Great captains are made, not born.
It may be laid down as a general rule that the greatest military leaders of modern times have been the product of the systematic and intensive study of their profession. Of antiquity we cannot say the same for two reasons. The first reason is that we lack the records of the early preparation for command of the great captains of ancient times. The second reason is as follows: war being merely an extraordinary means of carrying a national or dynastic policy into effect, it is no more than an aspect of statecraft. In antiquity, diplomacy, one of our modern resources for the carrying out of policies without recourse to violence, was crude and ineffective. Therefore, war was almost the sole means available to a statesman when a policy of one state was opposed by another. War and statecraft were therefore intimately related and the heads of states were commonly instructed in the arts of war and themselves led armies in battle. Even in republics, such as Athens and Rome, those who held the civil power conducted wars likewise. Examples are Themistocles, Pericles, Pompey and Caesar. Moreover, this was more practicable in those days because war was not the complicated and technical business that it is today.
But from the time that gunpowder introduced not only a new technique but also an element of mystery into war—the gunners jealously guarded their trade secrets at first—the breach between soldier and civilian, especially between general and civilian, became wider. This was emphasized by the growth of professional armies.
When this process began, soldiers commenced to study carefully the art of war. Although there was fighting continuously, and men desirous of learning the technique of war went from one army to another to get experience, it would be a great mistake to assume recklessly that the great soldiers placed a premium on so-called “practical experience.” Those cadets who expected to embrace a career of arms studied intensively the works of the masters of war, especially those of antiquity: Vegetius, Aelian, Frontinus, Xenophon, Caesar, Tacitus, Plutarch and Polybius were religiously read and digested.
Maurice of Nassau, Saxe, Turenne, Montecuccoli, Marlborough, Gustavus Adolphus and Frederick the Great were thoroughly familiar with these classics; in many cases they themselves were great scholars and commented upon these masters and upon the campaigns of their predecessors. They would have ridiculed the pretentions of any officer who prided himself upon being solely a “practical” officer. Marshal Saxe not only read the classics and made a profound study of military systems, but he wrote treatises, among them his famous “Reveries” in which he quotes the ancient Roman practices. Prince Eugene regarded with complete contempt a military officer who was inferior in erudition to civilians of his class or rank. Montecuccoli modelled himself upon the Roman general Fabius. He knew the Punic Wars well. Not only that, but so great an admirer was he of literature and science that he helped to establish an academy for the study of history and poetry. Marlborough knew his Vegetius. Gustavus Adolphus “was fond of reading, well-versed in ancient literature, and intimately acquainted with the classical treatises on the art of war, from which he derived his tactical ideas.” He was a master of military literature. It does not need to be true to be significant that it is told of him that he always slept with a copy of Grotius’ De Jure et Belli et Pads under his pillow.
Nor did he have any use for so-called “practical” officers. For the education of those to whom he confided the leadership of his soldiers he had the best military treatises translated. They were instructed by the pupils of Maurice of Nassau and had to pass tests that would appall modern officers.
The army of Gustavus Adolphus was the military school of Europe. That king was the Xenophon of his day. Moreover, as Xenophon learned his theory of war at the feet of the great Athenian philosopher Socrates, so Gustavus did not scorn the learning of the English philosopher Bacon. In short, in the words of one writer, “It never entered the head of any soldier of the armies of Elizabeth, Henry of Navarre, or Maurice of Nassau, or Charles I, or Cromwell, or Wallenstein—that Ignorance was not Night’s daughter, and that any officer could regard lack of a general education as anything but a disaster to himself.” Perhaps the most striking example of the high regard in which military scholarship was held in those days is offered by the career of Ambrosio de Spinola. This famous soldier was born in Genoa in 1569 and began as a merchant in the Levantine trade. Early in life he accumulated a great fortune. His leisure and his wealth he expended in a study of military affairs. Spinola spent no less than six hours a day on these studies. He read Vegetius, Pliny, Caesar, Xenophon, Polybius and Plutarch. While still a merchant he came to be regarded as an authority on military matters. The King of Spain, then the head of the finest army in Europe, did not hesitate to commission him in his service. Spinola raised, organized, equipped, administered and led his own army. When it arrived in the Netherlands he was able to give the war-worn Spanish forces a pattern of discipline and steadiness, and when the Spanish Army broke, Spinola retrieved the situation. His first opponent was the redoubtable Maurice of Nassau, the first soldier of Europe, who had spent his life in the field. Spinola finally worsted this master and saved the Spanish cause from disaster. “He recognized, as did Sir Charles Napier two centuries later, before undertaking the conquest of Sinde,” said a recent writer, “that by reading alone can a soldier become a master of his art, or hope for true fame.”
Even the barbarian conqueror Tamerlane did not fail to recognize the value of study. To him a general and a ruler were the same, and so he made no distinction, but he stated:
“History and politics should be studied by a ruler, that he may know what has happened to kingdoms and realms, and wherefore and how it happened.” He said also:
“One experienced and able soldier can direct the efforts of thousands of thousands.” Even that blood-thirsty Tartar would have considered our recent attitude toward military education as that of ignorant savages. When Tamerlane went to war he called a council of plan-makers. These did not scorn the uses of learning. When about to invade India such a council was held and in it the Prince of Shaarohd quoted precedents from the Turki annals.
Of Admirals up to this time we have said nothing. This is because, up to the period which has been discussed, they were interchangeable with generals. Even Cromwell used Blake to command at sea. But those almost purely sea-fighters, Drake and Raleigh, were by no means ignoramuses; in fact Raleigh was a very learned man.
I do not know in how far the general public still considers Napoleon a heaven-born military genius, but among military men that legend has long been exploded. With them it is a commonplace that Napoleon himself denied this absolutely. He attributed his success to years of study and to habits of profound reflection. The quotations to prove this are so hackneyed among soldiers and sailors that I hesitate to employ them. But there is one striking conversation recorded in which Napoleon was discussing his campaigns with some of his marshals and one of them remarked to the Emperor that in all his wars he had learned nothing because his first campaign was by far the most brilliant. Napoleon frankly agreed, saying that in time of war one had no leisure in which to learn, but that one could learn war only in time of peace. The most brilliant of his campaigns was due to long and intensive study. Napoleon sent to the Directory for the records of Marshal Maillebois’ Italian campaigns of 1745 and it was upon a study of these that he based his own Italian wars. Napoleon at St. Helena said that only by a study of the great masters of war could a soldier hope to learn his profession.
It is also a commonplace among military men that the Prussian Army which had not fought since 1815, as a result of peacetime study of war, beat the Austrians in 1866 and the French in 1871, both of which had had recent practical field experience.
Not so generally known is the fact that the Archduke Charles, Suvarov and Wellington, Napoleon’s greatest rivals and opponents, were also great students; or that Jackson and Lee devoted years to military studies. Von Moltke was, of course, a profound student of war; and the greatest military genius since Napoleon, Skobeleff, was an omnivorous reader. Nelson also was a profound student.
But for some curious reason our own military men, like the British and French after the Napoleonic Wars, came to regard study as a positive detriment to successful conduct of war and to hold up the ridiculous ideal of the “practical” officer. The Spanish-American War, so inaptly handled that military historians often dismiss it with contempt as useless for study because everything was so clumsily done, shows the results of so perverted an ideal. The Boer War was much the same until the British sent for the great scholar Colonel Henderson to get them out of the mess they had got themselves into.
Hence the obstinacy with which our naval service has in the past ridiculed the idea of learning the arts of high command at a War College was a distressingly and shockingly perverted attitude such as even barbarians scorned in the past. There is not and there cannot be the slightest warrant for it. Fortunately, that era is now past.
Over 2,000 years ago the old Attic philosopher Socrates commented: “Kings and commanders,” he said, “were not those who held scepters merely, or those elected by the multitude, or those who gained authority by chance, or those who attained it by deceit, but those who knew how to command.”
Plato in The Republic records this Socratic dialogue:
“ ‘What then,’ said I, ‘as to the contest of war; does it not appear to require art?’
“ ‘Very much,’ said he.
“ ‘Ought we then to take more care of shoemaking than of the art of making war?’ ”
Socrates repeatedly urged those who aspired to lead in war to study carefully their craft. His arguments immediately appealed to Pericles, who once had the following conversation with the philosopher:
“ ‘Yet in military affairs,’ observed Pericles, ‘in which it is most requisite to act with prudence, and order and obedience, they pay no regard to such duties.’
“ ‘It may be so,’ returned Socrates, ‘for in military affairs, men who are greatly deficient in knowledge have the command of them—the most of our generals undertake to command without previous study.’ ”
The historian Thucydides makes it clear that so proficient did Pericles become that he had a grasp of the value of sea power unrivaled until our own day, and that had the Athenians followed his strategy after his death, the great Peloponnesian War would have had a different outcome.
If Socrates was so plain-spoken in all matters—and he was— it is clear why the politicians made him drink the poison hemlock.
But he did not mind; for he believed that the Truth will live; and he knew it to be true that, “As the whole state, in the perils of war, is entrusted to the care of the general, it is likely that great advantages will occur if he act well, and great evils if he fall into error.”
For this reason, a weighty enough one, and for no other, the United States Government had the vision to set up at Newport a Naval War College where naval officers could repair to study the art of war in time of peace.
The report of the board presided over by Commodore Stephen B. Luce, and of which Commander W. T. Sampson and Lieutenant-Commander C. F. Goodrich were the other members, led to the establishment of the U. S. Naval War College, where later Admiral A. T. Mahan wrote his epoch-making words on sea power. In its report this board stated:
“The bare statement that our naval officers not only do not study war as a science, but have no adequate school of practice, seems in these days of broad and liberal culture so extraordinary that it is alone, in the judgment of the Board, sufficient reason for the early founding of the institution which the Department now has under consideration.”
Until recently it has not been appreciated by the Service. In its early years it was difficult to force officers to attend.
But, “Those who came to scoff remained to pray,” and the Secretary of the Navy who started for Newport to close its doors forever, on the way was urged to read Mahan’s Influence of Sea Power on History and, stating that this one book alone was worth the money, became an ardent supporter of the institution.
Now that graduates who have felt the benefits of such a course of study are so numerous that their influence is widely felt there is a certain amount of competition for the privilege of attending. Moreover, beginning with this year, a Junior War College is opening its doors to spread the light of learning more widely and to give to younger officers some of the advantages now enjoyed only by those of higher rank.
This step has a double significance. Not only will it begin the process of learning earlier and so give more years of instructed service to the Navy, but it will take the pressure off the Senior college. Perhaps, even, it will prepare the way for the realization of the significant ideal set forth by Mr. Adams in his article "Economic Competition" in the UNITED STATES NAVAL INSTITUTE PROCEEDINGS, Vol. 29, in which the author states:
You need scientific men in the Navy, as well as practical seamen, but you also need economists and historians, for without these you will be weak in a vital point. You will lack a channel of communication with the public, and such a channel is essential both to you and to the nation.
The tide of sentimentality, of superficial buncombe, is ebbing. The radical with his quack remedies, the pacifist with his nostrums, is giving way before sober conservatism. Get-rich-quick schemes are being discredited. The salvation of hard work is again coming into its own. The military no longer expect to find sucking Nelsons or full-fledged Napoleons coming out of the Naval Academy or West Point. They have given over the search for the philosopher's stone and the secret of transmutation of metals and gone to work to study history and chemistry.
But there have always been and perhaps always will be those who seek for a facile explanation of the works of genius. Such a one, desiring to know the secret of the wonderful color effects gained by a great painter once inquired with what he mixed his paints. "With brains, sir!" was the sharp reply. That is the secret of the combination known as Victory: it is mixed with brains; and brains are cultivated only by study.