Attrition


   One thing is very much for certain. Woodbury Kane was far from the only person who was thinking about how to avoid the mass slaughter that the great powers now found themselves involved in. One such individual was Garnet Wolseley, 1st Viscount Wolseley, Commander-in-Chief of Forces, which is a fancy way of saying he was the chief of staff of the British Army and the highest ranking military man in Britain. He had spent his entire war at Pall Mall, headquarters of the British Army. Of all the men in similar positions around the world, it seems that Wolseley and his staff were the first to realize the exact nature of the situation that they were in.
Wolseley’s boss, Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, the Earl of Salisbury, was the current Prime Minister of Great Britain. Lord Salisbury had a long career in civil service and was a well known conservative who, also had the ability to compromise. He was an expert in foreign affairs and his record long indicated that he truly believed one of his more famous sayings. Maybe it is quite ironic that this saying was, “whatever happens will be for the worse so it is in our best interests to make sure nothing happens.” Some have suggested that his “let it be” attitude helped contribute to the war but, those were now days past.
Since 1899, Lord Salisbury had been really waging two wars, the military and the political. The first was to defeat the enemies of Great Britain and the second was to keep his job. Ironically it would be Kitchener’s Mozambique campaign that would ultimately leave Salisbury at Ten Downing, although, many things about his third tenure as Prime Minister would greatly change. It was not the fact that Kitchener had delivered a much needed, and widely popular, victory. It was largely because the ensuing crisis, one that would play out behind closed doors, made even Salisbury’s most avid critics realize that this was no time for internal squabbles. As a result, Salisbury’s already “compromise cabinet,” would become even more so as Great Britain got an emergency war council that would govern till the end of the war.
In February and March of 1900, this cabinet was just starting to sort itself out with endless meetings that were largely devoted to structuring the details of Britain’s wartime economy. They had yet to really call it that and, there is some question if the men who were doing this work even realized that was exactly what they were doing. It seems more plausible that they had just taken up the work that was obviously right in front of them and had yet to fully appreciate the larger picture. It would be Garnet Woseley who would put it all in perspective for them.
There was one other serious, and quite unofficial, change. It was an open secret at White Hall but, no one would speak much of it and no reporters, obviously, felt inclined to print the story. The fact was that Lord Salisbury was in failing health and, while he remained Prime Minister, the truth of the matter was that he had less and less to do with the daily managing of the government or the war. Many of these duties had slowly been taken over by his nephew, another career politician, by the name of Arthur Balfour.
It was in this climate that Woseley gave the cabinet the news. For the better part of a year, Woseley had formed a special section that many at Pall Mall just referred to as “Statistics.” This term was a euphemism of the day and quite often translated into “spies.” There was intelligence work going on in this section but, in reality, they really were looking at statistics and crunching numbers. A good deal of their information was from the pre war period but, given the data they were most interested in, it was unlikely that much of it had changed over the course of the past few years. Woseley read everything coming out of that section, on a daily basis, and, by the time he delivered the full report to the cabinet, at their meeting of the 21st of February, he was as familiar with the report as anyone could be. He had also reached one inescapable conclusion.
The details of the report were certainly no secret to anyone. All of it was information that was widely known before the war. The difference was that no one had ever condensed this information, in this way, and presented it in this framework. Woseley noted after three days of presenting it to the cabinet, that the Secretaries were growing more and more restless. If the writings of Joe Chamberlin can be believed, it was not because Woseley was handing them news of imminent defeat. Curiously, he was not telling them of certain victory either. What truly disturbed the leaders of Great Britain was that he could not predict any outcome based on the information they had.
Strangely enough, and a bit too late, what Woseley realized, even then, was that he had also stumbled over the cause of the war. He did not stress this to the cabinet but, he did bring it up because it was relevant to the situation that they now faced. The reason for the war was a set of numbers and this set was far more simple than the endless pages of data sitting in front of the cabinet. It was because of something that Otto Von Bismarck had realized in decades past. He had used this to keep the peace in Europe but, something unseen had come along and upset this formula.
In the pre war world, there were five nations considered to be the great powers. Those were Great Britain, Germany, France, Russia, and Austria-Hungary. When even the most divisive of issues arose between the powers, the simple math was that one side would always be larger. There would always be a three to two margin and the side with the two would always have to back down. Bismarck had cleverly figured this out and made sure that Germany was always on the side of the three. What no one had realized, through the eighties and nineties, was that this basic formula of peace had changed. There was another player on the board and no one seemed to have recognized this basic fact.
You could call it simple human oversight or, quite possibly prejudice. I’m of the opinion that it was most likely both. Maybe the politicians of Europe did not include the US in their calculations simply because the US was not European. They were an ocean away, and, how could they possibly effect, or even care, about the affairs of Europe? It never seems to have crossed the minds of European leaders that they were, and had been, dabbling in North American affairs for centuries. Why would the Americans not return the favor when they finally had the ability? Europe seemed to have failed too connect US desires with the fact that the world was getting smaller.  
After the United States lost it’s first war with the Confederacy it had all but abandoned it’s long running policy of isolation. This was not something that the men in the cabinet were unaware of, in fact, anyone who read the newspapers knew this. The United States had an abundance of raw materials and a population that was rapidly expanding. There was certainly nothing new or secret about that. What the US had after the American 61, that they did not before, was a desire to harness that energy and a purpose with which to direct it.
As a result of this drastic change, in the late 19th century, the number of players on the board had changed. Now there were six great powers and because no one recognized this basic fact, the ensuing crisis, of September 1898, led to neither faction backing down. Each nation was completely confident that it had the numbers on it’s side. This was relevant in the early spring of 1900, to Woseley at least, because, it would now dictate how the war would have to be prosecuted. The news was not well received.
The simple fact, that Woseley’s statisticians had put into perspective, was that the appearance of strength, shared by each alliance, was no illusion. Up till this point, the military’s of the world had failed to deliver any substantial victories on the battlefield and, at this point, it was doubtful that they ever would. That left the two great alliances locked in a war of attrition. Put simply, this was now a contest of who would run out of resources first. This is what greatly upset the cabinet, because, who had the most was simply too close to call.
Each nation, in each alliance, had their own strengths and weaknesses. On the whole, these largely canceled each other out. It left the Allies (Britain, Germany, and Austria-Hungary) and the Triple Entente (France, Russia, and the United States) in a dead heat and virtually identical across the board. Their access to raw materials, the fire power of their armies, the viability of their fleets, the production capabilities of their factories, and the size of their populations were so close that it was impossible to say who had the most of what and where.
This news, presented in this fashion, only set off a heated round of debate amongst the cabinet members. As Chamberlin would later write, “they wanted him (Woseley) to tell them that a day of jubilance or apocalypse was right around the corner, and, he gave them the truth instead.” Indeed, Woseley proved that admitting ones own ignorance is, more times than not, the most difficult thing to do. Many in the cabinet even went so far as to ask the question of Woseley, “then what good are you?”
Woseley did not come up short on this matter. He had realized, some time before, that human endurance would not allow the conflict to continue until there was nothing left of anything. One side or the other was going to break long before that happened. While this much seems obvious, Woseley pointed out that even the break down of each alliance would not happen all at once. He coined the term, “decision points” and stated that there would be a series of them ahead. The first trick was to recognize them for what they were and, after that, the side that would claim victory would be the one who handled these points the best.
The reception of this theory was no better received than the rest of the news. It became controversial from the moment that Woseley presented it and, in many ways, it remains so until this very day. No matter what the opinion was, of each member of the cabinet, the one thing they would not do, during the war at least, was speak a word of this report outside of the cabinet. In fact, the work of Woseley’s military math guru’s would remain top secret for many decades to come. It would not see the public light of day until long after the men in that room were all dead and gone.
In some ways, at least to historians, it is somewhat tragic that this report remained so secret for so long. Many opinions, of Woseley’s term as Chief of Staff, along with Lord Salisbury’s handling of the war, might have been judged quite differently by earlier historians. No matter what you think of the report, and it’s very cold and callous nature, one thing about it is undisputedly true. Woseley was right and the first of his “decision points” was less than a month away.