[Sidenote: Difficulties in a sudden retreat.]
[Sidenote: Every officer tries to save his supplies.]
Moving a great army is an affair of time-tables. There is room for only
a certain amount of men and material on the roads and railways at one
time, and every man and every wagon above that maximum becomes a factor
of confusion and retards the movement of the whole mass to a dangerous
degree. The sudden retreat of an army is often reduced to chaos, first,
because a thoroughly worked-out plan of general retirement exists but
rarely in the strong-boxes of any general staff, and secondly, because
in the absence of a time-table drawn up in detail and strictly enforced,
the elementary principle of self-preservation leads every unit of the
army to put itself on the road as quickly as it can get transportation.
This is not to say that confusion is an invariable indication of
personal panic; but it is very natural, and even very proper, that every
battery commander, the director of every military store and depot, and
the leader of every body of troops which is not definitely ordered to
remain, should have the individual determination that his particular
command shall not fall into the hands of the enemy. The artillery
officer firmly resolves that he will save his guns at all costs; the
heads of supply departments are in charge of valuable stores which their
army needs for its very existence and which would be of great aid to the
enemy if captured, and the troop-leader naturally argues that it would
be futile to allow his men to be cut off when a general retreat has
already been ordered.
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