ECONOMIC WARFARE .sx The attack by materiel failed ignominiously .sx In the circumstances it could not succeed , because entrenchments could be dug more rapidly than guns could be built , and the defensive zones became so widened out that it was impossible to penetrate them during a single battle .sx The enormous demands made for all types of munitions of war , however , revealed clearly to the eyes of the General Staffs the economic foundations of the war .sx So visible did these economic foundations become that it was not long before these Staffs realized that if the food supply of the enemy could be cut off , the foundations of the hostile nation would be undermined and , with the loss of will to endure , its military forces would be paralysed .sx Throughout history warfare may be divided under the two general headings of fighting and plundering .sx In the Middle Ages , when the attack on castles failed armies laid waste the lands of the peasants .sx In the Thirty Years' War it was much the same , armies learning that to attack the economic foundations of their enemy's military strength is frequently more profitable than attacking him in the field .sx Thus , in the World War , the materiel attack having failed , it at once gave way to plundering operations attacks on trade in place of the devastation of crops .sx To introduce this most barbarous form of war , the first military problem that the Allied Powers had to solve was the circumvallation of the Central Powers ; and the second their surrender by starvation :sx That is an attack on the enemy's civil stomach , not only on his men but on his women and children , not only on his soldiers but on his sick and his poor .sx The economic attack is without question the most brutal of all forms of attack , because it does not only kill but cripple , and cripples more than one generation .sx Turning men , women and children into starving animals , it is a direct blow against what is called civilization .sx The encirclement of the Central Powers resulted in the most gigantic siege in history , the lines of circumvallation running from Calais to Kermanshah , and thence through Russia to the Baltic .sx The establishment of this immense circle of rifles and guns and entrenchments took time ; but what took longer still for the British Government to realize was , that this siege would prove futile unless the supplies then transported to Germany through neutral countries could be stopped .sx The problem was in fact a politico-naval one , and the politician was slow in solving it , not because it was diabolical , but because it might prove detrimental to the pockets of neutrals who , like vampires , were feasting on the blood of the battlefields .sx When , however , the blockade began to tighten , Germany , as we have seen , had no intention of committing felo-de-se in order to maintain a naval custom or a humanitarian tradition .sx She was now fighting for her life ; and , not possessing strength enough to defeat her adversaries on the high seas , she decided to break the blockade by establishing a blockade of her own by means of her submarines .sx This decision was met by a howl of execration and Germany was outlawed .sx But was her action more immoral than that of her enemies ?sx " There can be no doubt that , by instituting unrestricted submarine warfare the Germans violated certain laws of war made long before the advent of this weapon ; but also there can be no doubt that , if the slow starvation of German men , women and children by means of investment did not contravene the spirit of international law , then neither did unrestricted submarine warfare contravene it , though it may have infringed the letter of the tradition which this law had created .sx If starvation is right in one case it is right in both .sx The drowning of non-combatants is but an incident in the operation of killing by starvation , it does not affect the principle underlying this act .sx " If we examine the basic idea at the bottom of these three phases of the World War the traditional attack , the materiel attack and the economic attack we find that .sx it was " slaughter , " not so much as a means to victory , for by soldiers it was never doubted to be the only means , but as an end in itself .sx Economically every nation depended on the combined prosperity of all nations , and in the main , being followers of Clausewitz , soldiers and statesmen should have realized that when he declared that war was a continuation of peace policy in another form he did not mean that it was a negation of peace policy .sx Yet their actions resulted in this negation , because in the days when Clausewitz outlined his doctrine all nations were economically independent , and during the three generations following his death they had become economically interdependent .sx It was not Clausewitz who was wrong ; they were wrong still obsessed by the outlook of the Agricultural Age .sx THE THEORY OF MORAL WARFARE .sx If Clausewitz was right in his proposition that war is a continuation of peace policy , what should statesmen and soldiers have done in order to interpret him correctly ?sx They should have examined the civilization in which they lived .sx Had they done so they would have seen that though steam-power had physically contracted the world it had also intellectually expanded it .sx Whereas , in 1750 , it took three weeks to travel from Caithness to London , in 1914 Vladivostock could be reached in a similar time .sx Intellectually what did this mean ?sx It meant that , as space shrank , intelligence expanded through travel and rapidity of communications .sx " This intellectual and moral revolution , which was brought about through a growth in the physical sciences , was not grasped by the military mind .sx It was not realized that , while only a hundred years ago it took days and weeks and months before a moral blow could be delivered , to-day it only takes minutes and hours .sx It was not realized that , while in the year 1800 the nervous system of a civilized nation was of a low and ganglionic order , by 1900 it had become highly sensitive and centralized .sx It was not realized that , as the whole aspect of civilization had changed , so also must the whole aspect of warfare be changed , and , as science had accomplished the civil changes , so also must science accomplish the military ones .sx " In 1914 , what happened was this :sx unless the war could be won within a few weeks of its outbreak , armies , as then organized , could not , under probable circumstances , maintain or enforce the peace policies of their respective governments , because these armies , in constitution , belonged to a social epoch which was dead and gone .sx For over a hundred years civilization had been built upon science and steam-power , yet , in 1914 , armies were still organized on muscle-power , the power upon which nations had been constituted prior to the advent of the steam-engine , the dynamo and the petrol-engine , the telegraph and the telephone .sx As the main target in war the will of the nation grew in size through intellectual expansion and sensitiveness , so do we see in order to protect these targets , armies becoming not more intelligent and more scientific , but more brutal , ton upon ton of human flesh being added , until war strengths are reckoned in millions in place of thousands of men .sx " Yet in spite of this amazing foolishness the soldier remained a human creature controlled by his instinct of self-preservation .sx The bullet , fired to kill , awoke him from his hallucination and he at once turned to make good his hundred years of scientific neglect .sx " Invention was thereupon piled upon invention , but the killing theory still held the field , until towards the close of the war it became apparent to some that science was so powerful that it could even dispense with the age-old custom of killing and could do something far more effective it could petrify the human mind with fear .sx It could , in fact , directly dictate the will of one nation to another , and with vastly reduced bloodshed .sx It could , in fact , enforce policy with far less detriment to the eventual peace than had ever been possible before .sx The idea of the moral shock , in place of the physical assault , was just beginning to flutter over the blood-soaked battlefields when the Armistice of November 11 , 1918 , brought hostilities to a close .sx " I will now turn to the weapons of the moral attack and very briefly examine their powers .sx THE WEAPONS OF THE MORAL ATTACK .sx When kings led their hosts to battle " valour " was the watchword , but when democracies take command it is " cringing fear " ; not that the soldiers of to-day are less brave , but that the civil population is more terrified .sx It always has been so , because the masses lack discipline ; but compared with former times the difference to-day is , that then the common folk were spectators whilst now they are dictators .sx Their will is behind the will of the Government , even when it exerts its will , which is the exception rather than the rule .sx Throughout the history of war treachery has proved itself a powerful weapon , and during the interminable wars of the Middle Ages more castles and walled cities fell through treachery than through starvation the economic attack , or by force of arms the military assault .sx In the World War treachery was attempted through propaganda , the contending newspapers raking dirt out of the gutters of their respective Fleet Streets and squirting it at their country's enemies .sx All sense of justice was cast aside , the more outrageous the lie the more potent it was supposed to be .sx In England God sided with the Daily Mail , in Germany with the Berliner Tageblatt and in Paris with the Figaro .sx Libel , blasphemy , slander and obscenity were mixed up into a nauseating mess and dished out to each nation as its daily food .sx The behaviour of the English towards unfortunate Germans in England was as disgusting as it was brutal , and the same thing happened in Germany and France , in fact all over the democratic world .sx Later on in the war , the journalists were drilled into some semblance of order ; yet no Government appeared to realize that the attack by lies besmirched its own future , because the poles of the magnet which must attract all neutrals worth attracting are straight-fighting and straight-speaking .sx After all , is it not to the advantage of the world that the " cleanest " nation should win ?sx That is common sense .sx Fortunately , the moral , or immoral , attack did not halt here .sx The bullet had driven the soldier into his trench , and the shell had failed to dig him out .sx Then it was that the Germans , adopting Lord Dundonald's idea , replaced steel particles by gas particles , so that an entire battlefield , and all the targets included in it , either above ground or below , might be hit .sx The first gas attack took place on April 22 , 1915 , in which the Germans made two cardinal mistakes :sx First , they did not use enough to win a decisive battle , and secondly , they used a lethal gas chlorine which was unnecessary , because the Hague Convention had not forbidden the use of gases of a non-toxic nature .sx The result of this unexpected form of attack was that the traditional soldier was horrified .sx He pronounced gas warfare to be the invention of the Devil , and forthwith went into partnership with his Satanic Majesty .sx The horrors of gas warfare were well advertised , and as usual the anathema pronounced upon it was absurd in fact public opinion on any vital subject is always wrong , because it generalizes the views of the most ignorant .sx Here are the true facts :sx In the American Army the total casualties were 274,217 .sx Of these 74,779 , or 27.3 per cent .sx , were due to gas .sx Of the gas casualties only 1,400 , or 1.87 per cent .sx , resulted in death .sx Of the remaining 199,438 casualties , resulting from bullets , shell-fire , etc. , 46,659 , or 23.4 per cent .sx , proved fatal .sx Out of the 86 men totally blinded during the war only 4 were blinded by gas , and " in the year 1918 there were one and a half times as many cases of tuberculosis per thousand among all American troops in France as there were amongst those gassed .sx "