better methods of communicating orders and intelligence have
conferred upon the Commanders has rendered the control of great masses
immeasurably more certain than it was in the past.

Men kill each other at greater distances, it is true--but killing is a
constant factor in all battles. The difference between "now and then"
lies in this, that, thanks to the enormous increase in range (the
essential feature in modern armaments), it is possible to concentrate
by surprise, on any chosen spot, a man-killing power fully twentyfold
greater than was conceivable in the days of Waterloo; and whereas in
Napoleon's time this concentration of man-killing power (which in his
hands took the form of the great case-shot attack) depended almost
entirely on the shape and condition of the ground, which might or might
not be favourable, nowadays such concentration of fire-power is almost
independent of the country altogether.

Thus, at Waterloo, Napoleon was compelled to wait till the ground became
firm enough for his guns to gallop over; nowadays every gun at his
disposal, and five times that number had he possessed them, might have
opened on any point in the British position he had selected, as soon as
it became light enough to see.

Or, to take a more modern instance, viz., the battle of St.
Privat-Gravelotte, August 18, 1870, where the Germans were able to
concentrate on both wings batteries of two hundred guns and upwards,
it would have been practically impossible, owing to the section of the
slopes of the French position, to carry out the old-fashioned case-shot
attack at all. Nowadays there would be no difficulty in turning on the
fire of two thousand guns on any point of the position, and switching
this fire up and down the line like water from a fire-engine hose, if