valley. They cannot, like infantry, refuse a flank or retire fighting; at most, flank guns can be brought to bear. Then tanks moving up by covered approaches will break the line centrally, and will enfilade it in both directions. And what is the reply? There is none. The gunners cannot fire inwards, for by so doing they will destroy each other.

This is logical, because tanks are mobile guns which can concentrate against any chosen point in a static line of artillery. It is not a question of gun versus armour, or of battleship versus fortress, but of a mobile mass of arms operating against a static and unfortified mass. Frequently the static line will be circumvented altogether, and either attacked in flank or rear, or cut off from its base of supply.

The anti-tank problem, so Colonel Rowan-Robinson considers, is not in any way solved by burdening the infantry with anti-tank weapons, but by mechanizing field artillery and using it in large groups "under control from the air." If this is not done, then the following chaos may be expected :

Tanks have broken through on the whole divisional front. The artillery, distributed in depth from 1,000 yards to 3,000 yards behind the infantry, sees them mingled with friendly troops, appearing over crests and disappearing into valleys, some getting knocked over, others getting quickly nearer, the invisible ones multiplying largely in the minds of men. The first line of guns is passed and then the second. Batteries are now firing in every direction. Enemy tanks are mixed with friendly guns, gun-teams, and dragons. Friendly tanks arrive (F.S.R., vol. ii, sect. 108) and move to the counter-attack. Reinforcing artillery dash into positions previously reconnoitred (F.S.R., sect. 94 (8)). What confusion! A jumble getting more and more tragic till the last line is passed.

Here the picture is nothing like a ship attacking a fortress, one of the common arguments of gun versus tank. The fortress is not fortified, its guns are in the open, and the enemy's fleet can operate on land-these are the differences which compel Colonel Rowan-Robinson eventually to exclaim: "The proper antidote of the tank is the tank."

Looking back on these three books-and similar books are becoming every year more numerous-it must be clearly apparent to the reader, whether soldier or civilian, that the army to-day is faced by very much the same problem the navy was confronted by some seventy years ago, and though obviously the solution

of the present problem will differ vastly in detail, certain outstanding factors are common in the evolution of both services. The navy had been brought up on wind, sail and wood, and change was naturally repugnant. To-day the army is still mainly concerned with cavalry, artillery and infantry, all muscle-moved instruments. Steam revolutionized naval methods of war, and there can be little doubt that petrol is now initiating a similar revolution in military methods. Mr. Germains is, I think, right in asserting that civil evolution sets the pace for military evolution. Major Dening is right in reducing weapon power to a few clearly graspable tactical functions, namely, to guard, move and hit. But the most important constructive suggestion is that made by Colonel Rowan-Robinson when he suggests that the function of the general staff is to foresee the future. Of artillery he says: “There has been a tendency up to date to solve artillery problems rather by the light of the past than by the aspect of the future"; and he might have added: this is not limited to artillery, but is the common military denominator of all arms. It was this tendency in the 'sixties, 'seventies and 'eighties which led to enormous sums of money being wasted on naval construction. The whole process of evolution was one of trial and error, because the navy had no foreseeing staff.

To create such a foreseeing staff in the army is the first step, and the most important, towards placing mechanization on an efficient and economical footing. The existing general staff is fully employed, and is surrounded by present-day problems and things old. Obviously it cannot with any hope of success divide its attention between to-day and to-morrow. Last year we saw created in this country an experimental armoured force, a laboratory for the distillation of future military requirements. Is this enough? Should not we also create a small piece of mental machinery which will collect, examine and digest the many new suggestions made with reference to future war? The cost of such a department would be insignificant, but the value of its work might well proye immense. Knowing our commitments and liabilities it could square every new idea with these, and so by degrees elaborate a policy for the heads of the army to consider. Surely it would be wise, seeing we live in an industrial age, and that mechanization is but the military expression of industry, to follow in the footsteps of the great industrialists. For instance, in Henry Ford's immense factories each workman is encouraged to

submit new ideas which he considers will improve the business. None of these ideas are accepted until they have been carefully examined by a board of experts, when, should they be proved of value, they are utilised and the suggester is rewarded.

Outward pressure is a great stimulant to evolution, but inward direction of growth is a greater. Outward conditions will, I think, compel our army to mechanize, but unless mechanization is directed from within the army itself it is bound to be costly. Speed of change-over from a muscle basis to a motorized one is of secondary importance when compared to steady, simple and uninterrupted evolution. Normally in armies and similar organisations it takes approximately seven years for a new idea to be accepted, seven more for it to be understood, and yet another seven for it to be realised; or in all roughly a military generation. Consequently, unless the military education of officers progresses at a similar rate to the evolution of new weapons and new arms, when these weapons and arms are perfected they will be used by men who do not even understand their nature. Once we have established some branch of the general staff which can assist the heads of the army to elaborate the policy of evolution, then it seems to me that the next step is to produce a training manual for war based on this policy, and to make it as much the foundation of hypothetical tactical exercises as the "Field Service Regulations" is the foundation of all actual ones.

Every officer, regimental or staff, will then be asked to do two things, namely, to understand how to wage war with existing arms, and to speculate how to wage war with probable, and even possible, future arms. Thus, little by little, will the military mind of the future be built up, before the military body it must one day control is fully grown. In the past the reverse process has prevailed in all armies, and yet it must surely be patent to all intelligent men that, given two opposing armies equally well armed and equipped, victory will depend on which of the two manifests the higher skill. The human factor remains, as always, the deciding element in war; consequently mechanization is insufficient and incomplete unless (and I will coin another ugly word)" mentalization" of the army accompanies it. Change of mental attitude, which such books as those here reviewed foster, is essential to the future efficiency of our army, which is to-day in the process of sloughing its un-bullet-proof skin.

THE ROMAN HOUSE OF CAETANI IN THE

MIDDLE AGES

Caietanorum Genealogia. By DON GELASIO CAETANI. Perugia. 1920. Parts I. and II. By DON GELASIO CAETANI. 1927.

I.

2.

Domus Caietana. Vol. I.

Sancasciano Val di Pesa.

3. Regesta Chartarum. (Documenti dell' Archivio Caetani). Vol. I.
Edited by DON GELASIO CAETANI. Perugia, 1922.

4. Regesta Chartarum. (Documenti dell' Archivio Caetani).
Edited by DoN GELASIO CAETANI. Sancasciano Val di Pesa.

Vol. II.

1926.

5. Epistolarium Honorati Caietani. (Documenti dell' Archivio Caetani). Edited by DON GELASIO CAETANI. Sancasciano Val di Pesa. 1926.

AT all periods of her history Rome has been unique. This A1

is almost too obvious a truism to write of the imperial age. To found the most permanent of empires in fact and in tradition, to weld together that European civilisation which, in spite of temporary eclipse, has lasted to the present day, this has been given to no other city. Europe was made by Rome. The elements of Europe's spiritual inheritance may be derived from Greece or Asia, but their blending and extension are due to Rome.

In the Middle Ages, if we again take the ecumenical aspect of the Eternal City, this character of uniqueness is not less striking, nor is it perhaps less splendid; for Rome as the centre and arbiter of Christendom, " cunctarum urbium excellentissima," whither thronged pilgrim and prelate, whence emanated law and doctrine, could have no like among her subject or even rival cities. The greater that Constantinople was, the more typical she became of a state-capital with every advantage of nature and art. But Ecclesiastical Rome was never a mere capital, she was the heart of Western Christendom, or even more, an epitome of it. Nowhere else could the present seem to men to be an ever-living past, where Christian basilicas were coeval with pagan ruins, and the papacy was enthroned above the catacombs.

In some sort this was an alien and borrowed greatness. The medieval papacy drew more strength from the past of the city than from its present, and it may be claimed that the cosmopolitan prestige of the Church almost created an imaginary city to deck

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and cover with visionary glories a sorry reality. And this severe judgment is true. But that reality, the urban Rome of the Romans, the town of innkeepers and brigand barons, of relics and malaria, was itself unique both in Italy and Christendom. In spite of infinite variations the medieval towns of Italy fall into three or four types, and these types, while they diverge from one another, yet have features in common, and in their very divergencies show a common dependence on what we may call natural factors. They are commercial or industrial or agricultural; they are seaports, bridgeheads, mountain-strongholds, or cities of the plain. Their greatness or littleness, their very existence, is a kind of corollary to their geographical position. Bred and nourished from natural sources, they have a vigorous life proceeding from themselves alone, and they go through a development inspired by geographical and local circumstances. Their several histories, indeed, count for much--for very much but with urban Rome history is dominant; it is both the mainspring of her life and a crushing load.

Medieval Rome had little "natural" incitement to greatness beyond that which inspired the small fortress towns of the Campagna. She was not a natural port; she was but an unhealthy stage or bridgehead on the western route between north and south Italy; there was nothing to bring commerce to her or to make her a centre of manufacture; in the long-barren and malariahaunted Campagna a thriving agriculture was impossible. Her population and wealth depended on her being the chief sanctuary of Christendom, the see of the chief pontiff, the residence, in spite of intervals, of the wealthy, swarming, centralised papal court, the most elaborate administration of the Middle Age. When the Curia was fixed in the city such local life as there was became atrophied beneath it; if the Curia was long absent, Rome ceased to be the resort of Europe, her wealth, commerce, and activity withered away, and left a purposeless congregation of men, not a city or a State.

Medieval Rome, in fact, owed all her prosperity to the presence of the papal court. When that prosperity stirred her people into the activity of the other towns of North Italy and they formed the republican commune, the Curia almost automatically receded to some other residence, and the strength of the commune waned until the popes returned and the yoke was gradually reimposed.