit any success his initial assault had gained, the attacker had to begin the gritty process of orchestrating his attack all over again. Supplies had to be brought up over pock-marked terrain, a tedious process, and guns and troops had to be shifted to new jumping-off positions. Increased firepower thus provided only half the solution. The other half, which we might call the need for improved mobility, had received too little attention before the war, except in the realm of fiction. In part,

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this deficiency was due to rising interest and investments in aircraft, which was expected to open up combat on the ground. Even by 1918, however, neither aircraft nor land ironclads had matured enough technologically to provide a decisive advantage. That would require another decade or two of technological development, as another world war would attest.

6 Wars at Sea If I know my countrymen, their preferred method of fighting at sea will remain ramming for years to come. . .I see the submarine as doing little more than foundering at sea and drowning her crew. H.G. Wells, Anticipations, 1902

1

Wells’ prediction is rather curious, coming just after the turn of the century. Had it come a decade earlier, the statement might have been more appropriate. It was much talked about in naval circles after the battle of Lissa (July 20, 1866) during the war between Austria and Italy, where an Austrian ironclad rammed and sank an Italian one. In the 1890s, as Admiral Colomb conveyed in The Great War of 189-, British naval principles still tacitly included reference to ramming. The three primary principles of naval warfare were: first, to avoid ‘‘giving a friend the ram, or firing into him either by gun or torpedo’’; second, to engage in such a way that ‘‘an enemy’s ship should sustain the fire of more than one of our ships’’; and third, to maneuver so that ‘‘no one of our ships should find herself 2 opposed by two of the enemy’s.’’ These three principles were considered valid in the last decade of the nineteenth century, and indeed, save for the mention of torpedoes, might well have been thought of as timeless. Yet, by 1902, ramming was hardly considered a core tactic, and was instead speedily slipping into the category of a maneuver of desperation. The range of naval gunfire had quadrupled since 1892, and the improved efficiency of steam engines had greatly enhanced the speed and maneuverability of surface vessels. Torpedoes already ranged to nearly 3,000 yards, and most of the Great Powers were beginning to commission submarines in considerable numbers. Colomb’s The Great War of 189- had a bit of

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ramming for dramatic effect, but the majority of the combat was accomplished through cunning maneuver and the timely delivery of shot and shell. The book did not feature submarine warfare, which in any case was still premature at the time. This chapter compares competing visions of war at sea. Unlike war on land, naval warfare did not face the sort of crisis that threatened offensive maneuver. It did, however, offer fertile soil for the imagination since technological innovation during this time was so rapid and far-reaching. NAUTICAL NIGHTMARES Submarines did not appear very frequently in the war literature of the early 1890s, but torpedoes and torpedo boats did. The threat posed by the torpedo was driven home loud and clear in a short book entitled, 3 The Next Naval War, by Captain S. Eardley-Wilmot of the Royal Navy. Eardley-Wilmot described a war between France and Britain, prompted by the former’s demand for the withdrawal of British troops from Egypt. The British are both unwilling and unable to comply, as their contingency planning and mobilization schedules are hopelessly disorganized. The French make the first move, sending a flotilla of 20 torpedo boats to strike British ships still in harbor. After a brief encounter with destroyers and other fighting vessels, all but six of the little boats are lost. Yet, they man4 age to sink or severely damage three battleships and one cruiser. Since it takes several years to build one battleship, and less than a month to build a torpedo boat, this was hardly a favorable exchange. Later we find that the British Mediterranean Fleet is roughly handled by the French; the British force numbers 10 battleships and 11 cruisers, while the French bring 15 battleships and 12 cruisers to the fight. The British limp away with only five damaged vessels remaining. The lesson here, according to Eardley5 Wilmot, is that numbers are better than size and weight. The British had larger vessels and heavier guns, but were outmaneuvered by lighter, faster craft, capable of keeping up a steady fire. If Wells had little regard for the military potential of the submarine, his rival George Griffith thought otherwise. Part of Wells’ denigration of the value of underwater vessels may well have been driven by a desire, conscious or unconscious, to undercut the popularity of Griffith. The latter’s short story, ‘‘The Raid of the Le Vengeur,’’ which appeared in Pearson’s Magazine in February 1901, may well have been one of the former’s 6 targets. At the time the story was published, it was still conceivable that Britain’s next great enemy would be France rather than Germany. ‘‘The Raid

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of the Le Vengeur,’’ posits a war between two scientists, a duel of minds as well as matter. The French scientist, Leon Flaubert, is also a naval officer with a deep interest in submarines. He dreams of avenging Napoleon’s defeat at the hands of the British, and believes submarines—if they can be made into effective undersea weapons—will be capable of destroying Britain’s imposing surface fleet, and dominating the oceans. Flaubert’s principal challenge, however, was to find a way to enable submarines to see underwater; once they submerged to a depth of about 10 feet or so, they became blind due to the density of the water and the lack of light. The use of lights only allowed a few meters of visibility, again due to water density, and had the disadvantage of revealing the whereabouts of the vessels to their surface enemies. Flaubert overcomes the problem of visibility by attaching numerous retractable electric threads, which act like feelers or antennae, to his submarine. Le Vengeur, thus, feels its way about like an insect. Unbeknownst to Flaubert, a British scientist by the name of Wilfred Tyrrell has at the same time developed an undetectable ‘‘water ray’’ that enables visibility underwater at an indefinite distance; the ray can be used by submarines, or by surface vessels patrolling for mines and submarines. Tensions mount between France and Britain, though war is not yet declared. Le Vengeur strikes out anyway to prove its military potential; it sinks a British cruiser, but is found by a destroyer outfitted with Tyrrell’s water ray. The destroyer forces the submarine into port, and thus captivity, with a pair of steerable torpedoes. Flaubert, now disgraced, commits suicide, and his crew is tried for piracy and executed. Almost exactly four years later, Pearson’s Magazine published another gripping submarine yarn. In Walter Wood’s story, ‘‘Submarined,’’ the lieutenant of a damaged battleship turns the tables on an enemy subma7 rine. The battleship Samson limps into an out-of-the-way cove to make repairs, but is spotted by an enemy torpedo boat, which quickly withdraws. The crew of the Samson realizes the enemy will send a submarine at night to finish off the battleship; they discuss their options. Lieutenant Harden convinces the captain to allow him to don an underwater suit and take the ship’s only remaining mine, and wait along the path the submarine must take. When the underwater boat is close enough, Harden explains, he will detonate the mine, thereby ‘‘submarining’’ the submarine. The scheme works, but Harden sacrifices his life in the process, as the crew knew he must. The attitude of the ship’s captain is that submarine warfare is not ‘‘honest fighting,’’ as there is ‘‘no way of guarding 8 against them.’’ So, Harden’s sacrifice is particularly poignant insofar as it is a maneuver against which the submarine itself has no defense.

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Wood was something of an authority on naval matters. He authored two highly-regarded books during this period, Famous British Warships 9 and Their Commanders (1891) and The Battleship (1912). Both works exalted the battleship, and its role in naval warfare. His story, ‘‘Submarined,’’ might have received greater recognition had it not been for Arthur Conan Doyle’s tale, ‘‘Danger! Being the Log of Captain John Sirius’’ 10 (1914), published just before the war. Doyle’s story served as a warning, as did much of the war literature of the period, about the submarine menace. The first sentence of the narrative is indicative: ‘‘It is an amazing thing that the English, who have the reputation of being a practical nation, never saw the danger to which they were exposed.’’ The narrator is John Sirius, a naval captain from the fictional country of Norland, ‘‘one of the smallest powers of Europe,’’ which also just happens to have bested Great Britain in a recent war. Although the British had invested heavily in ships of the line, in aircraft, and in a land force, as Sirius remarked: ‘‘when the day of trial came, all of this imposing force was of no use whatever, and 11 might as well have not existed.’’ With a force of only eight submarines, Sirius would bring Britain to her knees in four weeks by attacking her trade. Sirius establishes a modest base away from his native land, and with his tiny force begins to sink cargo ships inbound to Britain. The price of grains and other essentials begin to rise rapidly. One of the subs is sunk, but the others manage to evade the efforts of the entire Royal Navy, all the while sinking more cargo ships. Sirius measures the success of his strategy by marking the rising costs of basic foodstuffs. Eventually, famine sets in, and riots break out across Britain. Some 50,000 people perish, and the British government is forced to conclude peace. Doyle’s story is really an argument for building a cross-Channel tunnel, which he strongly supported. His warning, like those of other tunnel advocates at the time, is that the British Isles can be cut off and starved by a submarine blockade. A land link to the Continent would preclude that, or at least make it more difficult to achieve. Germany’s U-boat forces attempted to accomplish such blockades in the course of two world wars. They posed a serious threat to British commerce, but they did not succeed. The principal reason for their failure is that the submarine, too, was vulnerable to other weapons; it was generally slower than surface vessels, such as destroyers; and was quite detectable from the air, unless cruising very deep. Also, starving the British populace would have required much more than just eight submarines. Doyle’s story, though prescient in some respects, essentially downplays the submarine’s vulnerabilities, nor does it explore the possibility of Britain using a blockade against Norland as a countermeasure. The war would then have become a contest of

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endurance. For these reasons, naval experts of the day considered the tale 12 interesting, but ‘‘most improbable.’’ Many authorities also stated that civilized nations were not likely to attack defenseless merchant ships. Although they were clearly wrong on this score, their statements aimed at balancing war literature’s tendency to demonize the foe, and to arouse public fears. Doyle was hardly the first to underscore the threat that blockade and the destruction of sea commerce posed to Britain, or any nation for that matter. George S. Clarke (writing under the pseudonym A. Nelson Seaforth) took up the issue two decades earlier in his book, The Last Great 13 Naval War, which appeared just after Colomb’sGreat War of 189-. Clarke’s book is written from the perspective of a narrator in the year 1930, giving an account of a fictional war between Britain and France which took place in the early 1890s. In the story, the French, remaining true to the philosophy of the Jeune ecole, send flotillas of torpedo boats into the Channel and against key British ports with the intent of disrupting British trade. In the first two months of the war, the British lose 32 steamers with a combined tonnage of 45,000, and some 40 sail14 ing vessels. As a result, times are hard. The British react by building torpedo boats of their own, constructing 100 of them in short order, and return the favor. Yet, the downside of commerce raiding in an era of interdependent economies is also explored, and presciently so. The French accidentally sink a German steamer, raising the ire of the German people, and nearly bringing Germany into the war to the disadvantage of France. In the First World War, of course, Germany’s U-boat actions helped bring the United States into the war to the disadvantage of the Reich. Clarke’s narrative climaxes with a great naval battle between the French and British fleets. The opposing sides begin the engagement by firing at each other from a distance of about 7,000 yards. The two sides close, and a vast melee ensues. The battle becomes a contest between individual ships and their crews, with discipline and fortitude generally carrying the day. After a fierce fight lasting several hours, the two sides disengage momentarily, assessing their regrouping and damages. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a British force of fast cruisers appears, and descends upon the disorganized French, routing them. The British victory is complete, the maneuver having evidently been planned by the British admiral all along. The engagement has all the characteristics of a classic cavalry encounter, with a charge, melee, and counter charge. Despite this somewhat artificial drama, the description is not too far from how a naval battle between great powers might have unfolded in the early 1890s.

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Although written a few years earlier, Samuel Barton’s The Battle of the 15 Swash (1888) also addresses the torpedo threat. However, the torpedo boats he describes are capable of diving underwater, and are thus called 16 ‘‘submarine torpedo boats.’’ So, Barton’s story features something of a hybrid weapon. The battle of the Swash occurs in the spring of 1890, but the story is recounted by an individual looking backward from the year 1930, 40 years later. In the narrative, the United States and Britain go to war over the future of Canada. The British send a mighty fleet to teach the upstart Americans a lesson. The Americans, much to their chagrin, discover that they have little to speak of in terms of coastal defense, and that their navy is hopelessly small and obsolete compared to the power of the Royal Navy. Nonetheless, thanks to Yankee inventiveness, the Americans have a few technological surprises in store for the British imperialists. One of these is the submarine torpedo boat, which is capable of diving under an enemy vessel and fixing an explosive charge to the hull, and detonating it. Another is the ‘‘self-destroying torpedo boat,’’ which carries two tons of dynamite packed into a steel-headed ram; the boat, as its name implies, rammed into an enemy vessel and detonated, sinking 17 both. A third invention was that of the dynamite gun, which fired explosive charges of great power against enemy vessels. The battle begins on May 11, 1890, as the British fleet swiftly destroys the Americans’ obsolete coastal guns and a few of her outdated wooden ships in the vicinity of New York harbor. Later that night, however, the Americans counterattack. Hundreds of lighted buoys are launched as a ruse, which the British engage; then, the submarine torpedo boats and the self-destroying torpedo boats attack. Three of the four major battleships of the British fleet are destroyed, and many other vessels are sunk or damaged. The British withdraw and regroup, then return to deliver a punishing bombardment that destroys a significant portion of New York City. The two sides conclude a peace; the British give the Americans Canada for a hefty price. The British can claim victory, but, as the narrative makes clear, the aura of British naval supremacy is broken, and her empire begins to crumble. The Battle of the Swash was clearly meant as a warning to the American people about their lack of coastal defense and maritime power. The potential bombardment of American cities, and of holding them ransom, was a general concern. The Stricken Nation (1890) by Hugh Don18 nelly, writing under the pseudonym Stochastic, stressed this theme. In this tale, combined British and Canadian fleets sail with impunity up and down the east and west coasts of the United States. The American navy, if it can be called that, is dispatched forthwith by the superior Royal

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Navy. Consequently, Boston, New York, Washington, San Francisco, New Orleans, and even inland cities, such as Chicago and Cleveland, are either bombarded or blockaded. Some 12,000 people are killed in New York City, and fires rage uncontrollably for days. Riots break out across the country, and the Americans have no choice but to accept severe terms. The long-term result is the collapse of the American republic, and the emergence, with foreign intervention, of small, individual nations where the United States had once been. Robida’s little masterpiece, War in the Twentieth Century, also highlighted the underwater aspects of naval warfare. Both sides in that fictional war possessed submarine fleets, each with a variety of sub-surface vessels; some were small, two-person reconnaissance submersibles, while others were armored fighters, and still others were large enough to transport plenty of infantry. The submarines were fish-shaped, looking very much like dorsal-less marlins or manta rays with prominent stingers, and were quite speedy and maneuverable. The submarine infantry were equipped with diving suits, helmets, and oxygen tanks, and were armed with compressed-air carbines capable of firing underwater. Molinas, not unlike the famed ‘‘frogmen’’ of twentieth-century navies, except in terms of his superhuman accomplishments, performs demolition work along the enemy’s coast, destroying underwater mines and ships in harbor prior to a French seaward invasion. While the exploits of Molinas are absurdly fantastic, they nonetheless largely reflect capabilities that would exist by the middle of the twentieth century. The submarine was not the only novelty to appear with respect to naval warfare. New tactical approaches were also considered. Erskine Childers’ Riddle of the Sands (1903) was completely new in that it called for fighting in the littorals, the coastal inlets and waterways. Childers volunteered for combat in the second Boer war (1898–1902), and served as an artillery officer; he was wounded and sent back to Britain to convalesce, whereupon he wrote Riddle of the Sands. Among other things, the novel reflected his profound love of sailing and the extent to which he was impressed by the guerrilla tactics of the Boers. Childers’ view of littoral warfare, in fact, can be summed up as applying guerrilla tactics to the defense of coastal waterways. He described Germany’s coastline between Denmark and Holland, where the bulk of the story takes place, as ‘‘an ideal hunting-ground for small free-lance marauders’’; the three searoads leading inland were like ‘‘highways piercing a mountainous district 19 by defiles, where a handful of desperate men can arrest an army.’’ Britain, Childers urged, needed to put ‘‘daring, resourceful’’ men in small maneuverable crafts along her own watery ‘‘defiles.’’ Such men would operate in

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small groups, travel light, and move swiftly to harass and ambush a stronger, slower-moving foe. As Childers’ intrepid young hero, Arthur H. Davies, a natural sailor, explained: ‘‘The heavy battle fleets are all very well. . .but if the sides are well matched there might be nothing left of them after a few months of war. They might destroy one another mutually, leaving as nominal conqueror an admiral with scarcely a battleship to bless himself with. It’s then that the true struggle will set in; and it’s then that anything that will float will be pressed into the service, and anybody who can steer a boat, knows his waters, and doesn’t care the toss of a coin for his life, will have magnificent opportunities. . .the millions we sink into forts and mines won’t carry us far. They’re fixed—pure passive defense. What you want is boats—mosquitoes with stings—swarms of them—patrol-boats, scout-boats, torpedo-boats; intelligent irregulars manned by local men, with a pretty free hand to play their 20 own game. And what a splendid game to play!’’

Unfortunately, as Childers, or rather Davies, pointed out, Britain had no such force ready. It did not build or use torpedo boats, and its destroyers were too long and ran too deep for this sort of task. ‘‘What you want,’’ urged Davies, ‘‘is something strong and simple, of light draught, and with only a spar-torpedo, if it came to that. Tugs, launches, small yachts—anything would do at a pinch, for success would depend 21 on intelligence, not on brute force or complicated mechanism.’’ ‘‘Those in the Admiralty,’’ Davies continued, ‘‘want some waking up. . .We’re a maritime nation—we’ve grown by the sea and live by it; if we lose command of it we starve. . .We’ve been safe so long, and grown so rich, that 22 we’ve forgotten what we owe it to.’’ Sadly, as Davies pointed out, Britain’s naval officers and her statesmen had to go to ‘‘an American to learn their A B Cs,’’ an obvious reference to the writings of the naval theorist Alfred Mahan. Childers portrayed Germany as a sleeping giant coming awake. Her rulers were described as strong and wise, and her subjects full of patriotic ardor; she was transforming from a land to a sea power, and was intent on expanding her empire. Years later, however, historians would describe Germany’s political and military leaders as anything but wise, and her subjects as anything but united under a spirit of patriotism. Still, by the time Riddle of the Sands was published, Germany had truly embarked upon an aggressive foreign and naval policy aimed at expanding her influence. Childers’ book deftly manipulated public concern about future wars, and the rise of Germany as a world power.

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PRUDENCE & PRINCIPLES The fears of war, the rapid industrial growth, and the upsurge in technological innovations made the public receptive of the period’s two prominent naval theorists, the American Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840–1914) and the British historian Sir Julian Corbett (1854–1922). Mahan served in the U.S. Navy for three decades, at a time when promotion was slow; it took him 24 years to make the rank of captain, and he was only promoted to rear-admiral in 1906, after he had retired. Although he was a career naval officer with some experience aboard-ship during the American Civil War, Mahan had spent little time actually at sea; he even became seasick on a trip to Europe, remarking: ‘‘I had forgotten what a 23 beastly thing a ship is, and what a fool a man is who frequents one.’’ He was appointed commandant of the U.S. Naval War College in 1886, and became assistant secretary of the U.S. Navy in 1897; he also served as a special consultant to the U.S. President during the Spanish24 American War (1898). Mahan used history as a basis for developing fundamental principles for sea power, which he defined as the ability to protect sea lines of communication. His book The Influence of Seapower upon History (1890) put 25 forth his theories in more detail, and became a classic worldwide. It is likely that this was the work to which Childers referred to in Riddle of the Sands, as the hero Davies displays an obvious fondness for Mahan’s theories. Despite modern advantages in naval technology, Mahan’s vision of a future war at sea remained based on what contemporary clashes suggested to him, that is, that there would be decisive battles between capital fleets for subsequent control of sea lines of communication. We find no inkling in his voluminous writings that new developments in technology would undermine or alter any of the fundamental principles that he, or rather history, had established, especially that of concentrating all of one’s naval forces for a decisive battle. Nor does Mahan appear to have indulged in fantasies about future war at sea, though he did hazard some recommendations about the design of future warships; however, he was roughly handled when he did so for getting many of the details wrong about the 26 capabilities of contemporary naval guns. His colleagues in the U.S. Navy were in hot debate at the time over the relative tradeoffs between enhancing the firepower (which also increased weight) or increasing the speed of fighting ships. Not to be outdone by an American, the British naval historian Julian Corbett took issue with Mahan’s fundamental assumption that the ability to wage a decisive battle at sea was the key to sea power. Mahan assumed

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that the principal threat to one’s sea lines of communication was the enemy’s fleet; once it was neutralized, one’s sea lines of communication were, by default, protected. Corbett, in contrast, felt that this conception did not go far enough; navies needed the capacity to defeat other nautical threats, such as torpedo boats and coastal batteries, and to project forces onto land 27 to seize and control important terrain such as canals and capital cities. Unlike Mahan, Corbett had no naval experience whatsoever, and all but backed into the role of historian, critic, and strategist after a career in law. Nonetheless, he established a reputation as one of the Royal Navy’s leading intellectuals, though many officers refused to embrace his views, and began lecturing at the British Naval War College in 1902. If Mahan had the confidence of U.S. Secretary of the Navy and later President Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919), Corbett had the trust and support of Admiral Sir John Fisher (1841–1920), First Sea Lord from 1904 to 1910 and 1915 to 1916, and the chief reformer of the Royal Navy during the decade 28 before the Great War. Without such political patronage, these thinkers would probably not have enjoyed the success and influence they did. In the summer of 1910, the former British officer and military analyst, Charles a` Court Repington (1858–1925), published an article in Blackwood’s Magazine analyzing the threat posed by the submarine to the 29 future of naval warfare. The article was both prescient and balanced, though his naval colleagues might not have thought so. Repington argued that improvements in the capabilities of submarines and torpedoes since the Russo-Japanese War were now threatening the dominance of dreadnought-series battleships, particularly in areas such as the North Sea and the Channel. Submarines, he reported, could now reach a surface speed of 15 knots (10 knots submerged), a displacement of 400–800 tons, and a range of 2,500 miles; they could fire 21-inch torpedoes, which had much more destructive force than the 18-inch variety used in the RussoJapanese War, and could range 7,000 yards. One such torpedo, if it struck the right spot, could sink a dreadnought. Moreover, Germany and Britain together possessed some 600 torpedo-firing vessels, with the number increasing by about 50 per year. Compounding the problem, Repington pointed out, was that little progress had been made in submarine countermeasures. ‘‘It is also certain that it must be a perfectly hateful idea to senior officers of the navy that a wretched little submarine should dominate waters in which a Dreadnought proudly sails. Yet, what other conclusion is possible?’’ Actually, history shows that Sir John Fisher had appreciated the submarine threat, and had fought not only to incorporate submarines into the Royal Navy, but to adopt countermeasures as well. Yet, bureaucracies are wont to

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move at their own pace, despite the occurrence of national emergencies. Repington’s essay, it must be remembered, came on the heels of the famous war scare of 1909. After that, no amount of progress, however vast or rapid, would have seemed sufficient in the eyes of critics. Repington’s role, like that of any critic, is to point out deficiencies, rather than to applaud progress. Despite Corbett’s lack of naval experience, he brought a relatively heterogeneous, and yet eminently defensible, vision of future war to naval thought. Navies in Europe and the United States had begun to expand their panoply, incorporating submarines, torpedo boats, destroyers, battle cruisers, and mine sweepers. While ships of the line remained important, with the dreadnought taking preeminence, navies were beginning to look more like the balanced task forces of the mid- to late-twentieth century. The various ships had their roles, and failure to muster fleets accordingly left them with an Achilles’ heel or two. In a word, naval visions moved, albeit in fits and starts and in some ways altogether unconsciously, from thinking about the merits of particular kinds of ships to combining ships of various capabilities into effective fleets. Still, Mahan, Corbett, and Repington looked only as far as the next war, no more than two or three years ahead. That was not so different from writers such as Wood or Doyle who, like them, wanted to inspire immediate action. Visionaries like Robida were in a class of their own. His illustrations predicted much more about the future, and did so more accurately, than his prose. He launched his mind 70 to 80 years into the future, and hit his mark, though most of his generation would not live to see it. Also, as we can see here, the dividing line between civilian and military writers tends to break down. Should Childers, who moved in and out of military service, be considered a civilian or a military writer? Corbett, who had no military service, had just as important a role in influencing the way naval officers thought as did Mahan. Naval officers in Britain may have resisted some of Corbett’s ideas, particularly those that seemed to denigrate the role of battle in determining command of the sea. Still, he provided the Royal Navy with a sound canon of first principles, many of which remain extant today. In the end, naval officers went forward cautiously optimistic, and events in the Great War justified doing so; for the principles of Mahan were not entirely disproved, and those of Corbett were not wholly validated.

7 Wars in the Air An air attack against a major city like New York would be devastating: no great accuracy would be needed in the congested areas, and the loss of life from fire, high explosive bombs, and panic would be appalling. American aviator Riley E. Scott, April 1914

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When Riley Scott’s words appeared in the spring of 1914, Europe was but a few months away from one of the most devastating wars in history. It was also the first European conflict in which aircraft would deliberately rain destruction upon civilian populations. Regrettably, it was not the last. While the bombing of major metropolitan areas might have come as a surprise, it was hardly unexpected. Terror bombing had been a major theme in future war fiction decades before the war broke out. Time and again, readers experienced the bombing of London or New York City, albeit vicariously. While military correspondents kept them abreast of the actual progress of Count von Zeppelin’s efforts to build ever more capable airships, the facts did not prevent fantastic reports from making the newspapers. One such report in 1909 alleged that German airships 2 could transport some 350,000 troops to Dover in a single night. As a result, between the publication of Wells’ War in the Air in 1908 and the outbreak of war in 1914, Londoners suffered from a recurring case of ‘‘Zeppelinitis.’’ As events would show, this malady had at least some basis in fact. This chapter compares the types of air wars and flying machines imagined by military and civilian writers. Aerial warfare was by far the most captivating of all the dimensions of modern war. The skies were humanity’s last frontier, and no other realm proved quite as fertile for the

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imagination. Speculations ran a veritable gamut of themes: from aerial combat to airborne invasion and strategic bombing. For many, the conquest of the air was long in coming, almost too long. And, in a sense, they were right. The public grew impatient, then skeptical, so much so in fact, that at first the Wright Brothers’ success at Kitty Hawk in December of 1903 was scarcely believed. Failure and disappointment had become so common that success, when it finally did occur, seemed incredible. FLIGHTS OF FANCY While progress would move rapidly after 1905, it was in many ways still very far below the lofty heights that imagination had reached by then. One of the first to conjure a future war in the air was the British scientific romance writer, George Griffith, who has been favorably, and unjustifiably, compared to H. G. Wells. Griffith’s writing never approached the precision and clarity of Wells’ prose, and the former’s characters were never more convincing than so many ‘‘Gaslight’’ stereotypes. Wells, on the other hand, had a gift for rendering a character wholly unique and believable with a few precisely chosen words. Nonetheless, Griffith’s Angel of the Revolution, which appeared in 1893, was an instant hit, and motivated him to write several sequels. Throughout, Griffith depicted air war as a superior, but not an independent, form of war. The book’s most telling passage is a communique´ sent by a fictitious war correspondent reporting on a war underway between the AngloTeutonic Alliance and the Franco-Slavonian League: . . .every assault on the part of the troops of the League has been preceded by a preliminary and irresistible attack from the clouds. The aerostats have stationed themselves at great elevations over the ramparts of fortresses and the bivouacs of armies, and have rained down a hail of dynamite, melanite, fire-shells and cyanogens poison-grenades, which have at once put guns out of action, blown up magazines, rendered fortifications untenable, and rent masses of infantry and squadrons of cavalry into demoralized fragments, before they had the time or the opportunity to strike a blow in reply. Then upon these silenced batteries, these wrecked fortifications, and these demoralized brigades, there has poured a storm of artillery fire from the untouched enemy, advancing in perfect order, and inspired with high-spirited confidence, which has been irresistibly opposed to the demoralization of their enemies. . . .The sober truth is that the invention and employment of these devastating appliances have completely altered the face of the field of battle 3 and the conditions of modern warfare.

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Griffith’s correspondent was more than a little prophetic. Military operations during the twentieth century would often follow similar patterns: heavy air bombardments to reduce fortifications and defensive positions, followed by artillery fire, and finally an attack by ground forces. One clear example of this approach is the saturation or ‘‘carpet’’ bombing that preceded the breakout of Allied armies from the tough Normandy terrain in 1944. In some places, upwards of 1,000 tons of bombs were dropped per square mile. One German general who was on the receiving end of such a barrage described it as absolute ‘‘hell. . .The planes kept coming overhead like a conveyor belt. . .The bomb carpets unrolled in great rectangles. . .at least seventy percent of my personnel were out of action— dead, wounded, crazed, or numbed. All my frontline tanks were knocked 4 out.’’ In truth, twentieth-century militaries lacking a strong air arm were often at a severe disadvantage against an opponent who did possess one. Yet, victory was not guaranteed by air superiority, and was hardly ever as easy as Griffith alludes. Expectations are usually that air bombardments will destroy everything in their paths. However, that almost never proves to be the case. Veterans of twentieth-century wars would testify time and again that, regardless of the intensity of the bombing, enough enemy troops seemed to survive to make for tough fighting. As capable and indispensable as Griffith’s aerostats were, they were far less powerful than the airships he gave to the story’s terrorists. These vessels were more like the space ships of an alien race, capable of traveling at incredible speeds and carrying many weapons and bombs. The next generation of airships depicted in the book’s sequel, Olga Romanoff (1894), were even faster and more powerful. In Outlaws of the Air (1895), which appeared five years before Count von Zeppelin’s first successful flight, the aerostats were capable of flying 50 miles per hour, even in strong headwinds. In contrast, Zeppelin’s LZ 1 could manage only 20 miles per hour against little or no headwind, and was rather unstable. When H.G. Wells’ The War in the Air appeared in 1908, Zeppelin was only on his fourth model of the airship, LZ 4. The ship was capable of flying at 29 miles per hour, and had a range of 870 miles, but crashed later that year. By this time it was also understood that any future aerial conflict would probably involve Imperial Germany, the same implacable foe the British Empire had been fighting in the pages of popular books, journals, and magazines for well over a decade. The French and Russians no longer seemed as threatening as the militaristic Teutons and their aggressive policy of supremacy, or Weltpolitik. Wells had little regard for the illusion of ‘‘world supremacy’’ itself, which in the eyes of so many had thoroughly

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infected the political rhetoric of the day. Yet, he had no reservations about making that illusion the obsession of his Teutonic antagonists. If Wells tentatively agreed with pacifists like Angell about the deceptive benefits of conquest and the enslaving logic of militarism, he did not think pacifist views would win over enough of humanity to bring about an end to war. The world would likely have to bring itself to the brink of annihilation before it could fully appreciate the folly of making war with modern weapons. Even then, the odds of such an epiphany occurring were not great. Wells might have gotten his inspiration for The War in the Air from Griffith’s works, but it is far superior to them and warrants more discussion. The book opens in the year ‘‘191-,’’ that is, before 1920, or about a decade from the time in which Wells wrote it. The sense the novel conveys, then, is that a great deal of change would take place within a short period of time. This particular future was within reach, indeed, just around the corner. Yet, as in ‘‘The Land Ironclads,’’ Wells depicted a level of technology considerably beyond what scientists and engineers could actually achieve within such a relatively short span of time. The great airships which the Germans employ in their bid for world domination, for instance, were purportedly the ‘‘lineal descendants of 5 the Zeppelin airship that flew over Lake Constance in 1906.’’ However, these airships were capable of flying 90 miles an hour, compared to the 20 knots or so possible in 1908. They were also between 800 and 2,000 feet long, with a lift capacity of 70 to 200 tons. Yet, even the famous Hindenburg, which was state-of-the-art when it was built in 1936, was only about 612 feet long, had a maximum speed of about 60 miles per hour, and 6 could manage a payload of only 60 tons. Wells’ airships also towed many smaller, single-piloted, kite-like machines called Drachenflieger (hanggliders). These machines had ‘‘wide flat wings and square, box-shaped 7 heads, and wheeled bodies.’’ They were, in a sense, the ‘‘torpedo-boats’’ of the air. The pilots of the Drachenflieger would swoop down like modern dive-bombers, and hurl bombs upon their targets. They could also engage in aerial combat with other airships, their chief tactic being to approach close enough to toss a bomb onto the dirigible of a foe. The protagonist of the story is the under-educated but by no means unintelligent Mr. Bert Smallways, who, Wells explicitly notes, is a product of the West’s tendency to indulge its upper-classes while inadequately preparing the rest of society with sufficient education and skills for the challenges of modern life. By a twist of fate, Smallways finds himself afloat in a balloon belonging a certain Mr. Butteridge, a popular but mysterious inventor who hardly resembles the ‘‘gallant experimentalists’’ portrayed

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in Wells’ earlier short story, ‘‘The Argonauts of the Air’’ (1895). Smallways is eventually shot down over Germany, whereupon he deems it beneficial to impersonate Butteridge. However, Smallways’ ruse is quickly uncovered by his German captors. Held prisoner in the German aerial flagship Vaterland, Smallways bears witness to the terrible war between Germany and the United States as it unfolds. In Wells’ vision of future air war, airpower easily trumps naval power. In a great battle for the north Atlantic between the German and American navies, dozens of dive-bombing Drachenflieger sink several American battleships and armored cruisers within a matter of minutes, even though the losses to the aeronauts themselves are grotesquely high. Bombs dropped from the airships finish off the rest of the American fleet, and as it sinks, so too do illusions about the dominance of the ironclad, at least in Wells’ 9 mind. The German airships, remaining high above the range of antiaircraft fire, then advance on New York City. The great city surrenders after a brief but devastating blitz, and agrees to resupply the Germans with arms and provisions, and to pay a hefty ransom. Not surprisingly, although the city’s officials have hoisted the white flag, the stubborn New Yorkers themselves refuse to surrender, and an insurrection of sorts begins. This reaction exposes a flaw in the German strategy. The Germans, who intended to dominate the skies as Britain had dominated the seas, had launched a surprise attack against their chief economic rival, the United States. The German plan was to establish a base of sorts at New York, which would allow her air fleets to refuel and rearm indefinitely; from there they would strike out, bombing other cities and terrorizing American citizens, until the United States accepted German terms. The overlooked flaw was that the destructive power of the mighty airships could cow a city’s authorities into submission by threatening to deliver an annihilating bombardment; however, the vessels could not carry enough troops to disarm a hostile citizenry if it refused to submit to the new authority. The loss of a few airships to bad weather and the actions of insurrectionists prompt the Germans to take the war to another level. The single-minded German commander, Prince Karl Albert, begins to raze New York City in retaliation. The Americans respond by throwing many squadrons of their own airplanes into the fight, small bi-planes with uptilted wings, long kept secret from the public. The battle rages in the air above New York, with the Americans attacking furiously and relentlessly, even crashing into the larger German airships to bring them down. The Americans also employ a sort of lightning gun that shoots bolts of electricity upward to ignite the inflammable Zeppelins. However, this gallantry

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was not enough to save the city. Eleven of the massive airships are downed, but all the American airplanes are lost. The conflict started by Germany sets off a world war, as nation rises against nation, each of whom had secret air fleets. Airships take only weeks to build, compared to years for ironclads. Vast air fleets quickly fill the skies, as each nation endeavors to take advantage of the situation, to gain the upper hand over its rivals. London, Paris, Berlin, Hamburg, and San Francisco are set ablaze. ‘‘It’s the end of the world,’’ remarks LuftLieutenant Kurt, a German officer who befriends Smallways, ‘‘The world’s 10 gone mad.’’ To everyone’s surprise, the hastily formed Sino-Japanese alliance puts up thousands of airships to the West’s hundreds. The Western nations, almost exhausted from fighting each other, belatedly unite and try to fight the Yellow Peril from the East. The Asiatic Alliance’s chief flying machine was the Niaio, similar in concept to the Drachenflieger, but made of ‘‘light steel and cane and chemical silk’’; it also had a transverse engine and a flapping side-wing, and it was armed with a gun that fired explosive bul11 lets loaded with oxygen. Yet, in obedience to the Bushido tradition, all the Japanese pilots also carried swords. The Niaio prove to be much more stable in flight than the Drachenflieger, and are much more numerous and maneuverable than the bulkier Western airships. Whereas the former are fish-shaped, the latter have the form of a stingray, and so slice through the air much more efficiently. The Asiatics sweep all before them, destroying everything and conquering nothing, until the secret flying machine of the mysterious inventor, Mr. Butteridge, is put into production, and sent skyward. Ironically, these machines make the war in the air more destructive, but also more indecisive. Some 30 years later, the war is still being carried on in places because, as Smallways’ son Tom explains, no one is able or willing to stop it. Civilization lies in ruins. Humanity has been reduced to tiny clusters of tribes and family clans, where mortality is high and the first priority is survival. Education and culture are long-forgotten luxuries. And so the story ends, with humanity returning to a primitive state. Wells’War in the Air posits three interesting but not altogether tenable characteristics of aerial warfare. First, as demonstrated in the case of the German attack on New York, the airships could lay waste to but not govern the areas beneath them. This peculiarity gives rise to the perpetration of violent atrocities, and eventually to broad social and economic disintegration. Second, aerial combat itself is indecisive. Unless one’s aircraft could obtain an advantage in altitude, or gain hold of the enemy flying machines with grappling hooks and board them for hand-to-hand

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fighting, aerial combats would prove costly to both sides, but ultimately inconclusive. Consequently, air-fleet commanders would endeavor to avoid air combats in favor of trying to achieve psychological victories by bombarding the foe’s major cities. Third, because both sides were open to punitive attack on the ground, aerial warfare was wholly indecisive. As Wells explained: . . .it was impossible to end a war by any of the established methods. A having outnumbered and overwhelmed B, hovers, a thousand airships strong, over his capital, threatening to bombard it unless B submits. B replies by wireless telegraphy that he is now in the act of bombarding the chief manufacturing city of A by means of three raider airships. A denounces B’s raiders as pirates and so forth, bombards B’s capital and sets off to hunt down B’s airships, while B in a state of passionate emotion and heroic unconquerableness, sets to work amidst his ruins, making fresh airships and explosives for the benefit of A. The war became perforce a universal guerilla war, a war inextricably involving civilians and all the apparatus of social life. These aspects of aerial fighting took the world by surprise. Mechanical 12 invention moved faster than intellectual and social organization.

In other words, the pace of technological change proved too rapid for the untrained human mind to forecast the second- and third-order effects of its inventions and innovations, and for society to adjust to those effects. This theme is similar to that of ‘‘A Tale of the Twentieth Century,’’ a very early and somewhat humorous story Wells published in 1887, which essentially shows how the imperfect or premature translation of an imagi13 native idea into a machine can result in disaster. Still, the message in War in the Air is eminently bleaker, where because of ignorance and vanity, humanity starts a war it cannot end. Wells was correct about the first characteristic of airpower—that it could kill but not govern. That quality is still evident today, as the recent war between Israel and the terrorist group Hezbollah (2006) illustrates 14 only too clearly. Curiously, as prescient as Wells was, he did not entertain the idea of airships capable of carrying paratroopers, even though as his story, ‘‘The Flying Man,’’ (1895) reveals, he was certainly aware of the 15 potential of parachutes. Some of the massive airships, instead of carrying tons of bombs, could have been designed to transport paratroopers, which would certainly occur in the Second World War. Interestingly, although invasion by air was a common theme in the war fiction of the day, few of the stories considered combat soldiers parachuting from the skies. An illustration in Punch magazine even lampooned the idea of aerial invasion,

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depicting it as impractical because the number of aircraft required to carry infantry units, considering a capacity of one soldier per plane, would have been astronomical. Aircraft would not only have filled the skies, they would have covered virtually every field and meadow capable of serving as a landing zone. Not only did Wells not entertain the possibility of airborne troopers, he did not consider the possibility of joint air-land attacks, which would have brought into play the capability of governing a conquered area. Presumably this oversight was because, if airpower made naval power obsolete, it rendered land power outmoded as well. Yet this was not true. As the twentieth century would show, aircraft capabilities and anti-aircraft weapons would co-evolve. As regards the second characteristic of air warfare—that aerial combat would prove costly but indecisive—Wells was also far from the mark. While one might manufacture flying machines relatively cheaply and quickly, it took much longer to train competent pilots. Moreover, as the First and Second World wars would show, air-fleet commanders often went directly for an opponent’s air power rather than seeking to avoid it, in an effort to establish air superiority, even if only locally. Thus, air combats would continue to occur, even as bombing campaigns increased. Finally, Wells was at least partially correct about the third characteristic of future air war—the indecisiveness of bombing an opponent’s major population centers. The Germans bombed London during the first World War, but aside from instilling temporary panic, achieved no decisive effect. Even the London blitz of 1940 succeeded in strengthening rather than weakening British morale. However, the bombing of industrial centers did hamper production, a factor that Wells did not address. Wells’ narrative of the air war and its waves of aftershocks is clearly reminiscent of the forebodings of Bloch: global war disrupts international trade, causes the inflation of paper currency, collapses stock markets, topples governments, and triggers social and political uprisings, universally. Panic, famine, and pestilence follow quickly, one after the other. Yet, as with Bloch, Wells’ chain of causality is too one-sided. The London blitz, for instance, as devastating as it was, did not lead to social uprisings or the collapse of political authority in Britain. Nor did the bombing of Berlin and Tokyo actually topple the governments of Germany and Japan. Wells’ War in the Air was nonetheless an effective argument against the view that airpower would provide a quick and easy path to victory. Across the channel, the prescient imagination of Albert Robida had already beaten that of Griffith and Wells to the punch by more than a decade. Robida’s aircraft, in comparison to Wells’, appeared much more like speedy darts or rocket ships. The E´pervier, which was driven by an electric

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propeller, looked very much like a dragon torso suspended from a cigarshaped balloon. The illustration of the E´pervier bears a remarkable resemblance to the electrically powered airship flown by French aeronauts Charles Renard and Arthur Krebs in 1884 (see La France illustration), 16 the year before War in the Twentieth Century was written. Robida’s craft was armed with several cannons of various calibers, could drop bombs of assorted capabilities and weights, and carried a crew of a score or so. Smaller single and dual-seated fighters also filled the skies, zipping to and fro, engaging other aircraft with their guns, or ramming them. All of Robida’s aircraft were capable of great speeds, and yet, perhaps in defiance of the laws of physics, were agile enough to be able to dive and to climb quickly. In Robida’s future world, airpower was not invincible; it was merely a complement to land and naval forces. Ground fire could knock one of the great darts out of the sky, just as the darts themselves could blanket and area with gas or chemicals, or blaze away at a Blockhaus Roulant with their onboard guns. No nation or alliance appeared to have a technological edge over the others. Technology was not the decisive factor in the combats of the future, but rather pluck and luck were. Fortune, of course, favored the French; after all, it had given them that fearless and indomitable weapon, Molinas! Robida’s future wars, unlike those of Wells or Bloch or Angell, did not threaten the economic or social existence of the world. Instead, wars were expected, and taken in stride. They began for perhaps the flimsiest of reasons, and ended with almost whimsical treaties. Regardless of the devastation and destruction left in their wakes, life went on much as it had before. War was an episode in the history of humanity, not the final chapter. Of course, Robida’s War in the Twentieth Century was written before the works of Wells, Bloch, and Angell, that is, before the seeds of general foreboding of the future had ripened. We can only wonder whether Robida would have seen the future differently had he written two decades later. As it turned out, his vision, though shaped by an earlier time, proved more accurate than that of Wells or Griffith. Frederick Austin (1885–1941), who would later serve in the British infantry during the war, brought the aforementioned lofty visions down to earth a bit. In 1913, he published the short story ‘‘Planes!’’ in the vol17 ume In Action: Studies in War. The story drove home the tactical significance of airplanes for the general reader, though the problems of arming aircraft had not yet been solved. In the story, a relatively small number of airplanes strafes a large infantry formation moving into defensive positions, causing panic. The infantry soldiers cannot return fire effectively against the high-flying aircraft, and begin to flee, leaving their positions

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for the opposing infantry to occupy. The story pointed up a major concern of military professionals of all brands. However, it downplayed the protection soldiers could experience in properly dug-in positions, as well as the effectiveness of anti-aircraft fire. Trenches would, indeed, provide quite a bit of protection, and anti-aircraft weapons and other countermeasures would reduce the tactical effectiveness of aircraft during the Great War itself. RISING EXPECTATIONS Military critics and theorists attempting to understand the potential of aircraft can hardly be said to have suffered from a lack of imagination. In fact, that was the least of their deficiencies. The military mind had no difficulty grasping the scouting value of balloons and other lighter-than-air vessels. After all, such contraptions had already been used in that role, though with spotty success, from the eighteenth through the nineteenth centuries. The question now was whether the long-awaited ‘‘conquest of the air,’’ if indeed it came, would bring about anything new in terms of military capabilities. Could flying-machines become a combat weapon? The problem was that progress in aviation proceeded in fits and starts, rather than in straight line. To some, it seemed to crawl rather than to run. The advent of electrically-driven propellers in the early 1880s, for instance, gave lighter-than-air vessels better speed, and raised expectations 18 of further progress. Yet, little of note occurred for almost a decade. As one German officer complained in 1886, aeronautics had achieved but a ‘‘scarcely anticipated significance’’ compared with advances in telegraphy, 19 railroads, and electricity. Count Zeppelin’s successful flight of a rigid airship in 1900 and the Wright brothers’ triumph with a heavier-than-air aircraft three years later rekindled public enthusiasm. Speculation returned with a vengeance, and justifiably so. Between 1905 and 1913, one aeronautical record after another was set, and broken. One such record was established by the French aviation pioneer Louis Ble´riot (1872–1936), who crossed the English Channel in 37 minutes with his model XI monoplane in July of 1909. His success prompted a number of governments to submit purchase requests for the model XI, many of which would see service in the Great War. In 1910, one young American officer reported, aptly, that ‘‘one achievement is hardly recorded which in itself upsets previous calculations 20 than another is announced that makes changes again necessary.’’ In the same year, Colonel John Wisser, U.S. military attache´ in Berlin, echoed a broader sentiment: ‘‘The conquest of the air by the invention of dirigible

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balloons and flying machines’’ was not only the ‘‘greatest invention and discovery of the century’’ but also a matter of ‘‘vital importance to the 21 military world.’’ By 1911, some 53 airship clubs existed in Germany alone, a testament to the public’s growing interest in the ‘‘last’’ frontier. Despite this enthusiasm, aircraft inventors and manufacturers struggled to meet military specifications. Parliaments and war ministries, responsible for prioritizing competing fiscal requirements, were understandably reluctant to risk already restricted budgets on vehicles that might not provide an edge. The costs of training and equipping large field armies, building fortifications, procuring artillery, purchasing submarines, and participating in the dreadnought race were already daunting. Still, military theorists and practitioners displayed keen interest in air vehicles, even if their bureaucratic counterparts in the procurement business moved more deliberately. Even German veterans of the 1870–71 war with France, such as Schlieffen and Blume, whom by some standards might be considered to have been a bit long in the tooth, recognized the military value of aircraft, particularly for reconnaissance. They wrote that airborne observers could detect troops on the reverse slopes of mountains, hills, and behind buildings and other structures, thus giving field commanders a ‘‘quick overview’’ of the enemy’s dispositions; vertical observation would also reveal trench lines and staging positions that 22 might appear invisible to horizontal observation. Schlieffen opined that the Reich’s aeronauts would first have to subdue the enemy’s airships, probably with incendiary bombs, before reliable intelligence could be 23 obtained. Other officers involved in the development of German aviation seconded that view, advising that ‘‘it will not be possible to operate in the air without weapons. Every reconnaissance flight will result in an encoun24 ter with enemy aircraft.’’ Yet, other military practitioners had set their sights still higher, beyond reconnaissance to terror bombing. Alfred von Tirpitz, chief of the German navy, and Helmuth von Moltke, chief of staff of the army, both considered the long-range bombing potential of airships to be excellent, if the vessels could be made more reliable. Both, however, were also concerned about the psychological repercussions of bombing civilians, as the moral back25 lash might undo any gains such attacks achieved. Between 1908 and 1909, while London’s Zeppelinitis was in full swing, Major Bannerman-Phillips, Britain’s foremost military commentator on aviation matters, warned his countrymen not to be unduly ‘‘influenced by the irresponsible utterances of chauvinists, enthusiasts, and panic mongers.’’ Airships were, indeed, ‘‘a monument of human ingenuity, but not 26 yet a reliable engine of war.’’ He was largely correct. By 1910, German

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field tests had shown that airships were vulnerable to fire from howitzers and anti-balloon guns, and that high winds and bad weather still posed 27 insuperable problems. Yet, Britain’s political officials had been much more nonchalant, even dismissive, than its citizenry had a right to expect. When Ble´riot crossed the English Channel in a mere 37 minutes, Britain’s officials were publicly embarrassed. The world was still very far from Wells’ fantasy of endless war, but the British Isles were now within quick striking distance of the Continent. In July 1910, British military critic Charles a` Court Repington, never one to shy away from exposing negligence or lassitude, endeavored to lay down the facts about the threat from the air, such as they were known. He thus followed his previous article on the ‘‘Submarine Menace’’ with 28 another essay entitled ‘‘The Airship Menace.’’ ‘‘Skepticism respecting the utility of airships in war,’’ Repington warned, ‘‘is not an attitude that 29 can be justified any longer.’’ He correctly pointed out that what the airship could do at present might be far less than what it could accomplish within the next few years; thus, both present and potential capabilities had to be taken into account, particularly in an age that had seen unheard of technological advances. He accurately reported that current models of the Zeppelin could range to 800 miles with 1,500 expected in the near future, could rise to 5,600 feet, and could attain a speed of 30 knots (though these numbers were nearly surpassed by the time they were printed). As he wrote: ‘‘on calm days and in moderate winds the arrival of German dirigibles above some of our seaports and a part of our territory must be anticipated in time of war.’’ The airplane, by comparison, had a range of 150 miles, could rise to 4,000 feet, and had a speed of about 30 knots; it would, he opined, prove invaluable for tactical reconnaissance, where the airship’s principal roles were strategic reconnaissance facilitated by ‘‘wireless telegraphy,’’ and long-range bombing. He stressed the importance of the last role, criticizing Punch magazine’s lampooning of the likely accuracy of such bombing, since tests have shown that ‘‘50 percent of projectiles dropped from a height of 4500 feet can be made to fall within a square with sides of 25 yards.’’ He pointed out, however, that it would not ‘‘profit the cause of Germany in the least to bombard London or Edinburgh,’’ as such actions ‘‘would only infuriate 30 our people, and make them ready for every sacrifice.’’ On that point he would prove correct: the Germans would bombard London in an effort to drive Britain out of the war, but the bombing, though it caused panic for a time, did not achieve its purpose. In fact, all told, some 54 airship bombing missions were undertaken between 1915 and 1918, resulting in

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hundreds of casualties. Yet, Britain’s will to fight was not broken. He also predicted that airships would not have the carrying capacity to transport the numbers of troops and weapons necessary to launch an airborne invasion of Britain. Like Wells and Griffith, Repington saw air power as eclipsing naval power, unless appropriate countermeasures were taken. He criticized the Admiralty (one of his favorite targets) for leaving Britain’s naval warships vulnerable to attack by German airships: ‘‘every warship 32 that floats should have an anti-airship armament.’’ Repington also believed the airship could prove an effective countermeasure to the submarine menace, playing the part of ‘‘the gull to the submarine fish.’’ An aircraft had a very good chance of spotting a submarine without itself being spotted. He also predicted that before long navies would develop ‘‘parent ships for aeroplanes’’; in other words, they would build aircraft carriers capable of providing them air cover while at sea. Since aircraft cannot remain in the air in the same way the armies occupy land, and ships can remain at sea, he cautioned that command of the air really meant ‘‘superiority in power to wage war in the air.’’ Finally, like Guilio Douhet (1869–1930), who would publish his influential, if controversial, Command of the Air in 1921, Repington argued that the air service should remain a ‘‘single family,’’ a separate arm, with the mission of pro33 viding ‘‘safe navigation of the air.’’ Repington’s advice did not go entirely unheeded. In 1912, British army maneuvers featured organized aerial reconnaissance. Yet these efforts were well behind those of the French and Germans, each of whom conducted their first air-ground maneuvers in 1910. Among other things, the French and German maneuvers clearly underscored the limitations of airships, as in each case the weather severely limited the use of dirigibles. Hence, the Reich’s interest in the expensive airships, one of which cost about the same as 100 airplanes, began to cool, even though the public’s ‘‘Zeppelin craze’’ was only heating up. Instead, airplanes, which were in many ways the natural enemy of airships, fared much better. One French general remarked that airplanes had proven themselves to be as ‘‘indispensable to armies as cannon and rifles.’’ Another noted that aircraft performed 34 ‘‘beyond any hopes that could have been conceived.’’ Since airplanes seemed to offer greater military potential, investment began to shift in that direction after 1910, even for the Germans, who had already sunk quite large sums of money into dirigibles. While bureaucracies are universally detested for their inefficiency, moving deliberately rather than swiftly sometimes has its merits. The problems of mounting weapons on airplanes were not fully solved until 1914. Still, by the time the war broke out, Germany and France

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possessed the most advanced air arms. The former had over 230 airplanes assigned to the army and another 39 to the navy, while the latter mustered about 132 airplanes total. The Great Powers had, thus, invested heavily in the new air wars, even though the air weapons themselves were far from mature.

Conclusion To predict the future we need logic; but we also need faith and imagination which can sometimes defy logic itself. Arthur C. Clarke, ‘‘Hazards of Prophecy,’’ 1972

1

Famed futurist and science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke might have done well to suggest in what proportion logic, faith, and imagination should exist in predicting the future. The era before 1914 had an abundance of faith and imagination, but its logic was driven by the need to persuade or to impress rather than the desire to be accurate. If it is possible to have too much imagination, or too much faith, or even too much faith in imagination, the period before 1914 was without par. Yet, this era was also exceptional for what Clarke has called ‘‘failure of imagination’’ as well as ‘‘failure of nerve.’’ The two clearly went hand-in-hand. When the Great War broke out, it seemed more like a war of the present than of the future. In fact, it had come much too soon, and was far too imperfect to fit the scenarios conjured by the period’s vivid imaginaries. Much of the war’s weaponry and machinery—airplanes and submarines, for instance—were still manifestly immature. Had the war come 10 or 12 years later, those technologies and others would have been further along. The war’s untimely arrival was, thus, premature, coming before aircraft were capable of dropping enough bombs to bring major cities to their knees, before submarine attacks could strangle the economies of nations, and before armored vehicles could advance deeply and rapidly enough to paralyze opposing armies. These capabilities belonged to an ideal future war. There, faith and imagination would hold much more sway than logic.

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Even four years of bitter fighting, always a powerful stimulus, could not propel technological development to the point reflected in the bulk of scientific romances written in the decades before 1914. Those romances tended to portray new machines as nearly perfect in form. The weapons of the future might be awkward, obsolete, or even comical, but fiction writers described them as if they had already come of age. The land ironclads of H.G. Wells—which would have been impractical, indeed impossible, to maneuver on any battlefield—were depicted as if they had reached the pinnacle of mechanical development. They had gone beyond state-of-the-art to perfection. They were, in short, mechanical marvels. In reality, though, the tragedies of the Great War were exacerbated by an abundance of nascent technologies; each held promise, but each also was held back by a lack of supporting technologies, or thwarted by the simplest countermeasures. The early tanks, unlike Wells’ ironclads, were susceptible to mechanical breakdowns, and vulnerable to artillery fire. The actual weapons of the Great War thus resembled the imperfect present more than an ideal future. Beyond a doubt, the pace and breadth of change between 1880 and 1914 fired every writer’s imagination, whether optimist or pessimist. All things seemed possible, even the bleakest of forecasts. Dark futures and bright ones competed with one another. The era generally put its faith in the latter, a faith that remained intact until the full extent of the Great War’s ruinous effects became known. The number of dead and wounded exceeded the expectations of pessimists, who predicted the next ‘‘great war’’ would be the bloodiest of all; yet, the war also fell short of the hopes of optimists, who thought it would give birth to a new morality centered on peace. The war nearly eliminated a generation, but it failed to produce a morally transformed society. Yet, for all the stimulation to their imaginations, neither optimists nor pessimists could claim to have foreseen just how the Great War would unfold. Here, then, was the failure of imagination. The visions of Ivan Bloch and Norman Angell have received praise for predicting the economic crises brought about, at least in part, by the war. However, the fact that the Entente and the United States could continue to produce tons of weapons, including warships, aircraft, and tanks, right up to the end of the war undermines their arguments. Both Bloch and Angell underestimated the extent to which states would push their populations to achieve victory, and how difficult it would be to arrive at a negotiated peace as a belligerent’s casualties climbed into the hundreds of thousands and beyond. Conservative parties put tremendous pressure on political leaders to achieve something to justify the war’s ‘‘blood loss.’’ This irrational

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dynamic, described many years ago by the Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831), both complicated and prolonged the war. Still, as the chapters in this book have shown, neither optimists nor pessimists were entirely wrong about the Great War either. One can find many similarities between actual events and the basic ideas these writers expressed about the causes of the conflict, its outcome, and even the weapons and tactics employed. After all, the sheer number of future wars that had been created for public consumption ensured that at least some imaginative notions would come close, albeit inadvertently, to what actually happened between 1914 and 1918. Admiral Colomb’s, Great War of 189-, though written two decades before the real Great War, came very close to predicting how the political alliances of the era would establish the opposing sides, and how the volatile political conditions of the period would cause the chain of events that ultimately resulted in war. Unfortunately, while coincidences might provide food for thought, they offer no real basis for formulating strategy or building military forces. In truth, though, predicting the nature and conduct of the Great War was not what the era’s optimists and pessimists actually set out to do, at least not primarily. Rising literacy rates and the advent of mass politics meant not only more readers, but more voting readers. A pointed story or essay, if well timed, might arouse public interest and instigate a call for a change in policy. That was the goal, more often than not. In an era of entrenched ideologies and rabid nationalism, warning the public was regarded as something of a civic, if not a patriotic, duty. Monetary compensation was considered just reward for fulfilling one’s duty. Describing future wars was, again, a means, not an end. This attitude is apparent even in genres as disparate as scientific romance and professional military literature. Science fiction writers, while visionary in many respects, were less interested in getting the next war right than in entertaining their readers, as in the case of Robida, or steering a course for the broader improvement of humanity, as Wells attempted to do. No doubt, their ideas and styles were partly driven by market forces, the need to stay competitive with other writers of the same genre, and indeed, if possible, to outsell them. For that, one needed to use the proper bait and hooks. But certainly Wells, and to a lesser extent even Robida, had higher motives. The former wanted to see the scientific approach given more sway in the structure and organization of politics and society. The latter appeared to want society to take itself less seriously, to embrace its lighter aspects. For each visionary, the future provided the perfect context for advancing his agenda.

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Military writers, though often more imaginative than given credit for, generally stayed closer to what was possible. Their writings focused primarily on the immediate future in an attempt to solve specific problems, usually of a tactical or technological nature. The theories of Goltz and Schlieffen offered viable, if imperfect, solutions to crossing the everexpanding deadly zone. The coordination of fire and movement was the key, and still is. Naval theorists such as Mahan tried to develop fundamental principles governing sea power, while others attempted to address the threats posed by aircraft and submarines, and to balance both the composition and role of modern fleets. Aviation theorists attacked the future with gusto, asserting that the era’s latest invention had launched a totally new form of war, for which no nation as yet was quite prepared. To Tirpitz and Moltke, terrorizing populations appeared to offer war-winning potential, if only such patently immoral actions would not backfire. Others, like Repington and Scott, celebrated the potential of airpower because of its ability to strike shipyards, battleships, supply depots, fortifications, and troop concentrations—if only airships and airplanes could carry the loads necessary, and over the distances required. It is important to note here that this book began by deliberately establishing something of a false dichotomy. It divided military and civilian writers into separate groups, as if the two did not share some of the same characteristics, and did not interact much. In fact, some gifted and influential writers, such as Erskine Childers, entered active service for a brief time, left it, returned, and finally left it again. His Riddle of the Sands was written while he was out of service, but is very military in its point of view. Should it be considered the work of a military mind? Other military writers held reserve commissions and served only on a part-time basis, when duty called. Were such writers more civilian or military in their outlooks? Many of the more renowned German military writers, such as Schlieffen, produced their most famous (or infamous) works while they were retired from service or on a semi-active status. Surely we would not classify them as civilian writers on that account, but it is equally certain they no longer felt obligated to tow the party line. Military writers also wrote for many of the same outlets as their civilian counterparts, and often for the same reasons, to inform the public and to make money, though not always in that order. Admiral Colomb’s Great War of 189-, which he co-edited with the illustrious civilian war correspondent Archibald Forbes, and distinguished army officers F.N. Maude, and Frederick Maurice, is a perfect example. Even those officers who were not active writers themselves sometimes served as consultants for civilian authors, or as reviewers for major magazine and book editors. British

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officer Ernest Swinton reviewed several stories for Blackwood’s Magazine, and published a few of his own in the same periodical. In this way, he and other officers influenced some of the speculative fiction that appeared before 1914. So the line between military and civilian writers was not always distinct, and sometimes individuals from each group colluded on the same projects. One should not make too much of these examples, however. Authors in each group did indeed share ideas or steal them from each other, and even collude on projects. Yet, when we look at the types of literature as a whole rather than the individual authors, we do see that military literature was, in fact, much more conservative than its civilian counterpart. That should not be surprising. Military literature, in general, had a more immediate focus, and it still does. It was concerned with solving immediate problems, and that was the primary reason military readers turned to it. They wanted to see the latest contributions to the debates of the day: whether artillery should be heavier or more mobile, whether cavalry should be relegated to reconnaissance roles, whether junior officers and noncommissioned officers should be given more responsibility, and so on. Answers to these questions could affect the careers of professional soldiers of all branches. However, civilian literature also had its conservative side, focusing on immediate political and public issues as well. Popular items included selection of personnel for military service, national budgets and military spending, and defense preparedness, among others. It is likely that the debates themselves enriched and enlivened both military and civilian literature. Surely the vast technological, economic, social, and political changes sweeping across Western society were an important source of inspiration for the era’s imagination. Yet the presence of venues in which to respond to change, to comment and debate, were no less significant. Without them, we would have little record of what was thought, and why. Once again, self interest proved a powerful motive in the expansion of Western society’s imagination. Competition was beneficial. Many of the ideas it inspired might have been too imaginative to have any practical value. Still, the process of thinking creatively, however it is stimulated, is valuable in its own right. At the same time, the debates of the day, whether engaged in by specialists or amateurs, inevitably confined the playing field of the imagination. It is not how big, but how persuasive one’s ideas are that matters in the end. Faith and imagination will likely exist in sufficient measure. However, the special logic that is driven by the need to be accurate may be the rarest and most important ingredient of all.

Notes INTRODUCTION 1. David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Ernest C. Mossner, ed., (New York: Penguin, 1978), Book I, Of the Understanding, sec. ii, p. 81. Hume (1711-76) was a Scottish philosopher who also was respected as an historian and an economist; his philosophical writings were undeniably skeptical, and undermined assumptions about the linkages between knowing and perceiving. 2. Richard Ohmann, Selling Culture: Magazines, Markets, and Class at the Turn of the Century (London: Verso, 1996), 62-80. It was also called the age of mass politics, mass culture, mass society, mass media, mass consumerism, and, perhaps most significantly, mass nervousness; see Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., ‘‘Fin de sie´cle: Industrial Transformation,’’ and Patrick Brantlinger, ‘‘Mass Media and Culture in fin-de-sie´cle Europe,’’ in Mikula´s Teich and Roy Porter, eds.,Fin de sie`cle and its Legacy (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1990), 28-41, and 9899, respectively; Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space 1880-1918 (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1983), 110-13; J. Walvin, Leisure and Society, 18301950 (London: Longman, 1978), 93; and Carlton J.H. Hayes, A Generation of Materialism, 1871-1900 (New York: Harper, 1963), 123-44. 3. Melvin Kranzberg and Carroll W. Pursell, Jr., eds., Technology in Western Civilization: Technology in the Twentieth Century, vol. 2, (New York: Oxford University, 1967). 4. Arthur C. Clarke, ‘‘Hazards of Prophecy,’’ in The Futurists, ed. Alvin Toffler, (New York: Random House, 1972), 144. 5. Clarke, ‘‘Hazards of Prophecy,’’ 135; it should be noted that Newcomb was not wholly opposed to the idea of creating a ‘‘flying machine,’’ only how soon it would actually occur. Self-taught and intellectually gifted in many fields,

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Newcomb was appointed professor of mathematics in the United States Navy in 1861, and in 1877, became senior professor of mathematics in the United States Navy, with the relative rank of captain; he retired at a rank equivalent to rear admiral. Alfred E. Moyer, A Scientist’s Voice in American Culture: Simon Newcomb and the Rhetoric of Scientific Method (Berkeley: University of California, 1992). 6. Clarke, ‘‘Hazards of Prophecy,’’ 135-36. 7. Clarke, ‘‘Hazards of Prophecy,’’ 135-36. 8. Compare: Alfred Vagts, A History of Militarism (New York: Free Press, 1967), 213-24; J. F. C. Fuller, A Military History of the Western World, 3 vols. (New York: De Capo, 1956), vol. 3, 185; Theodore Ropp, War in the Modern World (Durham: Duke University, 1959), esp. 204; Archer Jones, The Art of War in the Western World (Oxford: Oxford University, 1987), esp. 421. John Ellis, The Social History of the Machine Gun (New York: Pantheon, 1976), 50-51; Edward L. Katzenbach, Jr., ‘‘The Mechanization of War, 1880-1919,’’ inTechnology in Western Civilization, 549-52; I. F. Clarke, Voices Prophesying War, 17631984 (London: Oxford University, 1966), 89-90.

CHAPTER 1 1. ‘‘Mark Twain’’ was the pseudonym of the American novelist and writer Samuel L. Clemens (1835-1910). R. Kent Rasmussen, Mark Twain A–Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Writings (New York: Oxford University, 1996). 2. The H.M.S. Dreadnought was launched in December 19067. Robert K. Massie, Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War (New York: Ballantine, 1991). 3. In Germany and the U.S., steel production started from a smaller base, and so increases were more dramatic. S. B. Clough, The Economic Development of Western Civilization (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959), 377, 385; W.O. Henderson, The Rise of German Industrial Power, 1834–1914 (Berkeley: University of California, 1975), 161–65, 173–97, 233–34. 4. E. J. Knapton and T. K. Derry, Europe 1815–1914 (New York: Scribner’s 1965), 284. 5. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, Part 1, (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce, 1975), 224; European Historical Statistics, 818–26. 6. Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500–2000 (New York: Random House, 1987), 199. 7. Felix Gilbert, The End of the European Era: 1890 to the Present, 3rd Ed. (New York: Norton, 1985), 5. 8. Giles MacDonogh, Berlin: A Portrait of Its History, Politics, Architecture, and Society (New York: St. Martin’s, 1997), 109–14. 9. Historical Statistics of the United States, 382, 370; the percentages do not include private school attendance.

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10. B.R. Mitchell, European Historical Statistics 1750-1975 (London: Butler & Tanner, 1980), 795. 11. John H. Girdner, Newyorkitis (New York: Grafton, 1901), 41, 159; Frederick Peterson, M.D., ‘‘The Newspaper Peril: A Diagnosis of a Malady of the Modern Mind,’’ CNW 37, no. 23 (September 1, 1906): 12–13. The nervousness thesis was also extended to a number of ‘‘vices’’; see Dr. L. Bremer, Tobacco, Insanity and Nervousness (St. Louis: Meyer Bros., 1892). 12. Walvin, Leisure and Society, 93; Kern, Culture of Time and Space, 110–13; I. de Sola Pool, ed., The Social Impact of the Telephone (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1977), 209–11; Ohmann, Selling Culture, 62–80; Brantlinger, ‘‘Mass Media,’’ 102. 13 Brian Stableford, ‘‘The Emergence of Science Fiction, 1516–1914,’’ in Anatomy of Wonder: A Critical Guide to Science Fiction, 5th Ed., Neil Barron, ed. (Westport: Libraries Unlimited, 2004), 5. 14. Lawrence Lynch, Jules Verne (New York: Twayne, 1992). 15. Jerome Clark, The UFO Book: Encyclopedia of the Extraterrestrial (Detroit: Visible Ink, 1998). 16. Frank Whitford, Gustav Klimt (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1990). 17. Harold Bloom, ed., Ezra Pound (New York: Chelsea House, 1987). 18. Kenneth M. Roemer, The Obsolete Necessity: American Utopian Writings 1888-1900 (Kent, Ohio: 1976), 4; F.T. Marinetti, ‘‘The Founding Manifesto of Futurism’’ (1909), in Futurist Manifestos, ed. Umbro Apollonio (New York: Viking, 1973), 19-24; Asa Briggs, ‘‘Past, Present and Future in the Headlines,’’ in Asa Briggs and Daniel Snowman, eds., Fins de Sie`cle: How Centuries End 1400-2000, ed. Asa Briggs and Daniel Snowman (New Haven: Yale University, 1996), 157–196. 19. Kern, Culture of Space and Time, 99–101. 20. Norman Mailer, Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man: An Interpretive Biography (New York: Atlantic Monthly, 1995), 307–08. 21. Marvin Perry, An Intellectual History of Modern Europe (Boston: Houton Mifflin, 1993), 341. 22. George M. Beard, American Nervousness: Its Causes and Consequences (New York: Putnam’s, 1881). His credentials were impressive: a fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine and a member of the New York Academy of Sciences, the New York Neurological Society, and the American Neurological Association. 23. Beard, American Nervousness, vi–viii; emphasis original. Secondary and tertiary causes included ‘‘climate, institutions—civil, political, and religious, social and business—personal habits, indulgence of appetites and passions.’’ Specific causes of American nervousness were ‘‘dryness of the air, extremes of heat and cold, civil and religious liberty, and the great mental activity made necessary and possible in a new and productive country.’’ According to Beard’s theory, nervousness was a mark of distinction; it affected only ‘‘advanced’’ races, religions, and walks of life.

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24. Beard, American Nervousness, xiii. 25. Sir James Crichton-Browne, ‘‘La Vieillesse,’’ Revue scientifique 49 (1892): 168–78; Kern, Culture, 110–13; Tom Lutz, American Nervousness, 1903: An Anecdotal History (Ithaca: Cornell University, 1991), 3–7. 26. Gustave LeBon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1995), 34, emphasis original; Robert A. Nye, The Origins of Crowd Psychology: Gustave LeBon and the Crisis of Mass Democracy in the Third Republic (London: Sage, 1975); William McDougall, The Group Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1921); Sigmund Freud, Modern Sexuality and Modern Nervousness (New York: Critic, 1915). 27. Willy Hellpach, Nervosita¨t und Kultur (Berlin: J. Ra¨de, 1902), 12, 221ff; Walter Stallmeister and Helmuth E. Lu¨ck, eds., Willy Hellpach: Beitra¨ge zu Werk und Biographie (Fankfurt a.M.: P. Lang, 1991). 28. Modris Eksteins, The Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age (New York: Doubleday, 1989), 72–73, 80. 29. Fritz Ringer, The Decline of the German Mandarins: The German Academic Community, 1890-1933 (London: Wesleyan University, 1990); Konrad H. Jarausch, Students, Society, and Politics in Imperial Germany: The Rise of Academic Illiberalism (Princeton: Princeton University, 1982), 78–159. 30. Lt. Gen. R.S.S. Baden-Powell, Scouting for Boys: A Handbook for Instruction in Good Citizenship (London: C. Arthur Pearson, 1908), 256. 31. Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of Germanic Ideology (Berkeley: University of California, 1974); Peter Fritzsche, Reading Berlin 1900 (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1998), 31–32.

CHAPTER 2 1. Letter to Georg Brandes from the Norwegian poet and playwright Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906); Ibsen’s plays challenged traditional nineteenth-century values, and hence he is considered by many to have founded modern drama. Toril Moi, Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism: Art, Theater, Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University, 2006). 2. Thomas Peyser, Utopia & Cosmopolis: Globalization in the Era of American Literary Realism (Durham: Duke University, 1998); Sylvia E. Bowman, Edward Bellamy (Boston: Twayne, 1986); Arthur E. Morgan, The Philosophy of Edward Bellamy (Westport: Greenwood, 1979). 3. Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward: 2000–1887, intro. Walter J. Miller (New York: Signet, 2000 ); R.L. Shurter, The Utopian Novel in America: 1865–1900 (New York: AMS, 1973), 177; Jean Pfaelzer, The Utopian Novel in America, 1886–1896: The Politics of Form (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University, 1984). 4. Ismar Thiusen [John Macnie], The Diothas or A Look Far Ahead (New York: Putnam, 1883); Laurence Gronlund, The Coo¨perative Commonwealth in

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its Outlines: An Exposition of Modern Socialism (New York: C. T. Dillingham, 1884). 5. Edward Bellamy, ‘‘With the Eyes Shut,’’ in The Blindman’s World and Other Stories (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1898). 6. Toby Widdicombe and Herman S. Preiser, eds., Revisiting the Legacy of Edward Bellamy (1850–1898), American Author and Social Reformer (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 2002). 7. Robert Cromie, A Plunge into Space (London: Warne, 1890); Chauncey Thomas, The Crystal Button, or, The Adventures of Paul Prognosis in the 25th Century (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1891); Gabriel Tarde, Underground Man (London: Duckworth, 1896); Godfrey Sweven, Riallaro: The Archipelago of Exiles (New York: Putnam, 1901); William H. Hudson, Green Mansions (London: Duckworth, 1904), his A Crystal Age (London: Unwin, 1887), similar in theme, was reprinted after the success of Bellamy’s work. These utopias are briefly summarized in Neil Barron, Anatomy of Wonder: A Critical Guide to Science Fiction, 5th Ed., (Westport: Libraries Unlimited, 2004). 8. William Morris, News from Nowhere, or, An Epoch of Rest: Being Some Chapters from a Utopian Romance, ed. by David Leopold (Oxford: Oxford University, 2003). 9. Cf. T.J. Jackson Lears, No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformation of American Culture, 1880–1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1994), 62. 10. Friedrich Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, trans. Edward Aveling, introd. by the author, (New York: C. Scribner, 1892). 11. August Bebel, Die Frau und der Sozialismus was first published in 1879, and went through numerous editions; Society of the Future (Moscow: Progress, 1971), is a chapter from Women and Socialism; see also Woman in Past, Present, and Future, trans. H.B. Adams Walther (New York: AMS, 1976). 12. B. V. Suttner, Die Waffen nieder! Eine Lebensgeschichte (Dresden: E. Pierson, 1889), it first appeared in English as Lay Down Your Arms: The Autobiography of Martha von Tilling (London: Longmans, 1892); Roger Chickering, Imperial Germany and a World Without War: The Peace Movement and German Society, 1892–1914 (Princeton: Princeton University, 1975), 89–94. See also the work of the Hamburg schoolteacher Wilhelm Lamszus, Das Menschenschlachthaus: Bilder vom kommenden Krieg (Hamburg: Alfred Janssen, 1913). 13. Irwin Abrams, ‘‘Bertha von Suttner and the Nobel Peace Prize,’’ Journal of Central European Affairs 22, no. 3, (1962): 286–307. 14. Bertha von Suttner, Das Maschinenzeitalter (Zu¨rich: Verlags-Magazin, 1891). 15. The work first appeared in Russian: I. S. Bliokh, Obshchie vyvody iz sochineniya ‘‘Budushchaya voina v teknicheskom, politicheskom I ekonomicheskom otnosheniyakh’’ I. S. Bliokh (St. Petersburg: Tipografiya I. Efrona, 1898); then in French as La Guerre Future (1898); in German as Der Krieg (1899–1901); and in English as The Future of War in Its technical, Economic, and Political Relations (1899), and the abridged, popular version: Is War Now Impossible? (1898).

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16. Norman Angell, Europe’s Optical Illusion (London: Simpkin, 1909); The Great Illusion: A Study of the Relation of Military Power in Nations to their Economic and Social Advantage (London: W. Heinemann, 1910). 17. J.D.B. Miller, Norman Angell and the Futility of War: Peace and the Public Mind (New York: St. Martin’s, 1986). 18. Gordon A. Craig, Theodor Fontane: Literature and History in the Bismarck Reich (Oxford: Oxford University, 1999); Joachim Remak, The Gentle Critic: Theodor Fontane and German Politics, 1848–1898 (Syracuse: Syracuse University, 1964). 19. Theodor Fontane, Irrungen, Wirrungen: Eine Berliner Alltagsgeschichte (Leipzig: F.W. Stevens, 1888); published in serial form in 1887. In English: Entanglements: An Everyday Berlin Story trans. by Derek Bowman (Bampton, Oxfordshire: Three Rivers, 1986). Theodor Fontane, Effi Briest (Berlin: Neues Leben, 1970); in English: Effi Briest, trans. by Hugh Rorrison and Helen Chambers (London: Angel, 1995). 20. Ignatius Donnelly, Caesar’s Column: A Story of the Twentieth Century (London: Schulte, 1890); Jack London, The Iron Heel (New York: Macmillan, 1907); H. G. Wells, When the Sleeper Wakes (New York: Harper, 1899). See Barron, Anatomy of Wonder. 21. Leacock taught political science at McGill University, and was a prolific author and a popular speaker; his Nonsense Novels (New York: John Lane, 1911), Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (New York: John Lane, 1912), and Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich (New York: John Lane, 1914), as well as biographies of Charles Dickens and Mark Twain, gained international recognition. The Stephen Leacock Medal for Humor was created in his honor, and has been awarded annually since 1947. Albert and Theresa Moritz, Stephen Leacock: His Remarkable Life (Allston, MA: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2002). 22. Stephen Leacock, ‘‘The Man in Asbestos: An Allegory of the Future,’’ in Nonsense Novels (London: John Lane, 1911), Part X. 23. C.v. der Goltz, Das Volk in Waffen. Ein Buch u¨ber Heerwesen und Kriegfu¨hrung unserer Zeit (Berlin: R.v. Decker, 1883). 24. E`mile Souvestre, An Attic Philosopher, trans. and intro. Joseph Bertrand; www.gutenberg.net. 25. E`mile Souvestre, The World as it Shall Be, trans. and intro. Margaret Clarke and I.F. Clarke (Middletown: Wesleyan University, 2004). 26. Souvestre, World as it Shall Be, xxiii. 27. Phillippe Willems, ‘‘A Stereoscopic Vision of the Future: Albert Robida’s Twentieth Century,’’ Science Fiction Studies 26, no. 3, (1999): 354–78. 28. See: Albert Robida, Voyages tre`s extraordinaires de Saturnin Farandoul dans les 5 ou 6 parties du monde et dans tous les pays connus et meˆme inconnus de Monsieur Jules Verne (The Very Extraordinary Voyages of Saturnin Farandoul in the 5 or 6 Parts of the World and in All the Known and Even Unknown Countries of Mr. Jules Verne) (Paris: Librairie Illustre´e, 1879). Cf. Willems, ‘‘Stereoscopic Vision,’’ 355.

Notes

107

29. Robert Hendrick, ‘‘Albert Robida’s Imperfect Future,’’ History Today 48, no. 7, (July 1998): 27–32; Albert Robida, The Twentieth Century, trans. and intro. Phillippe Willems, ed. Arthur B. Evans, (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University, 2004). 30. Albert Robida, La Guerre au vingtie` me sie` cle (Paris: Tallandier, 1991), portions were serialized in periodicals between 1869–87; and Le Vingtie`me sie`cle: La vie e´lectrique (Paris: La Librairie Illustre´e, 1891). 31. Harold Bloom, ed., H.G. Wells (Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2004); John Batchelor,H. G. Wells (New York: Cambridge University, 1985); W. Warren Wagar, H.G. Wells and the World State (New Haven: Yale University, 1961). 32. H. G. Wells, Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought (Edinburgh: Morrison & Gibb, 1901/02). 33. Wells, Anticipations, 1, n. 2; Clarke, Tales, 19; and Kern, Time and Space, 95. 34. Wells, Anticipations, 31–7, 110. 35. Wells, Anticipations, 108–10, 112, 114, 122. 36. Wells, Anticipations, 56, 59, 63. 37. Paul K. Alkon, Science Fiction Before 1900: Imagination Discovers Technology (New York: Twayne, 1994), 7.

CHAPTER 3 1. Cited in I. F. Clarke, The Pattern of Expectation 1644–2001 (New York: Basic Books, 1979), 203. E´mile Zola (1840–1902), an influential and prolific French writer, typically addressed issues of social change. The most famous of these was the Dreyfus Affair (1898), in which Zola accused the French government of anti-Semitism for wrongly convicting Captain Dreyfus of espionage. Zola was in turn convicted of libel by the government, but he fled to England. Dreyfus was later exonerated. 2. David Ascoli, A Day of Battle: Mars-la-Tour, August 16, 1870 (London: Harrap, 1987), 138. 3. Michael Howard, The Franco-Prussian War: The German Invasion of France, 1870–1871 (London: Routledge, 1989), 7 n. 4, 98–99. 4. Hans Linnenkohl, Vom Einzelschuß zur Feuerwalze: Der Wettlauf zwischen Technik und Taktik im Ersten Weltkrieg (Koblenz: Bernard and Graefe, 1990), 12–13. 5. Thomas Parkenham, The Boer War (New York: Random House, 1979), 252–65; Byron Farwell, The Great Anglo-Boer War (New York: Harper and Row, 1976); W. Baring Pemberton, Battles of the Boer War (London: B.T. Batsford, 1979), 79–145. 6. R.M. Connaughton, The War of the Rising Sun and Tumbling Bear: A Military History of the Russo-Japanese War (London: Routledge, 1988), 199–207; J.N. Westwood, Russia Against Japan, 1904–05: A New Look at the Russo-Japanese War

108

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(New York: State University of New York, 1986), 30–32, 96–102; Menning, Bayonets, 163, 168–69. 7. Menning, Bayonets before Bullets, 163–67. 8. Connaughton, War of Rising Sun, 201. 9. Menning, Bayonets before Bullets, 171. 10. Menning, Bayonets before Bullets, 179–83. 11. Lawrence Sondhaus, Navies of Europe, 1815–2002 (London: Longman, 2002), 85–105. 12. Massie, Dreadnought; Theodore Ropp, The Development of a Modern Navy (Annapolis: Naval Institute, 1987). 13. Thomas Parrish, The Submarine: A History (New York: Penguin, 2005). 14. Sondhaus, Navies of Europe, 124. 15. Donald Cardwell, The Norton History of Technology (New York: W.W. Norton, 1994), 385. 16. Peter M. Brooks, Zeppelin: Rigid Airships, 1893–1940 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian, 1992). 17. Charles Stephenson, Zeppelins: German Airships 1900–40 (Oxford: Osprey, 2005), 6. 18. Stephenson, Zeppelins, 39. 19. Guilluame de Syon, Zeppelin! Germany and the Airship 1900–1939 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 2002). 20. John H. Morrow, German Airpower in World War I (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1982), 7. 21. I. B. Holley, Jr., Ideas and Weapons (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1997), 29. 22. James S. Corum, The Luftwaffe: Creating the Operational Air War, 1918– 1940 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1994), 22–23. 23. Holley, Ideas and Weapons, 29.

CHAPTER 4 1. Norman Angell, The Great Illusion: A Study of the Relation of Military Power in Nations to their Economic and Social Advantage, 3rd Ed., (New York: Putnam’s, 1911), ix. 2. Jane Addams, Newer Ideals of Peace (New York: Macmillan, 1907), 210–11; despite the similarity in content, no reference to Suttner actually appears. 3. Norma Smith, Jeannette Rankin: America’s Conscience (Helena: Montana Historical Society, 2002). 4. Known as the First Hague Convention, signed in July 1899, and put into effect in September 1900, it banned the use of certain kinds of military technologies on land, at sea, and in the air. It was followed by a second convention signed in October 1907, and put into effect in January 1910, which updated the provisions of the 1899 convention. 5. Jane Addams cited is several times, in fact, in Newer Ideals of Peace.

Notes

109

6. Bloch, Future of War, xlix, 159, 340; and Bloch, ‘‘Die Fortschritte der Waffentechnik mu¨ssen die Kriege verschwinden lassen,’’ Deutsche Revue 26 (1901): 83–94, esp. 84, 87–89. 7. Bloch, ‘‘Wars of the Future,’’ 327; Bliokh, Obshchie vyvody, 112–13. Cf. Jacob Kipp, ‘‘Soldiers and Civilians Confronting Future War: Lev Tolstoy, Jan Bloch, and Their Russian Military Critics,’’ in Chiabotti, Tooling for War, 201. 8. J. Bloch, ‘‘The Wars of the Future,’’ Contemporary Review 80 (September 1901): 305–32; reprinted in Jean de Bloch: Selected Articles, ed. Col. Richard M. Swain (Fort Leavenworth, Kans.: U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 1993), 8–9; and Johann v. Bloch, ‘‘Die Lehren des Transvaalkrieges fu¨r Deutschland,’’ Deutsche Revue 26 (1901): 258–78, esp. 262–68. 9. Hans Delbru¨ ck, ‘‘Zukunftskrieg und Zukunftsfriede,’’ Preussische Jahrbu¨ cher 96 (1899): 208, 210. At the time of Delbru¨ ck’s review, only the abridged edition, Der Krieg der Zukunft (Berlin: Deutsches Verlagshaus, 1899), and the first, third, and sixth volumes of the work had been translated into German; the others would not improve this first impression. 10. Angell, Great Illusion, viii. 11. August Bebel, Nicht stehendes Heer, sondern Volkswehr!, intro. Claudia Koonz (New York: Garland, 1972). 12. Bebel, Nicht stehendes Heer, 8. 13. Nicholas Stargardt, The German Idea of Militarism: Radical and Socialist Critics 1866–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1994). 14. Manfred B. Steger, Quest for Revolutionary Socialism: Eduard Bernstein and Social Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1997). 15. A. J. Ayer, Bertrand Russell (London: Fontana, 1972); A. D. Irvine, ed., Bertrand Russell: Critical Assessments, 4 vols., (London: Routledge, 1999). 16. Col. F.N. Maude, War and the World’s Life (London: Smith, 1907); Earl Roberts, A Nation in Arms (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1907); Homer Lea, Valor of Ignorance (New York: Harper, 1909); for French views see Richard D. Challener, The French Theory of the Nation in Arms 1866–1939 (New York: Columbia University, 1955). 17. Goltz, Volk in Waffen, 46–47. 18. Letter to Professor Dr. Bluntschli, dated 11 December 1880. Moltke, Leben und Werk, 351. 19. Dereck S. Linton, ‘‘Preparing German Youth for War,’’ in Boemeke et al, Anticipating Total War, 167–88. 20. Lt. Gen. R.S.S. Baden-Powell, Scouting for Boys: A Handbook for Instruction in Good Citizenship (London: C. Arthur Pearson, 1908), 256. 21. C. Frhr. v.d. Goltz, ‘‘Der ewige Friede und der na¨chste Krieg,’’ Deutsche Revue 29 (February 1904): 129–37. 22. Bertha v. Suttner, ‘‘Der ewige Krieg und die Friedensbewegung,’’ Deutsche Revue 29 (July 1904): 18–23; Goltz, ‘‘Noch einmal der ‘ewige Friede,’’’ Deutsche Revue 29 (July 1904): 23–25.

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23. P. Colomb, et. al., The Great War of 189-: A Forecast (London: Heinemann, 1893); Cf. I.F. Clarke, Voices Prophesying War: Future Wars 1763–3749 (Oxford: Oxford University, 1992), 62–63; emphasis original. 24. George Griffith, The Angel of the Revolution: A Tale of the Coming Terror (Westport: Hyperion, 1974). 25. Edward Fawcett, Hartmann the Anarchist; or, The Doom of the Great City (New York: Arno, 1975). 26. William Le Queux, The Great War in England in 1897 (London: Tower Publishing, 1894). 27. William Le Queux, Invasion of 1910, with a Full Account of the Siege of London (London: Nash, 1906); A.J. Morris, The Scaremongers: The Advocacy of War and Rearmament 1896–1914 (London: Routledge, 1984). 28. Thomas M. Ellis, Zalma (London: Tower, 1895). 29. Matthew Shiel, The Yellow Danger (New York: Fenno, 1898). 30. H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds (London: Heinemann, 1898). 31. Many of these novels are summarized in Barron, Anatomy of Wonder, 89–466. 32. Erskine Childers, The Riddle of the Sands: a Record of Secret Service (London: Nelson, 1903); Childers, a veteran of the Boer War, also authored volume V of the Times’ History of the War in South Africa, 1899–1902 (London: S. Low, Marston, 1907), War and the Arme Blanche (London: E. Arnold, 1910), and the German Influence on British Cavalry (London: E. Arnold, 1911), all of which were critical of the British army. He served with distinction in the Royal Navy in the First World War, and later became involved in the Irish nationalist movement; he was executed by Irish Free State authorities in 1922. 33. Clarke, Next Great War, 251–56. 34. Clarke, Voices Prophesying War, 64. 35. Hendrick, ‘‘Robida’s Imperfect Future,’’ 27. 36. An English translation is available in I.F. Clarke, ed., The Tale of the Next Great War, 1871–1914: Fictions of Future Warfare and of Battles Still-to-come (Liverpool: Liverpool University, 1995), 95–112; plans are underway to produce a translation of the original work complete with illustrations. 37. Enoch Brater and Ruby Cohn, eds., Around the Absurd: Essays on Modern and Postmodern Drama (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1990). 38. Clarke, Next Great War, 100. 39. Robida here is lampooning the theories of the Austrian physician Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815), which were then all the rage in Paris. Cf. Clarke, Next Great War, 367. 40. T. H. E. Travers, ‘‘Future Warfare: H. G. Wells and British Military Theory, 1895–1916,’’ in War and Society (1975): 67–87. Edward M. Earle, ‘‘H. G. Wells, British Patriot in Search of a World State,’’ in Nationalism and Internationalism, ed E.M. Earle (New York: Columbia University, 1950). 41. Wells, Anticipations, 39, 68, 71, 74. 42. Wells, Anticipations, 76–7, 80.

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43. Compare: H.G. Wells, ‘‘The Land Ironclads,’’ (1903) in Selected Short Stories (New York: Penguin, 1988); H.G. Wells, ‘‘The Air War’’ (1908), and ‘‘When the Sleeper Awakes’’ (1899), and ‘‘The Coming of Ble´riot,’’ in The Works of H.G. Wells, Atlantic Ed., 28 vols., (New York: C. Scribner’s, 1924–27), vols. 22 and 20, respectively.

CHAPTER 5 1. Capt. C.E. Vickers, ‘‘The Trenches,’’ Blackwood’s Magazine (January 1908): 39–52. 2. Maj. Gerald Gilbert, The Evolution of Tactics (London: Hugh Rees, 1907), 178–79. 3. H. G. Wells, ‘‘The Land Ironclads,’’ The Strand Magazine 26 (December 1903): 501–13. 4. Wells, ‘‘Land Ironclads,’’ 501. 5. Wells, ‘‘Land Ironclads,’’ 501. 6. Wells, ‘‘Land Ironclads,’’ 505. 7. It had 8’’ of armor on the turret, 4.5’’ on the sides, and 2’’ on the deck. 8. J.P. Harris, Men, Ideas and Tanks (New York: Manchester, 1995), 7. 9. Harris, Men, Ideas and Tanks, 9. 10. Vickers, ‘‘Trenches,’’ 11. Charles E. Gannon, ‘‘American Dreams and Edwardian Aspirations: Technological Innovation and Temporal Uncertainty in Narratives of Expectation,’’ in Histories of the Future: Studies in Fact, Fantasy and Science Fiction, Alan Sandison and Robert Dingley, eds., (London: Palgrave, 2000), 93. 12. Maj. W.H.L. Watson, A Company of Tanks (Edinburg: Blackwood, 1920). 13. Goltz, Volk in Waffen, 211, 216–8. 14. Goltz, Volk in Waffen, 265, 294, 219. 15. Colomb, et al., Great War of 189-, 34–35. 16. Colomb, et al., Great War of 189-, 83–84. 17. Colomb, et al., Great War of 189-, 274. 18. Echevarria, After Clausewitz, 274ff. 19. Colomb, et al., Great War of 189-, 267. 20. Colomb, et al., Great War of 189-, 229. 21. Schlieffen, ‘‘Krieg der Gegenwart,’’ 13. 22. Schlieffen, ‘‘Krieg der Gegenwart,’’ 14.

CHAPTER 6 1. Wells, Anticipations, 62. 2. Colomb, et al., Great War of 189-, 162. 3. Capt. S. Eardley-Wilmot, The Next Naval War (London: Edward Stanford, 1894). 4. Eardley-Wilmot, Next Naval War, 44.

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5. Eardley-Wilmot, Next Naval War, 51–4. 6. George Griffith, ‘‘The Raid of Le Vengeur,’’ Pearson’s Magazine (February 1901): 158–68; it is faithfully reprinted in Clarke, Tale of the Next Great War, 193–209. 7. Walter Wood, ‘‘Submarined,’’ Pearson’s Magazine (February 1905); reprinted in Sam Moskowitz, ed., Science Fiction by Gaslight: A History of Science Fiction in the Popular Magazines, 1891–1911 (Cleveland: World Publishing, 1968), 232–238. 8. Wood, ‘‘Submarined,’’ 235. 9. Walter Wood, Famous British Warships and Their Commanders (London: Hurst & Blackett, 1891); The Battleship (London: K. Paul, French, Tribner, & Co., 1912). 10. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, ‘‘Danger! Being the Log of Captain John Sirius,’’ Strand Magazine (July 1914): 1–22; reprinted in Clarke, Tale of the Next Great War, 293–320. 11. Doyle, ‘‘Danger!’’ 1. 12. Clarke, Tale of the Next Great War, 375. 13. A. Nelson Seaforth, The Last Great Naval War: An Historical Retrospect (London: Cassell, 1891). 14. Seaforth, Last Great Naval War, 41. 15. Samuel Barton, The Battle of the Swash and the Capture of Canada (New York: Charles T. Dillingham, 1888). 16. Barton, Battle of the Swash, 69. 17. Barton, Battle of the Swash, 98. 18. Stochastic, The Stricken Nation (New York: C.T. Baker, 1890). 19. Childers, Riddle of the Sands, 107. 20. Childers, Riddle of the Sands, 107–08. 21. Childers, Riddle of the Sands, 108. 22. Childers, Riddle of the Sands, 85. 23. Robert Seager II, Alfred Thayer Mahan: The Man and His Letters (Annapolis: Naval Institute, 1977). 24. Philip Crowl, ‘‘Alfred Thayer Mahan,’’ The Naval Historian,’’ in Makers of Modern Strategy, 444–77. 25. The Influence of Seapower upon History, 1660–1783 26. Capt. Wayne P. Hughes, Jr., ‘‘Mahan, Tactics and Principles of Strategy,’’ The Influence of History on Mahan, John B. Hattendorf, ed., (Newport: U.S. Naval War College, 1991), 25–36. 27. James Goldrick and John B. Hattendorf, eds., Mahan is Not Enough: The Proceedings of a Conference on the Works of Sir Julian Corbett and Admiral Sir Herbert Richmond (Newport: U.S. Naval War College, 1993); Julian S. Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy (London: Longmans, Green, 1911). 28. Massie, Dreadnought; Nicholas A. Lambert, Sir John Fisher’s Naval Revolution (Columbia: University of South Carolina, 1999).

Notes

113

29. Col. a` Court Repington, ‘‘New Wars for Old. 1. The Submarine Menace,’’ Blackwood’s Magazine (June 1910): 893–900. Repington was commissioned 1878, and served in Afghanistan, Burma, the Sudan, and in the South African War of 1899–1902; he left active service in 1902 after his affair with a married woman became public, and became a correspondent for the Times, then the Morning Post, and finally The Daily Telegraph. He also wrote several books after the First World War, but his literary career remained marked with controversy and scandal.

CHAPTER 7 1. Riley E. Scott, ‘‘Can the Panama Canal Be Bombed from the Air?’’ Sunset (April 1914), 784. Cf. Lee Kennett, The First Air War 1914–1918 (New York: Free Press, 1991), 45. 2. Kennett, First Air War, 11. 3. Griffith, Angel of the Revolution, 141. 4. Carlo D’Este, Decision in Normandy (London: Pan, 1985), 402. 5. Wells, The War in the Air, 61. 6. Stephenson, Zeppelins, 43. 7. Wells, The War in the Air, 106. 8. H. G. Wells, ‘‘The Argonauts of the Air,’’ was originally published Phil May’s Annual (December 1895); reprinted in John Hammond, ed., The Complete Short Stories of H.G. Wells (London: Phoenix, 1998), 116–125, tells the story of two inventors who give all of their material wealth, and ultimately their lives, in an attempt to conquer the air. 9. Wells, The War in the Air, 109–10. 10. Wells, The War in the Air, 155. 11. Wells, The War in the Air, 167–8. 12. Wells, The War in the Air, 165. 13. H.G. Wells, ‘‘A Tale of the Twentieth Century,’’ Science Schools Journal (May 1887); Wells was editor of the journal at the time. 14. ‘‘Air Power: An Enduring Illusion,’’ The Economist (August 24, 2006), 20–21. 15. H.G. Wells, ‘‘The Flying Man,’’ was first published in Pall Mall Gazette (January 4, 1895); reprinted in Hammond, ed., Complete Short Stories of H. G. Wells, 42–47. 16. Douglas Botting, The Giant Airships (Alexandria, Va.: Time-Life, 1981), 22. 17. F. Britten Austin, In Action: Studies in War (London: Nelson, 1913). 18. John H. Morrow, ‘‘Expectation and Reality,’’ Airpower Journal (Winter 1996): 27–34. 19. Premierlieut v. Lavergne-Peguilhen, ‘‘Die Verwendbarkeit der Luftballons in der Kriegfu¨ hrung,’’ Beiheft zur Milita¨ r-Wochenblatt (1886): 257–76, esp. 262–63.

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20. Capt. G.L. Townsend, ‘‘The Use and Effect of Flying Machines on Military Operations,’’ Infantry Journal 7 (1910): 244–58. 21. Col. John P. Wisser, ‘‘The Tactical and Strategic Use of Dirigible Balloons and Aeroplanes,’’ Journal of the United States Cavalry Association 21, no. 81, (November 1910): 412–13. 22. Blume, ‘‘Bedingungen des Erfolges,’’ 455–58. 23. Schlieffen, ‘‘Krieg der Gegenwart,’’ 18. 24. Cf. James S. Corum, The Luftwaffe: Creating the Operational Air War, 1918–1940 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1994), 22–23. 25. Kennett, First Air War, 11, 57. 26. Maj. H. Bannerman-Phillips, ‘‘Progress in Ae¨ronautics,’’ United Services Magazine 37 (March 1909): 620; ‘‘The Significance of Ae¨rial Navigation for Great Britain,’’ United Services Magazine 39 (June 1909): 278; ‘‘Military Aviation,’’ United Services Magazine 40 (November 1909): 184–95; ‘‘The Future of Airships in War,’’ United Services Magazine 37 (September 1908): 592. 27. C. Reichenau, ‘‘Taktische Erfahrungen aus dem Balkankriege,’’ Milita¨rWochenblatt 133 (1913): 3011–18. 28. Col. a` Court Repington, ‘‘New Wars for Old. II. The Airship Menace,’’ Blackwood’s Magazine (July 1910): 3–13. 29. Repington, ‘‘Airship Menace,’’3. 30. Repington, ‘‘Airship Menace,’’ 8. 31. Lee Kennett, The First Air War, 1914–1918 (New York: Free Press, 1991), 60. 32. Repington, ‘‘Airship Menace,’’ 9. 33. Repington, ‘‘Airship Menace,’’ 10. 34. Charles Christienne and Pierre Lissarague, A History of French Military Aviation, trans. Francis Kianka (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian, 1986), 3–43.

CHAPTER 8 1. Clarke, ‘‘Hazards of Prophecy,’’ 142.

Index

Addams, Jane, 43 Angell, Sir Norman: background, 18; and Bloch, 96; on survival of the fittest, 41; views of war compared to Goltz, 48, 55, Robida, 89, and Suttner, 43; The Great Illusion, 45–46 Aube, Admiral The´ophile, 33–34 Austin, Frederick, 89; ‘‘Planes!’’ 89 Baden-Powell, General Sir R., 48 Balkan Wars (1912–13), 38 Bannerman-Phillips, Major H., 91 Barton, Samuel, 74; The Battle of the Swash, 74 Beard, George M., 8, 10 Bebel, August, 46 Bellamy, Edward, 14, 15, 16; Looking Backward, 14, 15, 16, 20 Bernstein, Eduard, 46 Ble´riot, Louis, 90 Bloch, Ivan: and Angell, 96; background, 17–18; views of war compared to Goltz, 48, 55; views of war compared to Robida, 89; views of war compared to Suttner, 43;

views of war compared to Wells, 88; The Future of War, 17, 43–45, 46, 58 Boer War, 29–30 Childers, Erskine, 51, 75, 79, 98; Riddle of the Sands, 51, 75–76, 77, 98 Clarke, Arthur C., xii, 95 Clarke, George S. (A. Nelson Seaforth), 73; The Last Great Naval War, 73 Colomb, Admiral Philip, 49–50, 69–70 Corbett, Sir Julian, 77–79 Crichton-Browne, Sir James, 8–9 Cubism, 1, 7 ‘‘Deadly zone’’ 28–29, 57, 65, 67 Donnelly, Hugh, 74–75; The Stricken Nation, 74-75 Douhet, Guilio, 93 Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, 72–73, 79; ‘‘Danger! Being the Log of Captain John Sirius,’’ 72 Dreadnought, 35–36, 78 Einstein, Albert, 1, 7–8, 10 Eardley-Wilmot, Capt. S., 70; The Next Naval War, 70

116

Index

Fischer, Admiral Sir John, 78 Fontane, Theodore, 19 Franco-Prussian War, 28–29

More, Sir Thomas, 14–15 Morris, William, 16 Newcomb, Admiral Simon, xii

Girdner, John H., 9–10 Goltz, Gen. Colmar von der: background, 21; focus of his theories, 98; on the infantryman’s challenge, 63–64; The Nation in Arms, 21, 47; views of war, 47–48; views compared to Angell, 41, 55 The Great War of 189-,49–50, 97, 98; land battles, 64–66; naval warfare, 69–70 Griffith, George, 70–71, 82–83, 88. Works: Angel of the Revolution, 82; Olga Romanoff, 83; ‘‘The Outlaws of the Air,’’ 83; ‘‘Raid of the Le Vengeur’’ 70–71 Guerre de course, 33 Hellpach, Willy, 9 Hume, David, xiii Ibsen, Henrik, 11, 18–19, 26 Jeune E´cole, 33–34, 35, 73 Klimt, Gustav, 1, 6 La France, 89 Lawrence, D.H., 6–7 Leacock, Stephen, 20 LeBon, Gustav, 9 Le Queux, William, 50 Liebknecht, Wilhelm, 16–17 Mahan, Admiral Alfred Thayer, 77–79; Influence of Seapower upon History, 77 Maude, Colonel F.N., 47, 49 Milne, Alan Alexander, 51 Moltke, Colonel-General Helmuth von, 91, 98

Picasso, Pablo, 1, 6 Rankin, Jeanette, 43 Repington, Charles a` Court, 78–79, 92–93 Robida, Albert: background, 22–24; compared to Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, 51–52, 54, 88, 97. Works: The Electric Life (La vie e´lectrique), 23; The Twentieth Century (LeVingtie`me sie`cle), 23, 24; War in the Twentieth Century (La Guerre au vingtie`me sie`cle), 23, 52–54, 60–61, 63, 75, 89 Russell, Bertrand, 46 Russo-Japanese War, 30–33, 57 Russo-Turkish War, 33 Schlieffen, Field Marshal Alfred von, 66–67, 91, 98 Scott, Lieutenant Riley E., 81 Shaw, George Bernard, 6–7, 17 Souvestre, E`mile, 21–22 Stravinsky, Igor, 6–7 Suttner, Bertha von, 17–18, 42–43, 48; Die Waffen Nieder (Ground Arms), 42–43 Swinton, Ernest, 61, 99 Tirpitz, Count Alfred von, 91, 98 Twain, Mark (Samuel Clemens), 1–2, 4, 10, Verne, Jules, 5, 21, 22, 51-52; on H.G. Wells, 26 Vickers, Captain Charles E., 61 Wells, H[erbert] G[eorge]: background, 24; and Bloch, 58; compared to Griffith, 82, 84;

Index compared to Robida, 52, 54; dystopian literature, 20; general predictions, 24–6, 69; ideas and the Great War, 96, 97; ‘‘scientific romance,’’ 5; visions of future air war, 85; visions of future war, 55. Works: Anticipations, 24–26; ‘‘Argonauts of the Air,’’ 85; ‘‘The Flying Man,’’ 87; ‘‘The Land Ironclads,’’ 44, 58–63; The Sleeper Awakes, 20; ‘‘A Tale of the Twentieth

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Century,’’ 87; The War in the Air, 5, 81, 84–88; The War of the Worlds, 51; When the Sleeper Wakes, 20 Wisser, Colonel John, 90–91 Wood, Walter, 71–72, 79; ‘‘Submarined,’’ 71 Zeppelin, Count Ferdinand von, 36– 37, 83, 90 ‘‘Zeppelinitis’’ 37, 81, 91 Zola, E`mile, 27

About the Author ANTULIO J. ECHEVARRIA II is the Director of Research at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where he manages research programs and writes on issues of strategic concern. He is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy (1981), and has served in a variety of command and staff assignments in the United States and overseas; he is also a graduate of the U.S. Army War College (2002). Dr. Echevarria holds a Ph.D. in history from Princeton University. His other books include: After Clausewitz: German Military Thinkers before the Great War, University Press of Kansas, 2001; and Clausewitz and Contemporary War, Oxford University Press, 2007.

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