Tactics, Volume 1 (of 2). Introduction and Formal Tactics of Infantry

Note 186 — THE FORMAL TACTICS OF INFANTRY. (continued 4)

Walter Krueger translation

See Spaits, Mit Kasaken durch die Mandschurei. After the author had turned away in disgust from a Chinese execution, he wrote: “And we Europeans will feel just like this in war. We will get to a certain point where the strength of our will and our physical powers will succumb to the weakness of our nerves, and this state we will reach more quickly than did the Russians, who were better off in regard to nerves than members of those armies in which nervousness is carefully fostered.” See also this author’s remarks about Courage, ibid., p. 206.

[187] This complaint of the “void of the battlefield” is not new. A Saxon officer complains of it in his Vertrauten Briefen (Cologne, 1807), and the French officers report on the “void of the battlefield” in the fights around Metz. Bonnal, L’art nouveau en Tactique, p. 90.

[188] Revue des deux mondes, for June, 1902.

Return to THE FORMAL TACTICS OF INFANTRY. (continued 4)Return to THE FORMAL TACTICS OF INFANTRY. (continued 4)Return to THE FORMAL TACTICS OF INFANTRY. (continued 4)