Why Don't We Learn From History? (3 page)

Exploration should be objective, but selection is subjective. Its subjectiveness can, and should be, controlled by scientific method and objectiveness. Too many people go to history merely in search of texts for their sermons instead of facts for analysis. But after analysis comes art, to bring out the meaning—and to ensure it becomes known.

It was the school of German historians, headed by Ranke, who in the last century started the fashion of trying to be purely scientific. That fashion spread to our own schools of history. Any conclusions or generalizations were shunned, and any well-written books became suspect. What was the result? History became too dull to read and devoid of meaning. It became merely a subject for study by specialists.

So the void was filled by new myths—of exciting power but appalling consequences. The world has suffered, and Germany worst of all, for the sterilization of history that started in Germany.

The scientific approach

Adaptation to changing conditions is the condition of survival. This depends on the simple yet fundamental question of attitude. To cope with the problems of the modern world we need, above all, to see them clearly and analyze them scientifically. This requires freedom from prejudice combined with the power of discernment and with a sense of proportion. Only through the capacity to see all relevant factors, to weigh them fairly, and to place them in relation to each other, can we hope to reach an accurately balanced judgement.

Discernment may be primarily a gift—and a sense of proportion, too. But their development can be assisted by freedom from prejudice, which largely rests with the individual to achieve—and within his power to achieve it. Or at least to approach it. The way of approach is simple, if not easy—requiring, above all, constant self-criticism and care for precise statement.

It is easier, however, to find an index of progress and consequently of fitness to bear the responsibility of exercising judgment. If a man reads or hears a criticsm of anything in which he has an interest, watch whether his first question is as to its fairness and truth. If he reacts to any such criticism with strong emotion; if he bases his complaint on the ground that is not “in good taste” or that it will have a bad effect—in short, if he shows concern with any question except “Is it true?” he thereby reveals that his own attitude is unscientific.

Likewise if in his turn he judges an idea not on its merits but with reference to the author of it; if he criticizes it as “heresy”; if he argues that authority must be right because it is authority; if he takes a particular criticism as a general depreciation; if he confuses opinion with facts; if he claims that any expression of opinion is “unquestionable”; if he declares that something will “never” come about or is “certain” that any view is right. The path of truth is paved with critical doubt and lighted by the spirit of objective inquiry. To view any question subjectively is self-blinding.

If the study of war in the past has so often proved fallible as a guide to the course and conduct of the next war, it implies not that war is unsuited to scientific study but that the study has not been scientific enough in spirit and method.

It seems hardly possible that the authoritative schools of military thought could have misunderstood as completely as they did the evolution that was so consistently revealed throughout the wars of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A review of the record of error suggests that the only possible explanation is that their study of war was subjective, not objective.

But even if we can reduce the errors of the past in the writing and teaching of military history by soldiers, the fundamental difficulty remains. Faith matters so much to a soldier, in the stress of war, that military training inculcates a habit of unquestioning acceptance of the prevailing doctrine. While fighting is a most practical test of theory, it is a small part of soldiering; and there is far more in soldiering that tends to make men the slaves of a theory.

Moreover, the soldier must have faith in his power to defeat the enemy; hence to question, even on material grounds, the possibility of successful attack is a risk to faith. Doubt is unnerving save to philosophic minds, and armies are not composed of philosophers, either at the top or at the bottom. In no activity is optimism so necessary to success, for it deals so largely with the unknown—even unto death. The margin that separates optimism from blind folly is narrow. Thus there is no cause for surprise that soldiers have so often overnstepped it and become the victims of their faith.

The soldier could hardly face the test defined in the motto of the famous Lung Ming Academy, a motto that headed each page of the books used there: “The student must first learn to approach the subject in a spirit of doubt.” The point had been still more clearly expressed in the eleventh-century teaching of Chang-Tsai: “If you can doubt at points where other people feel no impulse to doubt, then you are making progress.”

The fear of truth

We learn from history that in every age and every clime the majority of people have resented what seems in retrospect to have been purely matter-of-fact comment on their institutions. We learn too that nothing has aided the persistence of falsehood, and the evils resulting from it, more than the unwillingness of good people to admit the truth when it was disturbing to their comfortable assurance. Always the tendency continues to be shocked by natural comment and to hold certain things too “sacred” to think about.

I can conceive of no finer ideal of a man's life than to face life with clear eyes instead of stumbling through it like a blind man, an imbecile, or a drunkard—which, in a thinking sense, is the common preference. How rarely does one meet anyone whose first reaction to anything is to ask “Is it true?” Yet unless that is a man's natural reaction it shows that truth is not uppermost in his mind, and, unless it is, true progress is unlikely.

The most dangerous of all delusions are those that arise from the adulteration of history in the imagined interests of national and military morale. Although this lesson of experience has been the hardest earned, it remains the hardest to learn. Those who have suffered most show their eagerness to suffer more.

In 1935 a distinguished German general contributed to the leading military organ of his country an article entitled “Why Can't We Camouflage?” It was not, as might be supposed, an appeal to revive and develop the art of deceiving the eye with the object of concealing troop movements and positions. The camouflage which the author wished to see adopted in the German Army was the concealment of the less pleasing facts of history. He deplored the way that, after World War I, the diplomatic documents of the Wilhelmstrasse were published in full, even to the Kaiser's marginal comments. The general concluded his appeal for the use of camouflage in the sphere of history by recalling “the magnificent English dictum ‘Wahr ist was wirkt.’ ” (Anything that works is true.)

The student of military history may be surprised not at the plea but that the general should appear to regard it as novel. History that bears the qualification “official” carries with it a natural reservation; and the additional prefix “military” is apt to imply a double reservation. The history of history yields ample evidence that the art of camouflage was developed in that field long before it was applied to the battlefield.

This camouflaged history not only conceals faults and deficiencies that could otherwise be remedied, but engenders false confidence—and false confidence underlies most of the failures that military history records. It is the dry rot of armies. But its effects go wider and are felt earlier. For the false confidence of military leaders has been a spur to war.

The evasion of truth

We learn from history that men have constantly echoed the remark ascribed to Pontius Pilate—“What is truth?” And often in circumstances that make us wonder why. It is repeatedly used as a smoke screen to mask a maneuver, personal or political, and to cover an evasion of the issue. It may be a justifiable question in the deepest sense. Yet the longer I watch current events, the more I have come to see how many of our troubles arise from the habit, on all sides, of suppressing or distorting what we know quite well is the truth, out of devotion to a cause, an ambition, or an institution—at bottom, this devotion being inspired by our own interest.

The history of 1914–1918 is full of examples. Passchendäle perhaps provides the most striking. It is clear from what Haig said beforehand that his motive was a desire to, and belief that he could, win the war single-handed in 1917 by a British offensive in Flanders before the Americans arrived. By the time he was ready to launch it all the conditions had changed, and the chief French commanders expressed grave doubts. Yet in his eagerness to persuade a reluctant British Cabinet to allow him to fulfill his dream, he disclosed none of the unfavorable facts which were known to him and exaggerated those that seemed favorable. When his offensive was launched on the last day of July, it failed completely on the part that was most vital. Yet he reported to London that the results were “most satisfactory.” The weather broke that very day and the offensive became bogged.

When the Prime Minister, becoming anxious at the mounting toll of casualties, went over to Flanders, Haig argued that the poor physique of the prisoners then being taken was proof that his offensive was reducing the German Army to exhaustion. When the Prime Minister asked to see one of the prisoners' cages, one of Haig's staff telephoned in advance to give instructions that “all able-bodied prisoners were to be removed from the corps cages” before his arrival. The chain of deception continued, and the offensive went on until 400,000 men had been sacrificed.

In later years Haig was wont to argue in excuse that his offensive had been undertaken at the behest of the French and that “the possibility of the French Army breaking up compelled me to go on attacking.” But in his letters at the time, since revealed, he declared that its morale was “excellent.” And the following spring he blamed the Government when his own army, thus brought to the verge of physical and moral exhaustion, failed to withstand the German offensive.

Haig was an honorable man according to his lights—but his lights were dim. The consequences which have made “Passchendäle” a name of ill-omen may be traced to the combined effect of his tendency to deceive himself; his tendency, therefore, to encourage his subordinates to deceive him; and their “loyal” tendency to tell a superior what was likely to coincide with his desires. Passchendäle is an object lesson in this kind of well-meaning, if not disinterested, untruthfulness.

As a young officer I had cherished a deep respect for the Higher Command, but I was sadly disillusioned about many of them when I came to see them more closely from the angle of a military correspondent. It was saddening to discover how many apparently honorable men would stoop to almost to anything to help their own advancement.

One of the commanders who cultivated my acquaintance assiduously, [Field Marshal Sir Archibald] Montgomery-Massingberd, asked me to collaborate with him in writing a book on the lessons of the war, and when we went out to study the battlefields together, I found that he evaded every awkward point and soon I came to realize that his underlying purpose in proposing such a book was to show how brilliant and unblemished had been the operation of the Fourth Army, of which he had been Chief of Staff. So I excused myself from assisting in that piece of advertisement. He also, I found, had a habit of dropping in my ear detrimental insinuations about other generals who happened to be competitors with him in climbing the military ladder.

He eventually reached the top of it, though not with my assistance, and his tenure of the post was marked by the worst period of stagnation in the Army's progress between the wars. That was all the more unfortunate because he came into office as Chief of the Imperial General Staff just as Hitler was taking over power in Germany. When Ironside became CIGS on the outbreak of war in 1939 and contemplated the list of the deficiencies in the Army's equipment, he was so appalled that he pointed to the portraits of Montgomery-Massingberd and his processor, Milne, in his office and vehemently exclaimed, “Those are the two men mainly responsible—they ought to be taken out and shot.” (That verdict was too hard on Milne.)

A different habit, with worse effect, was the way that ambitious officers when they came in sight of promotion to the generals' list, would decide that they would bottle up their thoughts and ideas, as a safety precaution, until they reached the top and could put these ideas into practice. Unfortunately the usual result, after years of such self-repression for the sake of their ambition, was that when the bottle was eventually uncorked the contents had evaporated.

I found that moral courage was quite as rare in the top levels of the services as among politicians. It was also a surprise to me to find that those who had shown the highest degree of physical courage tended to be those who were most lacking in moral courage, and the clue to this seemed to be largely in the growing obsession with personal career ambition—particularly in the cases where an unhappy home life resulted in an inordinate concern with career prospects. The other main cause in diminishing moral courage, however, was a lack of private means that led commanding officers to wilt before their superiors because of concern with the problem of providing for their children's education. That factor was very marked in the German generals' submissiveness to Hitler, and this became the more understandable to me because I had seen it operate in Britain in much less difficult circumstances.

I have been fortunate, as I remarked in the preface of my Memoirs, in being a “free lance”—often officially consulted but never officially employed or subsidized, and thus having no “interest to pursue” or “ax to grind” in seeking the truth and expressing my views objectively. In my experience the troubles of the world largely come from excessive regard to other interests.

Blinding loyalties