Countries like
Mexico, Bulgaria, Serbia, Afghanistan or Abyssinia are no more capable
of going to war without the connivance and help of manufacturing states
than horses are capable of flying. And this makes possible such a
complete control of war by the few great states which are at the
necessary level of industrial development as not the most Utopian of us
have hitherto dared to imagine.
5
Infantrymen with automobile transport, plentiful machine guns, Tanks and
such-like accessories; that is the first Arm in modern war. The factory
hand and all the material of the shell route from the factory to the gun
constitute the second Arm. Thirdly comes the artillery, the guns and the
photographic aeroplanes working with the guns. Next I suppose we
must count sappers and miners as a fourth Arm of greatly increased
importance. The fifth and last combatant Arm is the modern substitute
for cavalry; and that also is essentially a force of aeroplanes
supported by automobiles. Several of the French leaders with whom I
talked seemed to be convinced that the horse is absolutely done with in
modern warfare. There is nothing, they declared, that cavalry ever did
that cannot now be done better by aeroplane.
This is something to break the hearts of the Prussian junkers and
of old-fashioned British army people.
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