In spite of the
successful experiment of Torres Vedras and the warning of Plevna the
offensive remained dominant throughout the nineteenth century.
But three things were working quietly towards the rehabilitation of the
defensive; firstly the increased range, accuracy and rapidity of rifle
fire, with which we may include the development of the machine gun;
secondly the increasing use of the spade, and thirdly the invention of
barbed wire. By the end of the century these things had come so far into
military theory as to produce the great essay of Bloch, and to surprise
the British military people, who are not accustomed to read books or
talk shop, in the Boer war. In the thinly populated war region of South
Africa the difficulties of forcing entrenched positions were largely met
by outflanking, the Boers had only a limited amount of barbed wire
and could be held down in their trenches by shrapnel, and even at the
beginning of the present war there can be little doubt that we and
our Allies were still largely unprepared for the full possibilities of
trench warfare, we attempted a war of manoeuvres, war at about the grade
to which war had been brought in 1898, and it was the Germans who first
brought the war up to date by entrenching upon the Aisne. We had, of
course, a few aeroplanes at that time, but they were used chiefly as a
sort of accessory cavalry for scouting; our artillery was light and our
shell almost wholly shrapnel.
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