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Technology, Tactics, and Morale: Jean de Bloch, the Boer War, and British Military Theory, 1900-1914

In the decade between the Boer War and World War I, it gradually became evident to much of the British army that technological changes had rendered the defensive side of war very much more powerful than the offensive. Yet the army generally sought to overcome these technological factors by reemphasizing the value of moral qualities and the use of those qualities in the offensive, thus attempting to answer technical problems with moral solutions. Why was this? Some answers will be suggested below, but it will not do to argue that hindsight alone has revealed the true dimensions of the army's difficulty, for there were already a few who had quite accurately analyzed the situation around 1900-preeminent among them the Polish banker and amateur theorist of war, Jean de Bloch. In his book The British Way in Warfare, published in 1932, Liddell Hart noted that, twenty years before World War I, Jean de Bloch had correctly foreseen the nature of that war. "And the only ground for surprise," wrote Liddell Hart, "is that so few believed him. For even he was thirty years late in his discovery." Equally complimentary was J. F. C. Fuller, who remarked that "among the many military theorists who appeared during these years [1870-1914] one was outstanding, namely I. S. Bloch, because he got down to the roots of the war problem."' From the point of view of British military thought between 1900 and 1914, Jean de Bloch was significant because he raised and crystallized some crucial questions which related to three major challenges that the army faced, or perceived itself to face, before the First World War. It can be argued that these challenges consisted of, first, the need to reassess tactics, and prepare tactically for the next war, in the face of new weapons and technology, partly