The Foundations of the Science of War

Maj-Gen. J. F. C. Fuller

• Publisher: Valmy Publishing
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781787209855
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

The Foundations of the Science of War by Col. J. F. C. Fuller, first published in 1925, aims, as the title suggests and in the author's own words, to provide "a foundation of the science of war, or, at least, of a science of war." Col. Fuller spent over 15 years planning this foundation, and it was his endeavour that it would allow military students to examine it "not only for its own worth, but in order to think of war scientifically, for until we do so we shall never become true artists of war." Likewise, Col. Fuller hoped the book may be of use to all other interested readers, "not only in studying war, but in studying any of the activities of life."
"In this book I am attempting something new—at least, new since the days of Henry Lloyd and Robert Jackson; for, as far as I am aware, these are my only two fellow-countrymen who have attempted to reduce war to a science. In a small way I am trying to do for war what Copernicus did for astronomy, Newton for physics, and Darwin for natural history. My book, I believe, is the first in which a writer has attempted to apply the method of science to the study of war; for Lloyd, Jackson, Clausewitz, Jomini, and Foch did not do this. In a few years' time I hope that it will be superseded by many a better work, so that we all may begin to understand the nature of war, and thereby discover, not only how to prepare for war, but how to restrict its ravages; how to harness it, and possibly, also, how to transmute the destructive ferocity of the ape into the creative gentleness of the angel."—Col. J. F. C. Fuller

CHAPTER I—THE ALCHEMY OF WAR

Nothing is more terrible than active ignorance.

—Bossuet.

The art of war is like that of medicine, murderous and conjectural.

—Voltaire.

1. THE VALUE OF MILITARY HISTORY

THE history of war is a great romance, but as yet no true science of war has been written. For long the history of man and his perplexing ways were treated as a story, but in recent years the method of science has been applied to civil history, and today many historical works exist on the social, commercial, religious, and political evolution of nations. From these the student can discover, not only the sequence of past events, but their tendencies, and, above all, the probable direction of these tendencies in the future.

Though war is the oldest of the arts, no such method has as yet been applied to it. I will not say that attempts have not been made, for they have, but with little success; for most of the great writers on war lived before the advent of the present scientific age, and those who have written since have been obsessed by traditions. Guibert, in his Essai Général de Tactique, deplores “that whilst all other sciences are being perfected, the science of war remains in the cradle.”{4} Lloyd, writing at about the same time, says: “It is universally agreed upon that no art or science is more difficult than that of war...yet those who embrace this profession take little or no pains to study it.”{5} Robert Jackson, an English military surgeon, in 1804, sets out to examine the structure of war, “in order to inculcate useful truth” rather than “to furnish transient amusement.”{6} His book still deserves study, and so does Lloyd’s. Jomini is a great artist and geometrician of war, but little else, for he looks upon war mainly as “a terrible and impassioned drama”{7}; yet, “I have seen,” he says, “many generals—marshals, even—attain a certain degree of reputation by talking largely of principles which they conceived incorrectly in theory and could not apply at all.”{8} Men, like General Rüchel, who, at the battle of Jena, thought “that he could save the army by giving the command to advance the right shoulder in order to form an oblique line.”{9} Clausewitz, a military philosopher, never completed his great work, which is little more than a mass of notes, a cloud of flame and smoke; still, he writes of the art: “The conditions have been mistaken for the thing itself, the instrument for the hand.”{10} At length we come to Foch, the most eminent soldier of our period, who, in 1903, sets himself this question: “Can war be taught?”{11} He believes that it can be taught, but only as an art based on theory. He quotes with approval the words of Dragomirov: “First of all, science and theory are two different things, for every art may and must be in possession of its own theory, but it would be preposterous to claim for it the name of a science....Nobody will venture today to assert that there could be a science of war. It would be as absurd as a science of poetry, of painting, or of music.”{12}

Surely it will not take more than a minute’s thought to contradict this preposterous assertion. Poetry, painting, and music may be arts, but they are based on the sciences of language, of optics, and of acoustics. True, it is possible to be an artist without being a scientist, it is possible to theorize without knowing much, but this does not abrogate science, which, as I shall explain later on, is nothing else than true knowledge in place of haphazard knowledge, logical thinking in place of chaotic thinking, and, ultimately, truth itself in place of falsehood.{13}

Where are we to seek this theory of war which is unrelated to science? Foch answers: “History is the base,” and then, approvingly, he quotes General de Peucker, who says: “The more an army is deficient in the experience of warfare, the more it behoves it to resort to the history of war, as a means of instruction and as a base for that instruction....Although the history of war cannot replace acquired experience, it can nevertheless prepare for it. In peace-time it becomes the true means of learning war and of determining the fixed principles of the art of war.”{14}

But, if we are disallowed a science of war, we can have no true history of war, only a “terrible and impassioned drama.” On the battlefields we are artists of war, but we are seldom on the battlefields, for the greater part of our lives is spent in preparing for war in our lecture rooms, our studies, and on our training grounds. Here we are confronted by the history and mimicry of war. We do not want drama; we want truth. We require not merely a chronology of past events, but means of analysing their tendencies—means of dissecting the corpse of war, so that we may understand its mysterious machinery. To deny a science of war and then to theorize on war as an art is pure military alchemy, a process of reasoning which for thousands of years has blinded the soldier to the realities of war, and will continue to blind him until he creates a science of war upon which to base his art.

THE REALITY OF WAR

What, then, is the reality of war? For answer we must examine history. Wars come and they go; like flesh wounds, they ache whilst they last, and then, when they are healed, mankind forgets their smart. It is well that man should do so, for pain is an unpleasant sensation, so unpleasant that when we are wounded we pay large sums to those who can rapidly heal us.

In the past we have possessed innumerable witch-doctors of war, but few true surgeons, because we have possessed no science of war. The cauldron of war boils over; we are scalded; we shriek; some die; some recover; and then we lick our wounds and wait until it boils over again. Believe me, the history of war is an unbroken relation of these Medean performances.

If the student doubts my words, then let him read the history of the Crimean War, and he will find that the horror of its trenches, like some tragedy from the Grand Guignol, is, scene by scene, replayed sixty years later in the swamps of Flanders. Let him read the account of the massacre of the Prussian Guard at St. Privat, in 1870. What does the Duke of Württemberg say? He writes:

During the action at St. Marie aux Chênes, Prince Hohenlohe, commanding the Artillery of the Guard, had collected 84 guns opposite St. Privat, and cannonaded the French position with great effect, at first at 2,640 paces, and afterwards at 2,000 paces. About five o’clock in the afternoon the Commander of the Guard considered the enemy to be sufficiently shaken for him to risk an assault across the open and gently ascending ground....

“The effect of the enemy’s fire, even at a distance of more than 1,500 paces, was so murderous that, according to the accounts received, nearly 6,000 men fell in 10 minutes, and the advance had to be immediately discontinued.”{15}

It is needless for me to remind the student that identical operations were carried out during the battles of Verdun and the Somme, forty-six years later. Forty-six years later! It is enough to make one weep!

Turn to the Russo-Japanese War: “At Shen-tan-pu the enemy made no less than five determined attacks against our entrenchment and its machine-gun, and were repulsed each time. The machine-gun did great execution, and we have heard—but this is not yet verified—that there were a thousand dead Russians left before it. At Li-ta-jen-tun the enemy could make no headway against our machine-guns, and was beaten back each time directly he tried to advance.”{16}

Yet, in 1914, we had to learn the lesson of the machine-gun over again, and at what cost? We had to do so because war was looked upon as a dreadful drama, which required the most meagre of rehearsals for its preparation. “The truth is,” writes Marshal Foch, “no study is possible on the battlefield; one does there simply what one can in order to apply what one knows. Therefore, in order to do even a little, one has already to know a great deal, and to know it well.”{17} With this I full-heartedly agree; but I am of opinion that we shall never arrive at understanding war—that is, knowing it well—until we have a science of war which will reveal to us its reality, and not solely an art which must of necessity deal largely with its appearances.

3. THE LACK OF THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF WAR

Though the scientific method has never as yet been applied to the history of war, truth always exists either openly or hidden; consequently its discovery is not so much a matter of knowing that effect B follows cause A, but why it follows. Long before James Watt watched the steam in his mother’s kettle lift the lid, innumerable men had watched a similar phenomenon. Long before Sir Isaac Newton saw the apple fall, millions of human beings had shaken apple-trees to make apples fall. Yet these innumerable men and millions of human beings were not scientists, though Watt and Newton were, and, through discovering the laws of motion and of steam-pressure, they discovered truths, not necessarily absolute, but sufficiently general to enable thousands of artists (artificers of truth) to make use of them and apply them in a million ways.

Throughout the history of war, in spite of many famous artists, we look in vain for a military Newton or Watt. So much so that we see such eminent soldiers as Dragomirov and Foch affirming that war is solely an art and that there is no science of war. I think that I shall be able to prove that they are wrong, and that, because of this very ignorance of a science of war, the art of war has remained chaotic and alchemical.

If I am doubted, then again must I ask the student to turn to military history, and not merely examine one or two incidents as I have done, but read and reread the campaigns of the great captains and study the operations of the great fools, for not only are these latter folk in the majority, but their art is immensely instructive. What will the student’s verdict be? I imagine that it will agree with mine: namely, that we soldiers are mostly alchemists, and many of us little more than military sorcerers.

In the Great War of 1914–18 many of us witnessed curious happenings. Many of us partook of strategical black masses and tactical witches’ sabbaths. Many of us sought the philosopher’s stone and failed, and how ignominiously few of us as yet realize; for we, even today, possess no true test whereby to distinguish between the products of our ability and those of our incompetence. Be this as it may, do not let us despair of a little light, for as out of the twilight of the mediaeval laboratory arose the great sciences of today, so out of this all but invincible ignorance may arise, if we so will it, a true science of war. It is for this reason that I have called this first chapter “The Alchemy of War,” not because alchemy was utterly absurd, but because it was an art without a science. In alchemy what do we find? A false classification of real facts combined with inconsistent sequences—“that is, sequence not deduced by a rational method. So soon as science entered the field of alchemy with a true classification and a true method, alchemy was converted into chemistry and became an important branch of human knowledge.”{18} So also with war; true facts have been examined, but their values have not been understood...

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• DEDICATION
• DIAGRAMS
• PREFACE
• CHAPTER I-THE ALCHEMY OF WAR
• CHAPTER II-THE METHOD OF SCIENCE
• CHAPTER III-THE THREEFOLD ORDER
• CHAPTER IV-THE OBJECT OF WAR
• CHAPTER V-THE INSTRUMENT OF WAR
• CHAPTER VI-THE MENTAL SPHERE OF WAR
• CHAPTER VII-THE MORAL SPHERE OF WAR
• CHAPTER VIII-THE PHYSICAL SPHERE OF WAR
• CHAPTER IX-THE CONDITIONS OF WAR
• CHAPTER X-THE LAW OF ECONOMY OF FORCE
• CHAPTER XI-THE PRINCIPLES OF WAR
• CHAPTER XII-THE PRINCIPLES OF CONTROL
• CHAPTER XIII-THE PRINCIPLES OF PRESSURE
• CHAPTER XIV-THE PRINCIPLES OF RESISTANCE
• CHAPTER XV-THE APPLICATION THE SCIENCE OF WAR
• REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER