World War: Defense Is the Best Attack

A Briton who can explain muth to his countrymen about why this war started off so slowly (see p. 31), why the West ern Front was still so quiet last week, is a tall, thin officer of infantry in World War I: Captain Basil Henry Liddell Hart, 43, D. S. 0. V. C. Few weeks ago Captain Liddell Hart suffered a nervous break down, retired to the west of England, resigned his job as military expert for the august London Times.

Than Captain Liddell Hart, no other ten military critics caused more stir in the 20 years following World War I. He studied the campaigns of 1914-18, emerged with the conclusion that the generals on both sides had bungled fantastically: wasted millions of lives, exhausted their national patrimonies, achieved virtually nothing except to end the war by exhaustion. Other military men raised their eye brows at some of his military teachings, but when Leslie Hore-Belisha became Secretary of State for War in 1937, he began to listen to Captain Liddell Hart’s advice, began to mechanize the British Army, improve anti-aircraft defense (Britain had fewer anti-aircraft guns than in 1918 when air attack was much less developed), reduce the age and stuffiness of generals.

During the tense days of last spring, Captain Liddell Hart was at work on a big new volume: The Defence of Britain.* Events moved so fast that he had to finish it at a sprint, a misfortune from which the finished book suffers. Its last 190 pages are too full of military detail to interest most civilians, but its first 243 pages are meaty, revealing.

Remembering from “last time” the futility of trying to charge against a machine gun, Captain Liddell Hart lays down the axiom that in modern warfare the defense has a great advantage over the attack: no attack succeeds unless the attackers secure surprise or have at least a 3-to-1 preponderance over the attacked. This does not mean merely in men (in the last war some attacks failed with a 16-to-1 preponderance in men), but in fire power. Says he:

“Our chief risk of losing a war lies in trying to ‘win the war’— by pursuing the mirage of decisive victory on the battle field. . . . Under present conditions, it would be folly for Britain and France to attempt offensive strategy in the West, at any rate in the early stages. . . .

“Defense is a psychological attack. . . . If … attack is met by attack, the aggressor government is enabled to consolidate its people by representing to them that they are fighting to defend their homes. Such misrepresentation becomes far more difficult to maintain if the attack is met by defense. This tends to weaken the will of the enemy people. . . . This state of mind, and loss of spirit, will develop all the sooner if the offensive cam paign produces no results comparable to its cost. There is nothing more demoralizing to troops than to see the corpses of their comrades piled up in front of an unbroken defense. . . .”

The Liddell Hart doctrine thus inverts the saying that “attack is the best defense” into “defense is the best attack.” To “strategic defense” he would add a “harassing offensive.” frequent sharp, short blows delivered with surprise; artillery fire and air bombing to upset the enemy’s supply lines and rest camps. The whole he calls “super-guerrilla warfare.” Captain Liddell Hart comes to the conclusions which may startle those in the U. S. who assume that the U. S. will be drawn into the war and send another A. E. F. to Europe. He questions the wisdom for Britain herself of pouring forces into France—questions its wisdom even in 1914-18.

Rooting for smaller divisions with better weapons and plenty of trucks and tanks, he deplores attempts to prepare England for war by conscription of masses of infantry. Says he:

“For the aggressor, aiming at conquest, the complete overthrow of the opposing forces and the occupation of the opponent’s territory may be necessary to his success. But not to ours. Our object is fulfilled if we can convince the enemy that he cannot conquer. . . .

“It is often asserted that a war of ‘limited liability’ is impossible, and also that to enter upon war with any idea of conserving our strength is to invite defeat. The first assertion is unhistorical; the second unpractical. We conducted all our wars until the last on the policy of profiting by our sea-moat and seapower to limit our liability . . . and had a sustained run of success in, and after, them that no other modern nation has known. . . .”

*Random House, $3.50.