VII

OVER-SEA RAIDS AND RAIDS ON LAND[64]

[Footnote 64:  Written in 1906. (TheMorning_Post_.)]

It has been contended that raids by ’armaments with 1000, 20,000, and 50,000 men on board respectively’ have succeeded in evading ‘our watching and chasing fleets,’ and that consequently invasion of the British Isles on a great scale is not only possible but fairly practicable, British naval predominance notwithstanding.  I dispute the accuracy of the history involved in the allusions to the above-stated figures.  The number of men comprised in a raiding or invading expedition is the number that is or can be put on shore.  The crews of the transports are not included in it.  In the cases alluded to, Humbert’s expedition was to have numbered 82 officers and 1017 other ranks, and 984 were put on shore in Killala Bay.  Though the round number, 1000, represents this figure fairly enough, there was a 10 per cent. shrinkage from the original embarkation strength.  In Hoche’s expedition the total number of troops embarked was under 14,000, of whom 633 were lost before the expedition had got clear of its port of starting, and of the remainder only a portion reached Ireland.  General Bonaparte landed in Egypt not 50,000 men, but about 36,000.  In the expeditions of Hoche and Humbert it was not expected that the force to be landed would suffice of itself, the belief being that it would be joined in each case by a large body of adherents in the raided country.  Outside the ranks of the ’extremists of the dinghy school’—­whose number is unknown and is almost certainly quite insignificant—­no one asserts or ever has asserted that raids in moderate strength are not possible even in the face of a strong defending navy.  It is a fact that the whole of our defence policy for many generations has been based upon an admission of their possibility.  Captain Mahan’s statement of the case has never been questioned by anyone of importance.  It is as follows:  ’The control of the sea, however real, does not imply that an enemy’s single ships or small squadrons cannot steal out of port, cannot cross more or less frequented tracts of ocean, make harassing descents upon unprotected points of a long coast-line, enter blockaded harbours.’  It is extraordinary that everyone does not perceive that if this were not true the ‘dinghy school’ would be right.  Students of Clausewitz may be expected to remember that the art of war does not consist in making raids that are unsuccessful; that war is waged to gain certain great objects; and that the course of hostilities between two powerful antagonists is affected little one way or the other by raids even on a considerable scale.