om the rear, might hold out against any visible attack for
an indefinite period, unless the ground they occupied was searched very
ably and subtly by some sort of gun having a range in excess of their
rifle fire. If the ground they occupied were to be properly tunnelled
and trenched, even that might not avail, and there would be nothing for
it but to attack them by an advance under cover either of the night or
of darkness caused by smoke-shells, or by the burning of cover about
their position. Even then they might be deadly with magazine fire at
close quarters. Save for their liability to such attacks, a few hundreds
of such men could hold positions of a quite vast extent, and a few
thousand might hold a frontier. Assuredly a mere handful of such men
could stop the most multitudinous attack or cover the most disorderly
retreat in the world, and even when some ingenious, daring, and lucky
night assault had at last ejected them from a position, dawn would
simply restore to them the prospect of reconstituting in new positions
their enormous advantage of defence.

The only really effective and final defeat such an attenuated force of
marksmen could sustain, would be from the slow and circumspect advance
upon it of a similar force of superior marksmen, creeping forward under
cover of night or of smoke-shells and fire, digging pits during the
snatches of cessation obtained in this way, and so coming nearer and
nearer and getting a completer and completer mastery of the defender's
ground until the approach of the defender's reliefs, food, and fresh
ammunition ceased to be possible. Thereupon there would be nothing for
it but either surrender or a bolt in the night to positions in the rear,
a bolt that might be hotly followed if it were deferred too late.

Probably between contiguous nations that have mastered the art of war,
instead of the pouring clouds of cavalry of the old dispensation,[37]
this will be the opening phase of the struggle, a vast duel all along
the frontier between groups of skilled marksmen, continually being
relieved and refreshed from the rear. For a time quite possibly there
will be no definite army here or there, there will be no controllable
battle, there will be no Great General in the field at all. But
somewhere far in the rear the central organizer will sit at the
telephonic centre of his vast front, and he will strengthen here and
feed there and watch, watch perpetually the pressure, the incessant