909 is sufficient to show that many of the operations could never have
been carried out had it been a question of the troops being fed under
the conditions of war. It is an absolute necessity that our officers
should learn to pay adequate attention to these points, which are the
rule in warfare and appreciably cramp the power of operations. In
theory, of course, the commissariat waggons are always taken into
account; they are conscientiously mentioned in all orders, and in theory
are posted as a commissariat reserve between the corps and the
divisions. That they would in reality all have to circulate with a
pendulum-like frequency between the troops and the magazines, that the
magazines would have to be almost daily brought forward or sent farther
back, that the position of the field bakeries is of extreme
importance--these are all points which are inconvenient and troublesome,
and so are very seldom considered.

In great strategic war-games, too, even in a theatre of war selected in
Russia which excludes all living upon the country, the commissariat
arrangements are rarely worked out in detail; I should almost doubt
whether on such occasions the possibility of exclusive "magazine
feeding" has ever been entertained. Even smaller opportunities of being
acquainted with these conditions are given to the officer in ordinary
manoeuvres, and yet it is extremely difficult on purely theoretical
lines to become familiar with the machinery for moving and feeding a
large army and to master the subject efficiently.

The friction and the obstacles which occur in reality cannot be brought
home to the student in theory, and the routine in managing such things
cannot be learnt from books.

These conditions, then, are a great check on the freedom of operations,
but, quite apart from the commissariat question, the movements of an
army present considerable difficulties in themselves, which it is
obviously very hard for the inexperienced to surmount. When, in 1870,
some rather complicated army movements were contemplated, as on the
advance to Sedan, it was at once seen that the chief commanders were not
masters of the situation, that only the fertility of the theatre of war
and the deficient attacking powers of the French allowed the operations
to succeed, although a man like Moltke was at the head of the army. All
these matters have since been thoroughly worked out by our General
Staff, but the theoretical labours of the General Staff a