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the inevitable trial between the two systems which eventually took place in the clash of 1914; and the champions of the theory that strategy was an affair of rigid 'rules' and 'principles,' to which a hundred years were but as a day, looked forward with complacency to the result. In this they were doomed to disappointment. Merely to say that the French school was discredited is a euphemism and to understate the case. It collapsed at Its débris was swept away. Properly speaking, it never even got into its stride. Unfortunately, however, for themselves, and unfortunately for the advancement of military science, the very orgy of success which had been achieved by the Germans misled them. By detaching a fraction of their strength to deal with Russia before France was unmistakably crushed they vouchsafed the Allies an opportunity seldom granted in war. But to those who really probed the matter the outstanding fact was not that the Germans had lost the Marne, but that they had come so near to victory. It was undeniable that the French system of strategy based on Napoleonic campaigns and conditions had not stood the test applied. It was realised that strategy, like everything else, must move with the times. Rules' are subordinate to, and not the masters of, conditions. Principles' may permeate progress, but they cannot dominate it. Strategy is not a sun which bookish Joshuas can bid remain suspended in the military firmament. E pur si muove.

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The difference between the conditions of war in 1914 and those of a century earlier were very great, and a failure to make proper allowances for such difference reacted, as we have seen, severely on the French. Steam and electricity, however, had changed war only in degree; and in this way the difference between 1914 and to-day is greater even than the difference between 1914 and the Napoleonic era. Aircraft, Gas, and Mechanisation have between them produced a difference not of degree but of kind. They have not merely 'revolutionised' war but subverted it. The influence exerted by them is not a mere turning round' of war but a 'standing war on its head.' Obviously here is a crisis; but it is a crisis marked by a wide dissimilarity of opinion as to how it should be met. The compilers of the Field Vol. 249.-No. 494.

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Service Regulations pin their faith to the old maxim, 'The ultimate military aim in war is the destruction of the enemy's main forces on the battlefield.' But the power inherent in aircraft and gas, and to a certain extent also in tanks, to select a more vulnerable even if a more distant objective, has caused Colonel Fuller to disagree with the compilers of the military bible. Captain Liddell Hart, in his 'Paris, or the Future of War,' openly derides their conclusion. He goes even so far as to question whether armies are not obsolete. The advent of the aeroplane has, he points out, introduced new and boundless possibilities.

We shall not have written this article in vain if we have persuaded our readers not to look for guidance in the accumulated lore of past campaigns, and if we have weaned them from Evesham and Egospotami. These are definitely of a remote past. And what possible connexion is there between the sieges and winter quarters of Gustavus and Turenne and these days when a capital may be wrecked in an afternoon, and when arsenical smoke with a concentration of one part in ten million of air will incapacitate a man completely in a minute? Even the era of 1914 is centuries away; Mons and the Marne are as remote as the Metaurus and Marathon. If any protagonist of military history doubts this assertion let him endeavour to compare the actual 1914 with the same campaign fought under the conditions of to-day. His difficulty will lie not in estimating the divergence between the actual and the hypothetical campaigns, but in discovering a moment at which any similarity may be assumed. The advice of Napoleon to read and re-read the campaigns of the past is to-day acting as a clog on military thought. The statement of Clausewitz that Examples from history make everything clear' is, when quoted to-day, obvious nonsense. History affords us no precedent of wars fought with aircraft, gas, and mechanised armies. In the next great contest we shall be forced to play with new pieces; the 'rules' will be different; the principles' we shall have to discover as we go along. Prospice not Respice must be our motto. There is a good deal in what Verdy du Vernois said sixty years ago: To the devil with history and principles. What is the problem?'

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F. E. WHITTON.

Art. 5.-MUSIC AND THE PLAIN MAN.

1. Music. By Sir W. H. Hadow. Williams and Norgate,

1924.

12. Ludwig von Beethoven's Pianoforte Sonatas. By William Behrend. Translated from the Danish by Ingeborg Lund. Dent, 1927,

3. The Spell of Music. By J. A. Fuller-Maitland. Murray, 1927.

4. Music, Classical, Romantic and Modern. By Eaglefield Hull, Mus. Doc. Dent, 1927.

15. The Appeal of Jazz. By R. W. S. Mendl. Philip Allan, 1927.

THE plain man' will never read the literature of music until it is better written. English criticism of painting made a good beginning with Sir Joshua's Discourses,' and was definitely established as a form of general reading when an anonymous graduate of the University of Oxford began to put forth, in 1843, certain absolute and imperious volumes written with determined loftiness and splendour. The taste of our day finds the early Ruskin self-conscious in manner, pontifical in attitude, and occasionally wrong-headed in matter; but there is no doubt at all that his work created a new spirit both in the appreciation of pictures and in the way of writing about them. People visited Italy with opened eyes, and art-criticism, once stiff with conventions of 'correctness,' became almost passionate with convictions. Ruskin's intense sincerity impelled him to minute and tireless study as well as to prophetic earnestness of expression. Those who now despise him and unburden themselves in a jargon of vague technicalities convey a suspicion that it is not the deeps of knowledge which they hide in their cloud of words.

The criticism of music has not yet found a Ruskin, though some have written well at lower levels. The long series of weekly articles by Mr Bernard Shaw, still buried in the files of a World' that has come to an end, contained sound stuff under the disguise of witty irrelevance. Mr Shaw was catholic in his sympathies and creative in his enthusiasm. He affirmed constantly the

greatness of Mozart, though Wagner, as might be guessed, was his main theme. It seemed the height of perversity thirty-five years ago to be trying to force 'Tristan und Isolde' upon an impresario whose standard of tragic opera was 'Lucrezia Borgia,' and upon a fashionable public which appeared to desire no more than repetitions of 'Faust' and 'Romeo'; but Mr Shaw was undeterred, and the present place of Wagner in our operatic world is due as much to him as to any man in this country. The secret is simple: Mr Shaw could write; the other Wagnerians very palpably could not; moreover, writing in a fashionable weekly paper, under conditions of length and freedom that have no parallel in current journalism, he was able to transmit some part of his gaily reiterated enthusiasm to the people whose wishes carried weight.

The best of current writers on music is Sir Henry Hadow, and he, unfortunately, writes all too rarely. Like Mr Shaw, Sir Henry is a consummate man of letters, with strong convictions about the value of music as a giver of strength to the individual spirit and of concord to our common life. Sir Henry's views are free from professional bias. When painters or composers or doctors in congress proclaim the national need for more painting and music and medicine, we listen with the respect due to the shoemaker who says that there is nothing like leather. But Sir Henry Hadow has no professional interest in music. He has nothing to sell. When he tells the plain man that music is part of a nation's strength and not merely a drawing-room ornament, the plain man will do well to listen. In fact, he has listened; for Sir Henry's little volume on music, first published in 1924, has been thrice reprinted since. It deserves its success. It presents to the plain man a general view of music in the plain man's own language, and proves beyond dispute the right of this great art to a place in any scheme of liberal education.

Other writers may be as serious and competent as Sir Henry Hadow; but most of them lack his ability to attract the general reader. No doubt they all take pains with their music; but they appear to take no pains with their prose. Do they really suppose that composition with words is easier than composition with

notes? Let us open, for instance, Mr Behrend's volume on the Sonatas, and hear what he has to say about Beethoven's playing of Bach:

'Later on when he came to Vienna in 1792, he had to play such pieces as these to one of his aristocratic patrons, the aged Baron von Swieten, as a sort of Evening Benediction. This would most likely be when the less intimate guests had left, while the more cultivated "connoisseurs," worshippers of good, old music, stayed behind and needed serious evening devotions after the more or less empty virtuoso music to which they had listened in the course of the evening. For the ears of the Viennese society were pleasantly tickled by what would now be called " drawing-room music," which had caused such inflammation in them that for a long time they could not appreciate the overwhelming difference between this music and that produced by the young Beethoven.'

Of such writing there is only one thing to say, namely, that it cannot be read.

Mr. Behrend's comments on the Sonatas are not very inspiring; but were they twice as good, they would be made intolerable by his clumsy writing. A knowledge of human nature seems to have no part in the making of writers on music. Thus, after much reflexion, Mr Behrend reaches this profound conclusion:

'We have also other evidence that at this time, about his twentieth year, Beethoven's heart was disturbed by passionate Werther feelings, and it can hardly be doubted that they were concerned with Eleanor von Breuning, from the emotional letter of reconciliation that he wrote to her in 1790 (or 91) after a passing quarrel or disagreement.'

The other evidence is then solemnly produced. Does Mr Behrend really require documents to persuade him that 'about his twentieth year' a young man may be 'disturbed by passionate Werther feelings' for the first attractive woman he meets in intimacy? Can it be that musical criticism lacks conviction because the critics have never been young and have never experienced 'passionate Werther feelings'? The plain man is right in suspecting such interpreters.

At the opposite extreme to Mr Behrend we can put Mr Fuller-Maitland, who fails to reach the plain man,

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