THE PRINCE CONSORT'S LIBRARY ALDERSHOT 1860-1960 H.R.H. THE PRINCE ALBERT in the uniform of Colonel of the I ~th Hussars (Prince Albert'r Own) THE PRINCE CONSORT'S LIBRARY ALDERSHOT 1860-1960 CONTENTS Her Majesty the Queen has been graciously pleased to present a gift of threc water colours depicting scenes of the mid-ninetecnth century Camp at Aldershot to the Prince Consort's Library to mark its centenary. FOREWORD BY SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL, K.G. ............ ALDERSHOT-HOME OF THE BRITISH ARMY, BY LIEUT.-COLONEL HOWARD N. COLE, O.B.E., T.D., F.R.S.A., F.R.HIST.S. ............ THE HISTORY OF THE PRINCE CONSORT'S LIBRARY, BY LIEUT.-COLONEL L. H. YATES, O.B.E. (RETD.), LIBRARIAN .................. MILITARY THOUGHT, 1860, BY D. w. KING, o.B.E., F.L.A., WAR OFFICE MILITARY THOUGHT, 1860-rg18, BY MAJOR E. w. SHEPPARD, o.B.E., M.C. {RETD.) ........................... LIBRARIAN ........................... MILITARY THOUGHT, 1919-1945, BY MAJOR-GENERAL H. ESSAME, C.B.E., D.s.o., M.C. (RETD.) ..................... HOW MILITARY IDEAS HAVE SHAPED THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD, BY CAPTAIN ..................... B. H. LIDDELL-HART EPILOGUE, BY LIEUT.-GENERAL SIR RICHARD W. GOODBODY, K.B.E., C.B., D.S.O., ADJUTANT-GENERAL TO THE EORCES ... La ILLUSTRATIONS H.R.H. PRINCE ALBERT ............ THE PRINCE CONSORT'S LIBRARY, 1960 HOSPIT.+L HILL, circa 1860 ......... ... SALAMANCA AND BADAJOS BARRACKS, Circa I880 THE ORIGINAL ALDERSHOT TIME GUN ... GENERAL ORDER, I4TH SEPTEMBER, 1860 ... THE PRINCE CONSORT'S LIBRARY INTERIOR THE INTERIOR OF AN OFFICER'S HUT, circa 1859 DEPARTURE OF TROOPS FOR SOUTH AFRICA, 1900 ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... .,, ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ..I PAGE 5 7 IS 19 23 26 30 39 PAGE ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... THE RIGHT HON. WINSTON CHURCHILL INSPECTING THE 4TH HUSSARS, I920 LIEUTENANT-GENERAL SIR JAMES YORK SCARLETT, G.C.B. ......... 6 9 I1 I1 I4 I7 21 24 28 38 3 2 The coloured frontispiece of H.R.H. The Prince Consort in the uniform of Colonel of the 11th Hussars (Prince Albert's Own) is reproduced by kind permission of the present Coloncl of the Regiment. Photographs and reproductions on pages 6, 9, 11, 17, 21, 24 and 28 are reproduced by kind permission of Messrs. Gale & Polden Ltd. WESTERUAW 3344 c H ARTW ELL. WESTERHAM, KENT. I wish the Centenary Exhibition of the Frince Consortls Library at Aldershot all success. the study of military history cannot fail to be of great value to the soldier, and it is most cornmendable that a reference library of this nature should be available at Aldershot. However much weapons may change, September, 1960 4 ALDERSHOT- HOME OF THE BRITISH ARMY 1 tie l'rince Consort's Librory. 1960 By LIEUTENANT-COLONEL HOWARD N. COLE, O.B.E., T.D., F.R.S.A., F.R.HIST.S. THE FIRST RECORD of Aldershot in our history is in the will of King Alfred (circa A.D. 880-885) wherein he bequeathed Crondall to his nephew Ethelm, Aldershot being included in the bequest, for at that time the hamlet, as it was, formed part of the Hundred of Crondall and comprised some 30,000 acres. Strangely, there is no mention of Aldershot in the Domesday Book, but it is mentioned as "Alreshete" in the Patents Roll of 1276 and in the Compotus Roll of 1248. Although obscure and without any place of note in our nation's history, Aldershot throughout the centuries was one of the countless little hamlets which went into the pattern of England. Self supporting agriculturally, it produced grain and hops for sale in the Farnham markets, the villagers playing their part in our national life in peaceful, undisturbed and undeveloped surroundings. The village of Aldershot had been by-passed by the progress of the early years of the last century, as it lay on the very fringe OF the cultivated lands along the Surrey border of Hampshire adjoining an area which was then described as "a vast stretch of common land unbroken for miles by any sign of habitation." The area was regarded as a somewhat dangerous locality, and the Turnpike Road (now the Farnborough Road) was the scene of numerous highway robberies. There were many stories of highwaymen intercepting the coach travellers on this lonely road, which then cut through the heath and wastelands of Aldershot and was marked by small groups of tall pines. A directory published in the late eighteen-forties describes Aldershot as "a Parish 34 miles N.E.N. of Farnham, Acres 4,070, population 875." The same directory listed the principal residents, and in addition ten farmers, two innkeepers and a blacksmith. The only houses were in the neighbourhood of the Parish Church and included Aldershot Lodge, the Manor House, Elm Place, and Aldershot Park Manor. Cottages ran down Church Hill to Aldershot Green and along a small portion of High Street, then known as "Aldershott Street." Most of the cottages were in and around Drury Lane, now known as Windmill Hill, which then ran to a windmill at the top of the hill. There were a few more scattered houses in the vicinity of the lower end of Ayling Lane. There were also a number of farms in the neighbourhood, many of which exist to this day. The social life of the villagers centred around the "Beehive" and the "Red Lion," which were the only two inns in the village. The present-day Wellington Street, then known as "Lloyds Lane," was named after the farmer Robert Lloyd, and it ran through fields of rye and potatoes and was so narrow that two carts could not pass each other. High Street was but a track leading from Ash through "Aldershott Street" and wound along through agricultural lands past "the Parish Clerk`s Land"-the Municipal Gardens of today-and away through Cargate and West End out westwards across Aldershot Heath. 7 The country to the north and west of Aldershot was waste heathland, undeveloped, uncultivatcd, and in the main untraversed-a wide cxpanse of sandy soil covered with gorse, heather and bracken. Aldershott Village stood almost as an outpost of civilisation. On the borders of this expanse of wild, windswept hcathland to the cast and south lay green and cultivated lands, dotted with farms, inarket gardens, pastures and hop ficlds, for this was a prosperous hop-growing area. It is recorded that at that time "Aldershott was one of the most pleasing and picturesque hamlets in Hampshire." Such was Aldershott a hundred and six years ago . . . Prior to the establishment of "The Camp at Aldershott," there was no permanent camp or garrison in the country suitable for a large-scale concentration of troops for training and exercise. It was this deficiency which led to exprcssions of concern in Parliament, the outcome of which was the decision to hold in the summcr of 1853 a largc "Camp of Exercisc" at which troops "might be tested." The area around the village of Chobham, near Wohg, was sclected as being most suitable, and here thc largc region of sandy wastes and heathlands provided thc ideal expanse of training ground necessary for the exercising of all the Regular troops then in the United Kingdom. Thc results of the "Camp at Chobham," which attracted considerable public attention, wcre from a military viewpoint highly satisfactory, and in consequence plans were put forward for the establishment of such a camp as a permanency. This idea was strongly supported by Quccn Victoria and the Prince Consort for the successf~il Chobham Camp had to a great extent becn the outcomc of his suggestions. The government of the day decided that such a training camp was in fact necessary, and the Sccretary of State for War, Lord Hardinge, conducted a survey of the Aldershot area where the right type of undeveloped heathland of sufficient size existed. Lord Hardinge stayed a night in Aldershot at the "Red Lion" inn in August, 1853, and from there he wrote personally to the Prince Consort recommending thc area as being suitable as a camp for a division with ample ground available for manceuvres. It was on 11th January, 1854, that Lord Hardingc reported that the owners of the Aldershot heathlands were prepared to sell 25,000 acres at LIZ per acre. The ground was purchased, and work on the camp commenced in accordance with which the War Office submitted plans which had resulted from a survey of the area conducted by a party of Royal Engineers who had set up a small camp near the village in November, I 853. The outbreak of war with Russia in March, 1854, had far-reaching results on the future of military Aldershot, for the building of permanent barracks came into the plans. The camp was laid out to comprise two separate wooden-hutted camps set out in symmetrical lines, North Camp lying to the north of the Basingstoke Canal, and South Camp on the Aldershot side. These two camps comprised some 1,600 huts which cost A150 each. The first loads of building materials were delivered by the civilian contractors in February, 1854, at the R.E. Yard, on the site of the present-day Princes Gardens. Sufficient huts had becn erected in North Camp by May, 1854, to permit the arrival of the first troops. They werc 103 officers and men of the 94th Regiment (later the 2nd Bn. Connaught Rangers), who marched to 8 Aldershot from Windsor. They were followed shortly afterwards by two a battalions embodied on the outbreak of war. And so it was that as a result of the war and the departure of the Regular Army to the Crimea, Ald Camp was filled up as soon as accommodation was available by the reserves and reinforcements. Work on the permanent barracks commenced in September, 1854, and was completed in 1859. These barracks, which exist to this day, comprised accommo- dation for a brigade of cavalry (the East, West and South Cavalry Barracks* all adjoining the town); a brigade of infantry (in Talavera,? Salamanca and Badajos Barracks); and a brigade of Royal Horse Artillery and of Field Artillery in Waterloo Barracks: facing High Street. The only permanent buildings on the land acquired by the War Department were the Row Barge Inn on the Farnborough Road and the Union Poor House. This !arge brick building bccamc the first hospital, and still stands, in use as the District Pay Otfcc, on Hospital Hill. The old inn, part of which served as the R.E. Ofice during the early building days, was later demolished, the site being included in the grounds of the OfTicers' Club which was built in 1858. By April, 1855, sufficient troops were quartered in the Camp to justify the appointmcnt of a General Officer to command "The Camp at Aldershott"; this was General Sir William Knollys, formerly of the Scots Fusilier Guards. He assumed command on 14th May, and took up lodging at the "Beehive Inn" in High Street. At that time the Camp was occupied by the Royal Dragoons, three Regular infantry regiments and ten regiments of militia. Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort had taken a keen interest in the plans for and the establishment of this great new military centre, and the Prince made several visits to the site in the early days of its construction, making suggestions and directing certain plans. It was he who propoFed that a suitable residence should be built on the outskirts of the Camp for the convenience of the Queen on her future visits to the Army at Aldershot. The outcome of this was the building in 1855 of the wooden bungalow-style "Royal Pavilion," the site of which was chosen by the Prince. It was on 10th June, 1855, that Queen Victoria first visited Aldershot. Accompanied by the Prince Consort and General Knollys, she inspected "The Camp," and reviewed the whole garrison, at the conclusion of which the Royal Party dined at the new Royal Pavilion, the meal being served in a large circular marquee set up in the grounds. The Queen again visited Aldershot in July, but it was not until April, 1856, that she first took up residence at the Pavilion. Thereafter the Royal visits to Aldershot became a regular feature in the Palace life, and many were the spectacular parades and reviews held on Laffans Plain, in the Long Valley and on "The Quecn's Parade" between North and South Camps. Visiting sovereigns of foreign powers were inevitably invited, as part of the programme of state visits, to witness one of the great parades which were held in their honour. One of the most impressive parades was held in July, 1856, * Warbag, Willenis and Beaumont Barracks, the former partly dernolishcd in 1959 t Dcniolishcd in 1959-60 for the construction of new married quarters on the sites. and the site acquired by the Aldershot Borough Couccil. I0 Snlnntoricn nrrd Bndojos Barrocks nrrd tkc Aiwirrc. RM~ (lt~'cl/irr,qtori Aueriirr), circri I SXO Reproduced from "Rock's Album of Aldershot," by kind permission of Rock Bros., Ltd., London, E.2. Tke origirtal Aldershot "Time Gnrr", which sfuodfrom 1856 to 1873 at the toy if Grin Hill, and was firpd nt I u'clock nnd 9.30 p.m. each day. I1 when the Queen, accompanied on that occasion by the Prince Consort, the Prince of Wales, the King of the Belgians and Prince Oscar of Sweden, reviewed the troops who had returned from the Crimea. Soon the life of Aldershot settled down to a regular routine. It was the permanent station of "The Division at Aldershot," and here it was that the Army carried out its training on the heaths and tracts of pine and gorse-covered wastes which had become the War Department lands stretching from the outskirts of Woking to Fleet. The Camp began to assume a more permanent character, and fine solid buildings were erected. The Royal Garrison Church of All Saints, known from earliest days as "The Red Church," was built in 1863. The Prince Consort`s Library was opened in October, 1860, and as the years went by further buildings which are still standing were erected. Despite the many changes and the development and rebuilding which have taken place in the past hundred years, it is interesting to note that two of the original wooden camp churches remain to this day: they are the Roman Catholic Church near the Cambridge Hospital, and St. Aidan's Garrison Church in Evelyn Wood's Road in Marlborough Lines, North Camp. The St. George's Garrison Church in Queen's Avenue was built in 1892, and the youngest of the garrison churches, the Church of St. Andrew of Scotland, in 1939. The first military gymnasium, now part of the Headquarters establishment of the Army Physical Training Corps, in Queen's Avenue was built in 1861. The Cambridge Hospital (with its tall clock tower which dominates the Aldershot skyline and can be seen from the Hog's Back as one approaches Aldershot from Guildford) was erected in 1873, and the present-day Headquarter Offces were built in 1894-5. Previous to this the Alderrhot Military Headquarters was in a line of wooden huts on the rising ground, along which today runs Knollys Road. Outside the main hut stood a large bell set up on a wooden platform. This bell was brought home from Sebastopol at the end of the Crimea War, and on it an orderly struck the hours; later it was removed from its site and set up in the clock tower of the Cambridge Hospital. Another feature in the life of the Camp in the early days was the firing of a signal gun at midday, and again at 9.30 p.m., as a signal for men to return to their quarters before "Lights Out." The gun was located until 1873 on the site of the Cambridge Hospital, hence the name of Gun Hill, but when the hospital was built the gun was removed to near the entrance to the Military Cemetery on Thorn Hill. The practice of firing the signal gun continued up to 1914. As the years went by both the camp and the town settled down to an orderly existence enlivened by the great parades and reviews and the departure of troops to the many theatres of war in the latter years of the nineteenth century. Away went the marching columns, their home service helmets replaced by the white foreign service headdress, down to the Government siding or the town station, the bands playing "Add Lang Syne" as the trains pulled out to bear the men away to the plains of India, the sands of the Sudan, and the rugged mountains of the North-West Frontier. The value of Aldershot as a military centre was proved in the South African War; over 60,000 men had been mobilized, equipped 2nd sent overseas within a few months of the outbreak of war. They departed with bands playing, amid scenes of great enthusiasm and patriotic demonstrations. Throughout the war Aldershot continued to be the home base for the training and dispatch of troops to the Cape. * * * * * The outbreak of war in I914 saw great activity at Aldershot. Here the original British Expeditionary Force was mobilized and dispatched to France, an event which is remembered each year by the great "Old Contemptibles" parades on the anniversary of the mobilization, held annually at the Royal Garrison Church. With the departure overseas of the Regular Army, Aldershot became a great training establishment, and here many of Kitchener's "New Army" divisions were formed. Many new camps sprang up in the area, and throughout the war the Aldershot "military machine" functioned in the provision of trained men for service in every theatre of operations. Benveen the wars Aldershot was the Headquarters of the 1st and 2nd Divisions, and as "The Aldershot Command" it carried on its traditional role of training. One of the great features of the life of both the camp and the town was the annual Aldershot Tattoo, which by 1939 attracted more than half a million spectators to Rushmoor Arena. The Tattoo, which had its beginnings in the Torchlight Displays and the "Grand Military Fetes" in the grounds of Govern- ment House in the eighteen-nineties, had grown into a great national event becoming more popular as the years went by and was the means of raising money for military charities. Thousands were thrilled by the spectacles and Dageants and the music of the massed bands, and the magnificent finales provided I0 an unforgettable sight. The last of the great Tattoos took place in July, 1939, and a month later the men who took part had been mobilized and were en route to France. As in the 1914-18 war, Aldershot again became a great training centre, and the greater part of its barracks was occupied by the 1st Canadian Army, Aldershot becoming the U.K. base for the Canadians throughout the war. Aldershot was one of the concentration areas for the Invasion Army in 1944, and from here the convoys moved down to embark for the Normandy beaches. With the return of peace following the final defeat of the Axis Forces and the Japanese in 1945, the ditary role of Aldershot was changed. The overseas and occupational commitments of the Army were such that Aldershot did not immediately revert to its role as a peace-time garrison. It continued to function as a training centre for the National Service Army and continues so to do, although it is the home station of the Regular battalions of the Parachute Regiment and is the Headquarters of the Airborne Forces. In April, 1954, the Military Centenary of Aldershot was celebrated by a great ceremonial parade, in which some 3,000 troops marched through the town, the salute being taken outside the Town Hall by the General Oacer Commanding Aldershot District, Major-General (now Sir Douglas) Campbell and the Mayor (then Alderman F. Stay, o.R.B., J.P.). It was a great parade worthy of the traditions of military Aldershot, which has so rightly come to be known as "The Home of the British Army." I2 I3 E. H. No. 766. GENERAL ORDER. HORSE GUARDS, S.W., Libraries. .:--(I 860). In announcing to the Oficers of the Army and Militia the opening of the Librnry at Aldershot, Imsented for their use by His RoyaI Highne.;5 the Prince Consort, the Duke of Cninbridge congratulates them on this ndditioid proof of` the interest whicli the Prince Consort take3 in their eliare, and commends to their especial care the preservation of n gift so graciously bestowed, and SO. lriglily beneficial to the Service. By Order of His ItOYAL 1hHhTE66, ne General Commandinpin- Chief; JAMES YORKE SCARLETT, Adjutant- General, F & T 1500. 9 60. THE HISTORY OF THE PRINCE CONSORT'S LIBRARY By LIEUTENANT-COLONEL L. H. YATES, O.B.E. (Retd.) Librarian IN THE ROYAL ARCHIVES at Windsor is a letter written by Colonel Phipps on behalf of the Prince Consort on 1st June, 1859, to Major-General J. Peel, Secretary of State for War, stating that His Royal Highness was desirous of presenting a collection of 1,000 books to the officers at the Camp at Aldcrshot and of providing a suitable library in which they might be kept. The site for the building, off the Farnborough-Famham road, was selected after considerable correspondence with the Prince Consort. His detailed interest is evident from one letter in which he states his desire to see the building surrounded by grass since the Camp area suffered under the clouds of durt rising from Long Valley and Laffan's Plain. The plans for the Library were drawn up by Captain Francis Fowke, Royal Engineers (later responsible for the design of the Albert Hall), and personally approved by the Prince. Under Fowke's super- vision, work began in September, 1859, and was completed in September, 1860. His Royal Highness not only presented many of the books from his personal library and bore the cost of the building, but also provided for the furnishings, the planting of trees and shrubs and for the Library's upkeep and maintenance. Among the bills still kept at Windsor is one from Messrs. Standish of Ragshot for ,Cj38 9s. for trees and shrubs, and another from Messrs. Hill and Smith for L7 os. 6d. for garden seats. Both these firms, the former under another name, are still in existence. Bookbinding cost A665 15s. 6d. Prints came from Paris and Vienna; many of the foreign books from Messrs. Williams and Morgate and other books from Messrs. Bumpus-names still well known among book- sellers. The total bill, including building, furnishing, the provision of additional books and prints and the laying out of the grounds was ,Cj4,183 3s. 4d. After the death of the Prince Consort in December, 1860, Queen Victoria made it known that she wished to continue the Royal interest in the Library and gave orders that all requirements for its maintenance were to be met from the Privy Purse. The opening of the Library was announced to the officers of the Army and the militia in a General Order from the Horse Guards signed by General James Yorke Scarlett, the Adjutant-General, who was to command in Aldershot from 1865 to 1870. The order was dated 14th September, 1860, and was reproduced, together with the "Rules for the Conduct of the Library," in the Army List published in that month. It commended to the "especial care" of the officers "a gift so graciously bestowed and so highly beneficial to the service." Unhappy difficulties were experienced in the appointment of the first librarian. The original choice was a Corporal Weston of the Royal Engineers. However, he did not assume ofice, for a few days before the opening of the Library it was discovered that he was a deserter from the Inniskilling Dragoons, and a substi- tute had to be found at short notice. For this mishap the General Oficer Com- 4 I4 IS manding at Aldershot, General Pennefather of Crimean fame, and his two subordinate generals, suffered the personal displeasure of H.R.H. The Prince Consort. As a temporary measure, a Sergeant Wellington of the Royal Engineers and a Lieutenant Eustace of the 49th Regiment (later to be known as the Royal Berkshire Regiment) were accepted, and the Library was able to open on 5th October, 1860. Eventually, after other names had been submitted to the Prince Consort, Sergeant G. Gilmore of the 49th Regiment was approved and appointed librarian. A large number of the books on strategy and tactics were in French or German, and it was thought essential that the librarian should have a thorough knowledge of both these languages. Gilmore, though of German birth and speaking the language fluently, was sent to Jersey to learn French. His appointment was finally confirmed on 18th May, 1861, and he received A36 per year (paid for by the Prince Consort and later from the Privy Purse), in addition to his Army pay, until he retired on a pension of 2s. 6d. a day in 1891 after thirty years' devoted service. It is of particular interest that Miss Gilmore, a daughter of Sergeant Gilmore, is still living. A Quartermaster-Sergeant Bex, also of the Royal Berkshire Regiment, was next appointed librarian, but since I924 the post has been filled by retired officers. The original rules of the Library were stringent ones. No books were to be "taken out of the Library on any account," and smoking was only permitted in the room set aside for that purpose. It was not until 21st October, 1863, that certain books were allowed out of the building, and by 1873 some 1,800 volumes were available for circulation. The original registers of attendance, in Sergeant Gilmore's handwriting, give some useful information. In the first year the number of visitors was 552. Then only officers of the Regular Army and the Militia were permitted to use the Library. In 1959, with the Library open to all ranks and their families, the number of borrowers was 6,787, of whom 3,790 were officers! The popularity of the various types of books taken out in the early years is shown by a record for 1877, when military biography headed the list with 252 volumes, followed by military history with 246 and military science with III. The original Library had sections on military history, strategy and tactics as well as others on foreign armies, their uniforms and their weapons. Certain of the French and German books have been moved to the War Office Library in Whitehall and to the Royal Military Academy Library at Sandhurst. Some of the original books are, however, still available and a number still in use. Many of the coloured prints have been loaned to various institutions and Army messes, and the fine set of Indian Army uniforms in the Ackermann series is in the Indian Army Room at the Royal Military Academy. Regular reports of the meetings of the Library Committee were sent to the Prince Consort. The first was dated 18th October, 1860-Just thirteen days after the Library opened! At a meeting held in November, 1861, it was proposed to ask Royal permission to hold lectures in the building. Permission was granted, and lectures were duly held. But in 1887 there were still only 2,160 books in the Library, and at the instigation of the D.A.A. and Q.M.G., Major E. Hutton (later Lieutenant-General Sir Edward Hutton), the Aldershot Military Society, under the patronage of H.M. Queen Victoria and the vice-patronage of H.R.H. The Duke of Connaught and the Rt. Hon. the Secretary of State for War, was founded on ~3rd December, 1887, with the object of "stimulating professional interest by reason of an augmented library and occasional meetings for the purpose of holding discussions and lectures on the current military topics of the day." For many years the deliberations of the Society were published in booklet form by Messrs. Hugh Rees of Pall Mall. In 1911 the lecture hall was built, and it continued to be used by the Society for lectures and discussions, as well as for large-scale indoor exercises, war games, Staff College and promotion examina- tions-for all of which purposes it is used today. A glance at the names of members of the Society will show that many of our military leaders in the South African War, and in the two world wars to follow, had been members and had played an active part in running the debates, organizing the indoor exercises and serving on the Committee. Up to 1935 the subscriptions of members of the Aldershot Military Society provided money for the purchase of new books, and the Privy Purse bore the cost of maintenance of the Library. In this year the War Office assumed responsibility for both upkeep and provision, and the Society as such came to an end. All books, prints, pictures, together with the funds of the Society, were transferred to the care and custody of the General Officer Commanding at Aldershot, who continues to remain responsible and who still delegates certain duties to a committee to ensure that the running and policy of the Library closely follow the original purposes of its founder. With the reorganization in 1935, the Prince Consort's Library became also a Class 11 library under the Directorate of Army Education. This not only meant that the scope of the Library was extended to cover non-military subjects and 16 I7 fiction, but that its amenities were open to all ranks, their families, certain civilians employed by the War Department and some others. Today, in addition to a number of the original books, the Library holds a complete set of Army Lists dating from 1759 and bound volumcs of the]otrmal ofthe Royal United Srrvices Imtitntion from 1858. Its military books are divided into 150 snbsections, including a very large biography section, and it has in addition the range of any normal library of books of a non-military character and fiction. Although most of the new acquisitions are by purchase through the Institute of Army Education, the librarian is willing to acquire old books either by purchase or by gifts from individuals who for one reason or the othcr may be forced to part with their libraries. Postal requests for books on military subjects come from all over the country and sometimes from abroad. The Centenary of the Cadet Force was the reason for a recent request from Birkenhead School for the loan of Rife Drill for Volunteers 1860. An even more interesting link with the past is through the Victoria Soldiers' Library, Aldershot, which has now ceased to exist. In 1854 Queen Victoria sent boxes of books to her troops in the Crimea, and 720 of these (some of which are now in the Prince Consort's Library) formed the nucleus of the Victoria Soldiers' Library which was opened by General Knollys on 1st July, 1859. A function of this library was the provision of books to unit reading rooms. This service is continued by the Prince Consort's Library for units in Aldershot District, and there are some 18,000 books out on bulk loan at any one time. The connection with Windsor and the Royal Family has never been broken. The first Royal visitor, apart from the Princc Consort himself, was Queen Victoria, who, accompanied by Prince Arthur and the Crown Prince of Prussia, was shown round the Library on 5th April, 1861. For eighty-five years the Priw Purse maintained the Library, which has been throughout its association with the Palace the recipient of a number of Royal gifts. In a letter dated 5th March, 1862, Queen Victoria made known that she was presenting a large lithograph engraving after Winterhalter of the late Prince Consort, and she requested that it be hung in some prominent position in the Library. It may be seen today on the rails of the north gallery facing a similar portrait of Queen Victoria. Leavesfrorn the Journals of Her L$ in the Highlands was presented and inscribed by Queen Victoria in 1868. H.R.H. The Duke of Connaught, who commanded in Aldershot from 1893 to 1898, presented the fine portrait of H.R.H. The Duke of Cambridge, Commander-in-Chief I 856-95, which now hangs over the inside entrance. A set of nine water-colour reproductions of "The Camp" in its early days, from the collection at Windsor, was presented by H.M. King George V. To mark the centenary of the Library, Her Majesty The Queen has been graciously pleased to present a gift and in order to maintain the Royal interest taken in the gardens by the Prince Consort, to permit the planting later in the year of an oak tree from the Windsor estate in the Library grounds. others, the preservation of which over the last one hundred years has been the These further Royal gifts, "SO graciously bestowed," will be added to the ~ especial care" of the officers of the Army. `< MILITARY THOUGHT I 860 By D. W. KING, o.B.E., F.L.A. War Ofice Librarian THE PRINCE CONSORT'S LIRRARY was established at a time when considerable change had taken place in the strength and composition of the British Army. At the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1854 the Regular Army was made up of 26 regiments of cavalry and 110 battalions of infantry, together with a number of Colonial Corps carried on the United Kingdom establishment. The Royal Artillery, the Royal Engineers and the Royal Sappers and Miners formed a separate force under the Board of Ordnance, and the Commissariat was adminis- tered by the Treasury. The Army had had no supply and transport corps since the disbandment of the Royal Waggon Train in 1833. The Treasury gave up its control of the Commissariat at the end of 1854, and in 1855, following the demise of the Board of Ordnance, the Royal Artillery, the Royal Engineers and the Royal Sappers and Miners were incorporated in the main body of the Army. (The last two corps were amalgamated in the same year.) A Land Transport Corps was formed in 1855, and replaced by the Military Train in 1857. In the years from 1855 to r858 the number of infantry- battalions was increased to 128, and two additional cavalry regiments were raised in 1858. These changes in strength and composition took place during a period of drastic reform in the higher administration of the land forces. At the outbreak of the Crimean War no fewer than seven different departments exercised control over the regular and auxiliary forces. By the end of 1855 there were but two, the newly created War Department and the Office of the Commander-in-Chief at the Horse Guards. The reform of the central administration and the increase in the strength of the Regular Army was accompanied by a considerable expansion of the auxiliary forces, the general control of which passed from the Home Office to the War Department in March, 1855. At the beginning of the eighteen-fifties the only active component of the auxiliary forces was the Yeomanry. The Militia was reorganized in 1852, and the Volunteers were revived in 1859. By the early eighteen-sixties the auxiliary forces had reached a strength of 258,000-79,000 in the Militia, 16,000 in the Yeomanry, and 163,000 in the Volunteer Force. (The strength of the regular forces at this period was 225,000.) In the years immediately before the establishment of the Prince Consort's Library the Army had engaged in two major campaigns, the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny. The latter led to the demise of the East India Company and the incorporation of its European troops in the British Army in 1861. The Crimean War had brought home the necessity of having properly trained staff officers. The lack of these had been the principal cause of the administrative failures in the Crimea: It is no exaggeration to say that no soldier existed (in 1854) wit11 a conception of the requirements of an overseas campaign on a large scale. None had any idea of the functions of the Staff. Lord Panmure, Secretary 18 I9 of State for War, who assumed office whilst things were at their worst at the beginning of 1855, realized the cause. He wrote: "The system by which an army should be provisioned, moved, brought to act in the field and the trenches, taught to attack or defend, is non-existent." And again, "We have no means of making general officers or of forming an efficient Staff." (Godwin-Austen, The StaJ'arid the Staf College, pp. 88-9.) The task of creating a body of trained staff officers was one to which the Duke of Cambridge immediately applied himself after his appointment as General Commanding-in-Chief in 1856. It was, in fact, a matter in which the Duke and the Prince Consort had long been interested. In April, 1857, a Horse Guards Circular was issued laying down the qualifications requisite for future staff officers. Thesc included a need "to be thoroughly acquainted with geography and military history, especially as related to the campaigns of ancient and modern commanders." In 1858 the Sen;or Department of the Royal Military College was reorginized and bccame the Staff College. (The Senior Department had done good work in the training of staff officers in its early days following its foundation by the Duke of York in 1799, but had languished in the years of peace after Waterloo.) The literature acquired by the Prince Consort's Library at the time of its establishment reflected the general service conditions of the day. As was to be expected, there was little if any recent material available in English dealing with such subjects as staff duties, strategy and the theory of war. This had not always been the case. In the Duke of York`s days there had been much published material in thesc fields. The 1811 Catalogue of Egertons, the military publishers, listed a number of books on staff duties, including Thiebault's Duties of the Efat Major ofthe French Amy, Reid's StafOjicer's Manual, and an anonymous work, The Brigade Major's Assistant. (This Egerton catalogue contained well over 100 books and pamphlets covering all aspects of an officer's work and provided a striking illustration of the degree to which the Duke of York's work in fostering the interest of serving officers in their profession had met with success.) All the books in the 1860 catalogue of the Prince Consort's Library dealing with staff duties were in French or German. There appears to have been no contemporary published book or manual in English on the subject, apart from a reprint of the Peninsular War Instructions issued by the Horse Guards in 1854. (The absence of a iecent official manual had been noted by an 1855 Parliamentary Select Committee.) The only book in English on the theory and principles of war available to the first users of the Prince Consort's Library was The Theory of War, illustrated by numerous exarnples .from military history (Catalogue No. IS^), by Colonel P. L. Macdougall, the Commandant of the Staff College. The one other contemporary English work was The Principles of War, or elementary treatise on the hkher tactics and strategy, by Captain A. F. Lendy, published in 1853. (Lendy was a well-known military "crammer.") The 1860 catalogue listed but one book in English under the headings "Tactics" and "Minor and Secondary Operations of War"-Lallemand's Principles cf the Minor Operations of War, a translation of a work published in Paris many years before (No. 285). This, however, was an omission, for several tactical works in English had appeared in the eighteen-fifties, among them a translation from the German of General 20 21 Decker's The Three Arms, or Divisional Tactics and The Manual oj Field Operations adaptedfor the use of Oficers ofthe Army, by Captain J. W. Jervis. While Egerton's list of 1811 had contained some twenty books dealing with cavalry and infantry, only five works in English in these fields appeared in the Prince Consort's Library's 1860 catalogue. An item of particular note was Cavalry; its history and tactics, by Captain Noh (No. 605). This was the Captain Nolan who had been killed at Balaclava shortly after delivering the disputed message which led to the charge of the Light Brigade. There were but few books on artillery and military engineering in the stock of the Prince Consort's Library in 1860. This was probably due to the fact that both the Royal Artillery and the Royal Engineers had excellent libraries of their own. The Royal Artillery Library, founded in 1806, by 1826 already had a stock of several thousand volumes. The 1826 Catalogue and its 1830 Supplement together ran to over 270 pages. The Corps of Royal Engineers instituted a series of local libraries in 1846. By 1866 that at Aldershot contained about 120 volumes of Corps interest. English works on Army organization and administration were fairly pleritiful. The Army's unusual administrative arrangements before I 855 had frequently been the subject of parliamentary enquiries and the reports of a number of these enquiries were listed in the 1860 catalogue. The catalogue also listed under its organization head one of the first of the publications of the Army's Topographical and Statistical Department, which had originally been formed to provide information relating to the operations in the Crimea. This publication, Streugth, Compositiori aid Ocyanizariou of the Armies of Europe, appeared as item No. 423. The Topographical and Statistical Department was later to do much to remedy the difficulties caused through the lack of material suitable for study in connection with staff work by publishing translations of the more important French and German military text-books. Whatever may have been the deficiencies in English military literaturc in some fields, therc was certainly no lack of material dealing with the history of wars and campaigns. There werc few nineteenth-century British operations not recorded in some detail by those who had taken part in them. An appendix in Sir Charles Oman's Wdliryton's Army lists well over a hundred narratives of Peninsular War service, most of which had appeared well before 1860. It is surprising, thcrefore, to note what little literature relating to the Peninsular War the Prince Consort's Library possessed in its early days-some eighteen items in all, of which nearly half were in French or German. The catalogue did, however, list the three standard histories available at the time--Sir John Jones's Account cf the War in Spain, Portugal and the South of France (No. I795), the Marquess of Londonderry's Narrative ojthe PeninrdarWar (No. I 800), and Sir William Napier's Hixtory ofthe War in the Peninsula and the South ofFrance (No. 1825). It would appear that the Library's policy at this period was to confine the selection of campaign material to standard works in English, French and German. This material did, however, largely suffice to enable an officer to become "thoroughly acquainted with . . . military history, especially as related to the campaigns of ancient and modern commanders." MILITARY THOUGHT 1860-1918 By MAJOR E. W. SHEPPARD, o.B.E., M.C. (Retd.) THE PERIOD of our military history from 1860 to the eve of the First World War was marked by a succession of minor campaigns in China, West Africa, Abyssinia, New Zealand, Zululand, Egypt and the Sudan, a war with Afghanistan, and numerous expeditions on the North West Frontier of India, and culminated in a war against the Boer Republics of South Africa which ranked as the greatest overseas enterprise in which British troops had up to that time ever been engaged. The number of men employed in each of these wars varied from a few hundred to the force of half a million men sent to South Africa in the last and strangest of Britain's imperial wars. Between 1860 and 1875 our Army underwent a series of drastic reforms which, according to its great historian Sir John Fortescue, led to the death of the old long service army-the army which had won fame under Marlborough and Wellington and had conquered an empire greater than those of Assyria and Rome. The new model army which replaced it was based on short service, with a higher administration purged of the defects revealed by the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny, and with a rejuvenated Staff College enjoying a new scope and importance. The Indian Army was remodelled; the proportion of British service troops in India was increased; and the volunteer force of 18,000 came into existence to form a second line of home defence. Under the direction of Lord Cardwell, the most radical of British military reformers, the old infantry battalions were linked in pairs to form new territorial regiments; the purchase system for the appointment and promotion of officers was replaced by one based on seniority and merit; the periods of service with the Colours and in the reserve were fixed; and the second line formed by the Militia and the Volunteers was more closely linked with their Regular comrades. Yet, though the form of the Army underwent such drastic changes, the spirit of its old units survived and pervaded it. Officers and men were still drawn from the same social sources and regarded themselves as a Service apart from the nation; and British governments and the British people, as before, knew little about their army and disliked what they knew, and were content to pay its officers and men at minimum rates in peace and in war to demand Napoleons at cut prices and protest bitterly when they were not forthcoming. Contrary tu popular opinion, the period from 1860 to 1913 saw a marked increase of professional study and interest among the o&cers of the Army, which became more manifest from 1902 onwards, after the events of the Boer War had stressed the need for it. Much of this study was devoted to military history, particularly to the American Civil War 1860-5, the Franco-German War 1870-1, the South African War 1899-1902, and the Russo-Japanese War 1905. The pioneer in the study of the American Civil War was Colonel G. F. R. Henderson, who wrote a biography of one of its great figures, Stonewall Jackson, and in The Campaign of Fredericksbq and The Science of War threw a new and fascinating light on other aspects of its history, while his Battle qfspicheren was one of the earliest studies of an episode in the Franco-German War. Spenser 22 23 Wilkinson, in War and Policy, and W. R. Wood and J. E. Edmonds, in their History ofthe Civil War in the United States, followed up his work. The Franco- German War gaw rise to a spate of somewhat ephemeral literature, evidence OL the great impression made by the startling victories of the short service German troops over the French professional army. Translations of German books- V. D. Goltz's Nation in Arms and Von Moltke's Tactical Problems-were much in demand, and the British doctrine of strategy embodied in E. B. Hamley's Operations of War drew freely on the lessons of both these campaigns. The Boer War, as was natural, had an even greater influence on our military thought and training and gave rise to a fierce controversy on the correct employment of cavalry between the believers in shock tactics and the advocates of increased reliance on the fire power of the rifle. Erskine Childers, in War and the Armc Blanche, was the principal champion of the latter school, and he was backed by Lord Roberts, the British Commander-in-Chief in the war; while prominent cavalry leaders such as French, in his introductions to various German books- upheld the value of shock tactics, and Haig, in Cavalry Studies, also pinned his faith to these time-honoured methods. The future, as so often happens, proved the controversy irrelevant. The Russo-Japanese War provided more valuable lessons, and the British Oficial History and Sir Ian Hamilton's Staff 05cer's Scrapbook pointed them out clearly; but the differences between the conditions of that war and those expected to prevail in die European war, for which the British Army WAS being prepared from 1910 onwards, were thought to be too great for these lessons to be re!evant. Nevertheless, this preparation was well conceived and carried out under Lord I-Ialdane, who welded our first and second line forces into a united whole, with a Regular Expeditionary Force for service in Europe and a Territorial Army primarily designed for home defence, but prepared and willing, as the future was to show, to go overseas at need. Thus the army with which Britain entered on the First World War in 1914. though, as always, too smd in numbers, was in every othx respe:t the finest in oxr history as regads its armament, training and spirit. This war was on a far greater scale than any previous one in our history and saw our army multiplied and transformed. By 1918 it numbered 54 million men, and was no longer a small professional force but a nation in arms. The conditions of the conflict differed widely from those foreseen by its leaders and envisaged in its training manuals, and there had to be much adjustment of its armament and methods to meet them. The armies of its allies and its enemies, however, were similarly situated; but in one respect at least the British Army was better prepared than they to meet these conditions, because it had never been organized and trained, as they had, for one war only in one theatre, but had always to be ready to fight in unknown countries and under unexpected conditions. Few of the First World War theatres of operations were entirely unknown to officers familiar with our military history. The expeditionary forces sent to France and Flanders, the Black Sea area, the Middle East, and Africa were heirs to a long and creditable record of past campaigns fought in these areas. They were also using the same methods of experiment, adaptation, and improvisation which have been throughout our history the essential stock in trade of British generals and British troops. The army of the First World War was fortunate at least in this-that its best leaders were able to learn in some measure from our small wars how to wage and win this greater one. All military history shows that, however perfectly an army may be trained in peace, it will always have something to learn when it goes to war. No amount of theoretical peace-time study can guarantee victory, because victory is the result of action, for which the knowledge gained in such study can be only a preparation. Nevertheless, the aphorism of Von Moltke, the Commander-in- Chief of the invincible German army of the war of 1870, is still true today: "There is always a step from knowing to doing, but it is a step from knowing and not one from not knowing." 24 MILITARY THOUGHT 1919-194'j By MAJOR-GENERAL H. ESSAME, c.B.E., D.s.o., M.C. (Retd.) FIELD-MARSHAL WAVELL, in an article in The Times of 24th October, 1942, awarded the palm of military merit to Marlborough and Belisarius, followed by Welling- ton, Frederick the Great, Robert E. Lee, and Napoleon. He thought that Hannibal and Scipio should also find their place somewhere in the list. The selection from among the higher commanders of world War I1 of those who qualify for inclusion in this company will provide future historians with much scope for study. Undoubtedly many of our own commanders are likely to receive honourable mention for a high degree of competence. Practically all of them served at Aldershot at some time between the two wars and used the Prince Consort's Library. What they and their contemporaries read in this formative period of their careers is therefore of considerable interest. It must be very difficult for the young officer of today to realize how radically the conditions of life and service have changed. Most of the commanders of World War 11 served as junior regimental and staff officers in World War I in an over-expanded Army, faced so far as the main front was concerned by a military problem insoluble until the advent of the tank, improvement in artillery techniques and the intervention of United States made movement again possible. When peace came, they reverted to their substantive ranks in an Army the age structure of which had been hopelessly put out of gear. Promotion was by seniority until 1938. Anyone who reached field rank by the age of forty was considered lucky. The only hope of the officer who wished to rise above the rank of lieutenant-colonel was to secure a place at the Staff College. The odds against were ten to one. Even then, with commands held for four years and the iniquitous system whereby the higher commanders were enabled to play ``General Post," their prospects were nebulous. Despite their low pay and erratic promotion prospects, this generation enjoyed greater leisure and freedom of action than their successors today. Far fewer married at an early age; administrative duties were less absorbing; mers life flourished; moves were less frequent. Afternoons were for exercise and evenings free for study and amusement. The War Office advised-and, indeed, exhorted them-to read widely before sitting for the examination and read they did. The Staff College syllabus had a more academic bias than it has today. There were three papers in Tactics: one on "Future Developments," one similar in character to the present Tactics B, and one on "Small Wars and Duties in Aid of the Civil Power." Thc Military History paper in the late 'twenties demanded knowledge of Napoleon's Campaign in 1796, the Peninsular War, the Waterloo Campaign, the American Civil War, the Russo-Japanese War, the I914 campaign on both the Western and Eastern fronts, and finally Allenby's campaign in Palestine. Officers who served at Aldershot in the early 'thirties were fortunate, for the future Field-Marshal Wavell, then commanding the 6th Infantry Brigade, addressed his mind to the selection of books suitable for study. His list, issued in October, 1930, greatly influenced the demand for books from the Library. tIis choice throws considerable light on the mind of a great commander who was also a scholar. For strategy in general, he prescribed Henderson's Essence .f War and Maurice's British Strategy. Every officer, he thoupht, ought to read Mahan's Lije of Nelson and Pargiter and Eady's Arniy and Sea Power. For the 1796 campaign he recommended study of York von Wartenburgh`s Napoleon as a General and Foch`s Princkles of War. For the other campaigns he balanced what he thought were the most reliable authorities against others of a lighter character. For instance, the student of the Waterloo Campaign was told to read not only Ropes but the Creevy Papers and Mercer's Journal as well. Wellington's Army by Oman was a strong favourite. For the American Civil War, he suggested Wood and Edmonds's Civil War in United States, Maurice's Rohert E. Lee, Liddell Hart's Sherman, and Henderson's Stonewall Juckson, adding rather oddly, "For human side: John Brotvn's Body (poem)." It is interesting to note with regard to world War I that he apparently had a high opinion of Ironside's Tannenherg and Winston Churchill's World Crisis. He also listed Robertson's Soldiers and Statesmen and Liddell Hart's The Rea! War (later published as History of the Wo:ld War 1914-18). Naturally, he mentioned his own work on the PalesLine Campaign. Finally, he mentioned two volumes of the Official History--Volume I on 1914 and Volume I1 on Palestine, with the rider that Spear's Liairon 1914 should be read. So far as military history was concerned, these therefore were the books for the loan of which officers at Aldershot bombarded the librarian. Oficers are seldom studious by nature They do not often read for reading's sake. Fot many what was good enough for the Commander of the 6th Infantry Brigade was good enough for them. Some, however, read-and many claimed to have read-Winston Churchill's Marlboroucyh-Hir L$ and Times when it came out in 1933. It is doubtful whether many read Liddell Hart's Foch, which is a pity. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom left the majority cold: it was not their sort of wisdom, and he was not their sort of man. But all read C. S. Forester's The General. It revived memories of standing in mud for days on end and fighting battles in which they did not believe. They suspected that the Higher Command in World War I had fallen short of the standards of the great captains of the past. Intuition and the evidence of the development of the internal combustion engine which they saw around them convinced them that the Battle of Cambrai in November, 1917, had inaugurated a new phase in the development of the art of war. They therefore looked for guidance to higher authority within the Army and outside. There is an element of tragedy in the historv of the Army between the wars which it is only now possible to view with at least an element of detachment. World War I had cost nearly a million dead. Scarcely a family had been unaffected. The public turned with distaste from the very thought of another war. The cult of Armistice Day, the play journey's End, the cartoonists and imaginative writers all combined to lower the reputation of the professional soldier in the public esteem. In addition, the vast expenditure on the war had brought acute economic and social difficulties. The nation, in fact, temporarily lost sight of its destiny. In consequence, it got as its political leaders men lacking in strategic sense whose main anxiety was to avoid any risk of conflict which might lead to war. They therefore refused to make available the money needed to modernize the Army. 26 27 output was vast. Both looked back into the past in the search for first principles with historical insight and into the future with at least a touch of genius. Major-General Fuller, who had played a significant part in the development of the tank and who was offered, but later resigned, the command of the first Experimental Mechanized Force in 19.27, did not retire until 1933. Whilst servmg he was allowed considerable freedom to express his views. His Tanks in the Great War appeared as early as 1920. Thereafter in quick succession followed The Reformation of War, Sir John Moore's System of Training, The Foundations of the Science of War, On Future Warfare and Generalship; its diseases and their cure. He also turned to the American Civil War with studies of Grant and Lee. To sense the atmosphere of the age in which he lived, and as Field-Marshal Wavell would have said: "for human interest," the young officer today might well read Fuller's The Army in my Time. In the case of Liddell Hart, the books which probably exercised the most influence on thought within the Army were his Paris, or the Futnre of War, The Re-making of Modern Armies, The Stratqy of the Indirect Approach, History qf the World War 1914-18, and his When Britain goes to War. The reception of these books by those then in authority was mixed. There came a time when the younger officer sometimes found it inexpedient to quote the opinions of either of these writers. With Cyril Falls, the official historian of the campaigns in Egypt and Palestine, Macedonia and France 1917 they were on less controversial ground. Historically, prophets-and both Liddell Hart and Fuller were highly articulate prophets-have sooner or later clashed with established authority. It is now clear that both closely forecast the pattern of World War 11. Unfortunately, it was the Germans who most thoroughly absorbed their doctrine and put it into effect. In the early 'thirties, their books were being translated by the German General Staff and circulated. Guderian, who commanded the armoured forces which raced through the Ardennes in May, 1940, and swept onward to the Channel, admitted that he owed his inspiration to these two. Less controversial but also important in the period was Major-General Sir Charles Gwynn's Imperial Policing, which came out in the mid-'thirties and settled, probably permanently, the basic principles of the subject. There remains one significant book published in 1936. This was Air Marshal Slessor's Air Power and Armies, which, although differing from the purely air strategy favoured by the Air Staff, set out the principles on which the Second world War was, on the whole, fought by the Royal Air Force. Had it been given the attention it deserved, much misunderstanding and friction between the Army and the Royal Air Force might well have been avoided. Most of the commanders of World War I1 lectured at some time or other in the Library and borrowed books from it. To enter it today revives memories of them as they were in their prime, but above all of Field-Marshal Wavell, who in the darkest hour of the war gained overwhelming victory with insignifcant forces and who was called upon to bear a burden almost beyond human endurance-an Olympian figure, equali y at home on the battlefield. in conference. amongst soldiers and in the world of books. The R2ht Hon. Wimto~ Churchill, accotnp inicd by the G.O.C., General Lord Roiulirrson, inspecting the 4th Hirssars at Willems Barracks, 4th February, 1920. In this atmosphere, those occupying the higher positions in the Army could achieve little. They may have been too old to adapt themselves to a period of increasingly rapid change. All had been subjected to immense strain in the war. Around their necks hung the Cardwell System whereby one half-and the better half-of the Army served overseas, mostly in India. India's needs were for large numbers of infantry for internal security and mountain warfare. Any changes in the balance of arms had to be considered in relation to these requirements. Proposals therefore for the reorganization of the Army and the development of mechanized and armoured forces foundered on the rocks of Indian requirements and financial stringency at home. It must also be recorded that there existed within the Army itself an influential element whose main aims were to restore its pleasant pre-1914 social life and to maintain the cult of the horse. The rising generation of ambitious officers was thus forced to seek guidance in its studies from the many able officers in the middle ranks who had emerged with credit from the war and from writers not subject to the control of the War Office. Fortunately for them, they lived in what was probably the most creative period in the history of British military thought. This will always be associated with the names of "Boney" Fuller and Liddell Hart, but there were others. These two were highly combative, lucid and original men. Both had a sense of mission and the ability to express thrmselves in provocative and literary Engli\h. Their 28 HOW MILITARY IDEAS HAVE SHAPED THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD By CAPTAIN B. H. LIDDELL HART EIGHTY YEARS AGO, John Richard Green, in his History of the English People, that historical best-seller, delivered the statement: "War plays a small part in the real story of European nations, and in that of England its part is smaller than in any." It was an astoundingly unhistorical statement. In the light of today it has a devastating irony. That view may account for some of our subsequent troubles. For in recent generations, despite the immense growth of research in all other branches of knowledge, the scientific study of war has received too little attention in the universities, and too little aid either from them or from Government quarters. The universities' neglect of it had a close connection with the vogue for evolutionary history and economic determinism. The tendency has been to suggest that movements are independent of individuals and of accident; that "the captains and the kings" count for little; and that the tide of history has flowed on unperturbed by their broils. Its absurdities are palpable. Can anyone believe that the history of the world would have been the same if the Persians had conquered Greece; if Hannibal had captured Rome; if Caesar had hesitated to cross the Rubicon; if Napoleon had been killed at Toulon? Can anyone believe that England's history would have been unaffected if William of Normandy had been repulsed at Hastings? Or-to come down to recent times-if Hitler had reached Dover instead of stopping at Dunkirk? The catalogue of cataclysmic happenings, of history-changing "accidents," is endless. But among all the factors which produce sudden changes in the course of history the issues of war have been the least accidental. In reality, reason has had a greater duence than fortune on the issue of the wars that have most influenced history. Creative thought has often counted for more than courage; for more even than gifted leadership. It is a romantic habit to ascribe to a flash of inspiration in battle what more truly has been due to seeds long sown, to the previous development of some new military practice by the victors, or to avoidable decay in the military practice of the losers. The success of the Greeks over the Persians was not merely a matter of a battle-the battle of Marathon was but an incident in that tremendous struggle. The repeated Greek successes are adequately explained by their development of a tactical formation, the phalanx, supplemented by superior armour and the Ic-foot Doric spear. But within the arena of Greece itself the weak spot of the phalanx was probed by Epaminondas. Operating against the drill-drugged Spartans, he cleverly took advantage of the hoplites' natural tendency to edge to their right, their unshielded side. Thinning his own right wing, he held it back out of danger, while with his reinforced left wing he was able to crush his opponent's right. The Greek phalanx was finally overthrown by a mechanism more flexible than itaelf-the Roman legion. Polybius, who was an esen tially scientific historian of war, puts the issue in a nutshell: "The nature of the phalanx is such that men cannot face about singly and defend themselves." The close-packed men of the phalanx had an outward advantage over the more dispersed Roman foot, each of whom, as Polybius points out, had to "face two of the front rank of a phalanx, so that he has to encounter and fight against ten spears." "Why is it, then, that the Romans conquer i And what is it that brings disaster on those who employ the phalanx?" "There is but one time and one kind of ground in which a phalanx can fully work`-flat and open ground. In contrast, the Romans' formation was flexible, and also divisible. or is itself driven back, in either case its peculiar order is dislocated: . . . and when this occurs the enemy's rcserves . . . fall upon it in flank and rear." That was the decisive factor when the two formations met at Cynoscephalae. Polybius's analysis significantly reveals that dislocatiori was the real act of decision. The phalanx could only be defeated when its order had been dislocated. The condition is equally true of any modern force, although the effect may be achieved by upsetting the mind of its commander, or by interrupting its communications, as well as by dislocating its dispositions. The Marne in 1914 was but a greater Cynoscephalx. So was the Meuse crossing in 1940, which led to the collapse of France. The historical significance of this analysis is that it establishes so clearly the decisive part that a new military technique, and the inadaptability of an old technique, can play and has played in changing the course of history. The legion which overcame the phalanx was itself the recent produce of a military reform which had been still more fateful in its effect on history. At the outset of the Second Punic War the legion had proved incapable of coping with the real power of manauvre which Hannibal's army possessed in its elastically hinged cavalry wings, capable of exploiting the disorganization which the commander's art created among the enemy. The eventual victory of the Romans at Zama was by no means inevitable. It was achieved by a man, Scipio, who was not only a military artist but a military architect. It was due to his insight in realizing the fundamental flaws in the legionary tactics. He sought to create an equally effective cavalry arm and to develop a superior infantry pivot. In Scipio's new model legion the maniples had acquired a complete flexibility and the rear lines were used as a reserve for decisive manacuvre, not merely as a frontal reinforcement to fill the gaps. The ultimate decline of the legions can be traced to the fact that the Romans, like so many armies before and since, forgot the lcssons which they had called from defeat to produce victory. As time wore on, the legion lost its tactical mobility and began to grow stiff in the joints, partly through garrison service and partly through the arthritis of tradition. From the ashes of the Empire emerged the new-old Byzantine Empire. When Justinian mounted the throne of Constantinople, the barbarian tide had almost engulfed the Mediterranean world, and the legacy of Rome seemed likely to be 4` Now, whether the phalanx in its charge drives its opponents from their ground, 30 divided between Vandals, Goths and Persians. It was preserved by the dtary renaissance that took place under Justinian's generals, Belisarius and Narses. War was studied more scientifically than in any army until that of France in the late eighteenth century. This activity of military thought bore fruit in a flexible divisional system which anticipated by a thousand years the reforms of 1788. The tactical handling of this instrument was based mainly on the strong cavalry arm, composed of horse-archers and heavy armoured cavalry. These were combined in a way closely parallel to the modern tank tactics applied by Rommel in North Africa, where Belisarius had also operated. It may be of historical interest to add that I took this historical combination as a guide in working out a system, thirty years ago, of tank tactics that was adopted in Britain's first armoured brigade-the first that was created in any country. That fact is a reminder of two familiar sayings: "Nothing is new under the sun" and "the wheel comes full circle." The supremacy of the mounted arm endured for nearly a thousand years. It was first checked in the thirteenth century by the Flemish, Swiss and Scottish pikemen. Their tactics were in essence a revival of those practised by the Greek phalanx. They were startlingly successful in Europe, where the cavalry mind had become cluttered up with the conventions of chivalry. But the success of the Scottish "schiltron" was short-lived. For a few years after it had produced the defeat of the English at Bannockburn, two "disinherited" Normans, Edward de Baliol and Henry de Beaumont, compounded the answer to it in an unauthorized expedition to regain their Scottish fiefs. They used their English archers to gall the flanks of the "phalanx" until it became disordered, and then threw in their small mounted reserve to complete the issue. This experiment at Dupplin in 1332 was repeated a year later at Halidon Hill by Edward 111 to the greater discomfiture of the Scots. It then became the key to victory in the Hundred Years War against France. For it was the tactical method of Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt. The ultimate loss of England's conquests in France was due more to the advent of artillery than to that of Joan of Arc. Not only did the chain of castles fall like ninepins before the French artillery train, but the latter provided the decisive answer to the English tactical method on the battlefield. Then early in the sixteenth century the French in turn werc the victims of a new development, and suffered from a new weapon, a reverse curiously similar in form to those of Crecy and Poitiers. At Pavia, in 1525, the French were thrown into disorder on meeting a dispersed line of 1,500 "skilful, practised and artful" Spanish arquebusiers-men using the prototype of the musket-who had been trained to such a degree of flexibility that they could wheel and face in any direction "without word of command." Pavia ushered in the reign of individual firerams and spelt the doom of shock arms. It also ushered in the great era of Spanish power in Euiope. And the fame of the Spanish terrios was founded on a school of thought inspired by Gonzalo de Cordoba. The next great military change coincided with the uprising of a new power in Europe. Introduced by Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, it is the key to his astonishing career of success, which was within reach of creating a vast Protestant confederation under Swedish hegemony when he was struck down at Lutzen. His victories were due to the instrument which he had created and inspired rather than to any superlative art of his in strategy or tactics. He increased the musketeers to two-thirds of the army, and formed them for firing in a three-deep line, whch remained the custom for another two centuries. His administrative reforms were hardly less significant than his tactical. His was a regular army, regularly paid, endowed with a proper supply system. Gustavus also initiated a revival of cavalry, which had lost its essential momentum. He used his musketeers and his new mobile field artillery to prepare the way for the charge. Thus, like Scipio, he made his mounted arm a real striking arm, operating decisively on the flanks of his offensive infantry pivot. It was this "re-mobilization" of cavalry, together with the administrative reforms, which most influenced warfare and history in the generations that followed. English history within a generation was to experience its greatest cataclysm, and the triumph of the Commonwealth over the royal power was achieved by a military instrument, the famous "New Model" army. Its opera- tions were based predominantly on its cavalry. Cromwell, indeed, relied almost as exclusively on his mounted arm as had Belisarius. ` This survey of some of the more important places where new military ideas changed the course of history in the previous two thousand years may provide a background for the last two hundred. Thereby it serves to bring out the significance of the successive currents of military thought that have had so tremendous and far-reaching an influence in shaping the world we live in today. The ftrst-with an emphasis on accelerated mobility-was, to a great extent, responsible for the triumphs of Revolutionary France and for Napoleon's Empire. The second-with an emphasis on mass and weight of numbers-culminated in the mutually exhausting trench deadlock of world War I. The third-reviving mobility by mechanical science-was generated in Britain after that war, but unfortunately more eagerly applied by the Germans, and produced their swift conquest of continental Europe at the outset of world War 11. The outstanding features of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century warfare were the rareness of battles and the indecisiveness of campaigns. The cause is largely to be found in the military conditions. Battle implies mobility, strategic and tactical. The army which seeks to fight another must be ahle to move quickly against it. On the battlefield the troops must be able to follow up the beaten enemy and complete the victory. Battle also implies the immobilization of the enerny, the paralysis of his powers of movement so that, in the first place, he may not be able to slip away; in the second place, that he may not be able to counter your strokes; in the third, that he shall not slip away "to fight again another day." These conditions of success were limited, if not lacking, in eighteenth-century warfare. Roads were little better than tracks. But a still greater handicap was the difficulty of feeding the army while in movement. It is proverbial that an army marches on its stomach. The normal eighteenth-century army could only wriggle on its stomach, because it was dependent on bulky supply trains and a chain of magazines. Thus it was easily blocked by the fortresses which grew up at all important road centres. 32 33 An even greater hindrance to battle in the eighteenth century was the incapacity of armies to paralyse their enemy's mobility. They lacked the means of making him stand and fight. If he disliked the prospect or deemed the situation unfavour- able, he could too easily slip away and retire behind a fortified barrier. Thus battles, usually, were by mutual consent. The incapacity of armies to force battle upon an unwilling foe was due, above all, to their own order of battle. The idea that an army should be drawn up in a rigid line of battle, normally with the infantry massed in the centre and the cavalry on the wings, had become fixed by the custom of centuries. The strategic handicap suffered by pre-Napoleonic armies was even greater than the tactical. Custom ordained that they should move as they fought, in a solid block. Each army was a single piece on the chessboard of war. And the comparison with chess may help us to realize the difficulty of cornering an opponent when only two pieces exist on the board. All that was changed by a revolutionary movement of military thought which started in France and preceded the political revolution there, with far-reaching effect on its prospects. The new movement towards mobility was generated by Marshal Saxe in his Reveries, published after his death. He began by remarking: "War is a science so obscure and imperfect" that "custom and prejudice, confirmed by ignorance, are its sole foundation and support." He went on to suggest many brilliantly imaginative reforms. By his explosive criticism he cracked the conventional casing of current military practice, and thus cleared the way for the great practical changes which .. such contemporary military thinkers as Bourcet and Guibert propounded. Bourcet-shut out from high command because he did not belong to the high nobility-was an expert adviser to successive commanders on the Franco- Italian frontier. By purposeful dispersion he mystified the enemy and kept them spread out; then, having penetrated the mountain barrier at a weak point, swiftly concentrated on their flank, external or internal, a force superior to what they could belatedly concentrate. In his plans, the advancing columns were always spread like a net that could be suddenly drawn tight around an isolated fraction of the opposing forces. This new method of calculated dispersion, based on flexibility, became the basis of Napoleon's practice half a century later. And its execution was made more effective because Bourcet`s grouping of the army into separate divisions had by then been developed into a permanent divisional organization. Moreover, the plan of campaign for the Army of Italy which Napoleon drew up in 1794 was a remarkably close reproduction of Bourcet's plan of 1744. A more direct influence on the young Nepokon was exerted by Guibert's thought. In his case there is no need to trace the connection, since Napoleon carried Guibert's book round with him on campaigns and often quoted from it. Rising two generations later than Bourcet, Guibert cut a much wider channel. While Bourcet influenced the minds of generals, Guibert's ideas spread through the military world as a whole. He was only sixteen when he first saw service in the field, and only twenty-nine when he produced his Essai general de Tactique. The keynote of Guibert's teaching was manoeuvre and surprise springing from a new mobility. It was above all in the accelerated movement of armies that Guibert, following Saxe, found the kcy to future decisiveness. The army should always be distributed in divisions, each forming a separate column. Advancing in this flexible group of columns capable of variable combination, an army should have an inherent and vital advantage over an enemy of superior strength but rigid pattern. Guibert's prescription for loosening the enemy's hold and throwing him off his balance was "Move the army on to the flank or rear of the enemy." Significantly, the manmuvre by which the whole army was placed astride the enemy's communications was to become the most deadly of Napoleon's strategic devices. To translate Guibert's conceptions into living facts, executive genius was needed. Napoleon provided it, and this was his distinctive contribution to the new warfare of mobility. In twenty years of war he made strangely little improvement in the methods and the instruments he had inherited. He himself confessed 3s much at St. Helena when he said: "I have fought sixty battles, and I have learned nothing which I did not know at the outset." But he had forgotten a lot. Indeed, it might be said that General Bonaparte applied a theory which created an empire for him; that the Emperor Napoleon developed the practice which wrecked his empire. The superiority of numbers which Napoleon enjoyed, from the immense resources of imperial power, had a growing effect on his conduct of war. If he still exploited mobility, he unconsciously pinned his faith to mass, and sub- ordinated his art to his weight. By giving him a blank cheque on the bank of manpower, imperial power led him into an extravagant way of war-and thus to final bankruptcy. But the lesson was lost on posterity, blinded by the glamour of his colossal gamble. The original Napoleonic method was obscured by the Napoleonic legend. Under its influence, military thought took a fresh direction in the nineteenth century. It was a movement in reverse, a swing of the pendulum back to immobility. The belief in mass, the creed of quantity rather than quality, was stamped on the military mind by the impress of Clausewitz. Writing on the eve of the mechanical age, he came to the conclusion that sheer number of men was the main factor in success. Looking back instead of ahead, Clausewitz declared his conviction that "Superiority in numbers becomes every day more decisive." He had no vision of how the machine-gun, and then the tank and the aeroplane, would cancel out his calculations. In the nineteenth century the development of the steam engine and the railroad -the first great mechanical inventions-fostered the growth of mass armies by making it easier to feed and maintain large numbers. But these new fixed lines of supply were strategically vulnerable-!$ they could be reached. That could be seen in the American Civil War, the first modern war. The opposing armies became increasingly immobile, because of their sheer bulk. Effective mobility was only regained when Sherman "cut loose" from his communications on his "march through Georgia" to the Atlantic coast, and then north through the Carolinas. 34 3s But the development of firearms was now beginning to make movement on the battlefield more difficult in face of fire. This check was already apparent in the later stages of the American Civil War, and became more evident during the subsequent wars on the other side of the ocean, particularly the Russo-Japanese War of 1905. Then in World War I the increasing power of the defence, established by the machine-gun, produced a state of deadlock. Armies had become bigger than ever with the aid of railroad supply, but they found it almost impossible to make any rapid advance once they had made contact with the enemy. To break the deadlock, they first tried to develop an overwhelming weight of artillery fire, but this only made possible a very limited advance. Moreover, it ploughed up the ground, and thus hindered the exploitation of any opening success in an attack. As a fresh aid to advance in this state of siege warfare, the tank was invented. But in World War I it was too slow a machine to have any decisive effect beyond the first stage of an attack. After World War I the main body of soldiers thought that the next war would continue where that had left off-with infantry-cum-artillery pushes in slow time, and with tanks merely a supplement to that battering process. But a small number of younger soldiers felt that there must be a better solution, if people would only search hard enough for it. A new possibility of reviving mobility seemed to lie in the development of faster tanks. The tank of World War I had been devised as a solution for the trench war deadlock-the defensive combination of trenches, wire entanglements and machine-guns that mowed down assaulting infantry in the open. Basically, the problem itself was only an intensified form of an old problem, that of storming a fortress. The tank itself was only a modernized adaptation of old solutions; devices like the battering ram, the Testudo, and the movable tower. It was a novelty only in two of its principal ingredients-the caterpillar track and the motor. Although tank-aided assaults cracked the enemy's front, they never completely broke through the defence. The tanks were too slow to exploit the crack, the horsed cavalry too vulnerable, the infantry too slow as well as too vulnerable. So the results of a victory were never decisive. The new post-war concept was different. It WAS a vision, not merely of "warfare with tanks" but of true "tank warfare." We thought of fast tanks as a means of resurrecting the golden age of cavalry-the period when wars were most decisive-by giving "mounted troops" a modern form of offensive mobility. It should thus be possible, we felt, to convert a breach of the defence into a complete break through, because such new mechanized forces might exploit any disorder in the enemy's lines more quickly than the enemy could rally, and drive through a gap before he could bring up reinforcements to block it. An extension of this new concept was that fast armoured forces should be able to operate strategically, independently of the main army, carrying out a long-range drive to cut the enemy's communications far back, where his main arteries of supply could be severed. In this way his whole army, and power of resistance, might be paralysed. This new concept was adopted in the instruction of the Experimental Mechanized Force, when formed in 1927, and developed more fully in the exercises of the 1st Tank Brigade when established in 1934 as a permanent formation in the British Army. Unfortunately, it was the Germans, enthusiastic- ally taking up this new British theory, who first applied it in war-with fateful effect. When the next war came, the handful of mechanized forces that had been created by then rcvolutionized warfare. A mere six divisions of this new kind produced the collapse of Poland within a few weeks. A mere ten divisions virtually decided the so-called "Battle of France" before the main mass of the German Army had even come into action. The effect of their drive to the Channel coast produced the collapse of France, with all its far-reaching con- sequences. No event in history has done more to change the course of history; that has become increasingly clear since the war ended. A happier fact was that in the war the resurgence of the Allies started from the brilliant run of victories achieved by a small British mobile force, barely 30,000 men, over an Italian army almost ten times its strength. The core of that force was the illustrious 7th Armoured Division, the "Desert Rats," which here seized the chance to show its ability to fulfil the new concept that had originated in Britain and first been demonstrated there in exercise trials. From this survey of warfare through the ages, it can be seen that most of the epoch-making developments have not come immediately and directly from the invention of a new weapon, but from a fresh tactical and strategical concept about the way of applying weapons and other means recently, though not newly, available. That was again true of the last war and its revolutionary technique. The motor, the tank, the aircraft were developed before, or during World War I, but they did not change the shape of warfare until World War 11, following the development of new military theories as to their use. Significantly, such new ideas did not usually come from the heads of the armed forces, nor from the established organs of military study, but from junior officers and others who had devoted themselves to a detached and independent study of current problems. That fact emphasizes the value of providing, as the Prince Consort's Library has done, the facilities for such study as a spring of fresh ideas. 37 36 EPILOGUE By LIEUTENANT-GENERAL SIR RICHARD W. GOODBODY, K.B.E., c.B., D.S.O. Adjutant-General to the Forces IT IS MOST APPROPRIATE that the Adjutant-General should contribute to a booklet commemorating the Prince Consort's Library Centenary, as it was a General Order signed by a predecessor of mine, General Scarlett, which announced the presentation of this Royal gift to the Army. Education in the Army was one of the ninny interests dear to the heart of the Prince Consort, and it was the subject of much discussion with the General Commanding-in-Chief. Prince Albert held particularly firm views on the education of the officer both before he entered the Army and whilst undcrgoing training for his commission, and this interest was demonstrated in the Prince Consort's concern for the affairs of Wellington College on the one hand and of the then Royal Military College at Sandhurst on the other. It was a natural corollary that he should provide for the further education of the officcr by establishing a reference library at Aldershot. The Library was founded when the Army was reawakening to the realization that the study of past campaigns was of importance in the training of the oficei. Later years brought many distinguished soldiers to Aldershot, and it would be impossible to assess the influence of this new view of military history and of the facilities provided by the Library on many of the commanders who came into prominence in subsequent wars. Sir Winston Churchill in the foreword reminds us that changing weapons in no way diminish the need to study the subject. Certainly the importance of the soldier studying the literature of his profession has never been greater than at the present time. Captain Liddell Hart elsewhere in this booklet considers the cffect of military campaigns on world history and how the actions of individual commanders have been affected by military thought. Many hctors contributc to the character of the great commander. The wisdom that determines his actions is derived from many sources, and one of these is military literature, which today is readily available to all ranks of the British Army. A century ago, as the first catalogue of the Library shows, there was little available in the English language to the student officer. Now there is a bewildering amount published. In an attempt to limit within reasonable compass the best of this literature a small number of modern books have been chosen for inclusion in the exhibition being held in connection with the Library Centenary. Doubtless, we would all wish to add our favourite author to thosc whose books are on display, but the selection does provide a balanced library from the welter of books confronting the student of military history. All the modern books on special exhibition are circulated throughout the Army Library Service, but I consider many of them should be the personal property of the officer and on his own bookshelf. If the Prince Consort's Library Centenary highlights again in 1960 the idcals and beliefs which led to the Library's foundation in 1860, it will have achieved the success we all wish it. 39