The Pattern ofPrediction 553

The Pattern of Prediction 1763-1973

FORECASTS OF FUTURE WARS,
1871-1914
1. F. Clarke
By the 1810's predictive fiction had become a most popular and
effective means of warning people of the likely outcome of
visible trends. This article continues the historical analysis of
forecasting and its influence from previous issues of FUTURES,
and shows how aspects of the new kind of warfare were used in
the construction of cautionary scenarios of the future.
The 'sixties and 'seventies of the last
century were a distinct stage in the
general realisation that the rate of
change was accelerating and that the
great industrial nations had to learn
new techniques of adaptation. The
future-that is, the potential of the
applied sciences-had begun to invade
the present with questions, promises, and
threats about the state of mankind in
ten, fifty, or one hundred years. By
the end of the 'seventies the tale of
the future became firmly established-
especially in Britain and France-as
the most effective means of describing
the pattern of probabilities for the
entertainment or instruction of readers.
A new race of prophets had arisen
who made it their business to reveal
what had to be done in order to bring
mankind to the level of civilisation
they predicted or to preserve the
nation from the disasters they antici-
pated.
In this rapid development of pre-
dictive fiction two decisive factors
were the extraordinary demonstration
of a new kind of warfare in 1870 and
the publication of a new kind of
political forecast, Chesney's Battle of
Dorking, in 1871. The swift German
victories in the war with France had
shown how technology-railways, tele-
graphic communications, breech-
loading guns-could change the con-
duct of war and could in a few months
alter the balance of power in Europe.
The speed and scale of the German
campaign seemed so unprecedented
that the Annual Register for 1870 was
almost lost for words: "Only by
becoming in imagination the readers
of some future historical work, and
comparing it with any or all of the
Professor I. F. Clarke isHead of the English Studies Department, University ofStrathclyde, UK.
FUTURES December 1969
554 The Pattern ofPrediction
histories that now stand upon our
shelves, can we form. an idea of the
place that' must be' found in the
world's annals for the catastrophe of
Sedan and the ,Si.ege. of Paris."
There was widespread alarm' in the
United Kingdom. A flood of articles
and commentaries in the press created
a nightmare vision of the disaster that
might follow, if the German conscript
masses ever managed to establish a
bridgehead on the Channel coast.
And so, one month after the pro-
clamation of the new German Reich
in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles,
an officer of the Royal Engineers sent
Blackwood's . Magazine the outline of
a short story: He wished, he wrote,
to demonstrate the urgent need for
"securing the defence of the nation by
the enforced arming of the people";
and he proposed to do this by "des-
cribing a successful invasion of Eng-
land, and the collapse of our power and
commerce in consequence":
The would-be author was Sir George
Tomkyns Chesney-a plain colonel
in 1871-who had begun as an officer
of the Bengal Engineers and after distin-
guished service in India had been
appointed the first Principal of the
Royal Indian Civil Engineering College
at Staines in Middlesex. Chesney was
one of the new breed of educated
soldiers to be found in a specialist
branch like the Royal Engineers. He
had understood the factors working for
military change; and in writing the
Battle of Dorking he showed a shrewd
appreciation of the ways in which he
could use an influential middle-Class
journal in order to direct attention to
the question of national defence: As a
self-appointed military spokesman,
Chesney 'opened the first public re-
lations campaign on behalf of-the
British Army. His method of presenting
the case for conscription by describing
the fearful consequences of national
unpreparedness depended on a highly
effective technique-a political parable,
or war scenario, that could project
any lesson for any nation into any kind
of feasible future. The tale of the
coming victory---or defeat---of the
nation was essentially a communica-
tions device. Propagandists could in-
volve their readers in the arguments
for a bigger navy or better weapons,
since the fiction of imaginary warfare
enabled them to convert the latest
figures for naval tonnage or the com-
parative statistics of the continental
armies into compelling images of a
nation fighting to survive.
Although the techniques of futuristic
fiction were not new in 1871, Chesney's
narrative was most original. In
describing the imaginary German in-
vasion of the British Isles, he combined
precise details with carefully observed
episodes that told their own sad story
of military incompetence and the
failure to prepare for the new methods
of warfare. Granted Chesney's one
hypothesis-the absence of the Royal
Navy overseas---on which the story
depended, then everything else was
sound strategy and good propaganda.
At the chosen moment German troops
hurry aboard their waiting transports
in all the ports from the Baltic to
Ostend. As Chesney pointed out,
"everythinghad been arranged before-
hand; nor ought we to have been
surprised, for we had seen-the same
Power, only a few months before, move
down half a million men on a few
days' notice to conquer the greatest
military nation in Europe, with no
more fuss than our War Office used to
make over the transport of a brigade
from Aldershot to Brighton". The
Germans hind without any serious
opposition, and the rest of the story is
an admonitory tale of defeat and
despair.
The episodes in the Battle of Dorking
depend on a skilfully contrived sense of
inevitability that leads the unhappy
reader from one disaster after another
to the final catastrophe of military
defeat and the occupation of London.
Chesney spared no one. The German
FUTURES December 1969
Figure 1. Frontispiece of the
French translation of the
Battle of DorKing by Charles
Yriarte. Chesney's story nat-
urally aroused great interest
in France in 1871. It was
widely read: and in a long
introduction to the trans-
lation Charles Yriarte
commented on the origin-
ality and the vigour of the
narrative. He wondered
"if such a book, published
here in 1869, might not have
had an influence on our
future".
t;--\
f ,h
FUTURES December 1969
The Pal/em ifPrediction 555
Figure 2. Illustration show-
ing a cross section of the
design for a 'mobile steam
battery' which was proposed
in 1855 by James Cowen
and James Sweetlong. It
was an idea before its
proper time: the great
weight of the solid iron
structure would have con-
fined the machine to roads;
and the weight: power ratio
of the small engine would
have limited operations to
attacks on static positions.
55G The Pal/em ofPrediction
Figure 3. Cover illustration
from one of the earliest
American forecasts of future
warfare, The Stricken
Nation, published in 1890by
the minor political writer,
Henry Grattan Donnelly.
The story was intended to
warn the USA that it was
imperative to build a large
navy in order to keep pace
with the growth of foreign
navies. The British are, of
course, presented as the
enemy. The Royal Navy
bombards all ports on the
East Coast. Total surrender
follows-as humiliating as a
patriotic propagandist can
make it.
- .... ..
Figure 4. By the eighteen-
nineties the description
of future wars had become
a minor publishing industry.
In 1891 the editor of the
weekly illustrated magazine
Black and White com-
missioned eminent experts
-Admiral Colomb, Colonel
Maurice, Captain Maude-
to give their version of the
next war. The result was
The Great War of 189- in
which the strategy and
tactics of 1870are projected
into the future. The illu-
stration shows an old-style
battle with the German
cavalry charging the squares
of French infantry at the
imagined Battle of Machault.
The experts believed that
this kind of battle would
last about two hours.
FUTURES December 1969
troops are always expert and enter-
prising; the British are brave but
hopelessly inexperienced. The penalty
for national unpreparedness is, there-
fore, a humiliating peace; and the
story ends with Chesney's bleak fore-
cast of the future before the British
people if they do not prepare for the
new conditions that lie ahead: "When
I look at my country as. it is now-its
trade gone, its factories silent, its
harbours empty, a prey to pauperism
and decay-I ask myself whether I
have really a heart or any sense of
patriotism that I should havewitnessed
such degradation and still care to live."
Chesney had written the most success-
ful political tract in the history of
nineteenth-century Britain; and at the
same time the Battle ofDorking was the
first forecast in fiction that gained a
world audience. Within one month of
publication in the May number of
Blackwood's Magazine the story had
become notorious. Some twenty authors
rushed into print with their own anti-
Chesney versions of what would really
happen to German invaders. Overseas
there were special editions in Australia,
Canada, New Zealand and the United
States. There were six translations
within the year on the Continent; and
Gladstone, the Prime Minister, de-
nounced the Battle of Dorking in a
public speech as a dangerous exercise
The Pattern ofPrediction 557
in 'alarmism'. The story was reprinted
in June as a sixpenny pamphlet and at
once it sold by tens of thousands.
The European recollection of the
Battle of Dorking remained very vivid
up to the end of the last century, for
Chesney gave Europe a model of
predictive fiction that was copied
everywhere. Between 1871 and 1914
there were only two years in which tales
of the next Great War, the <.uklmftskrieg,
and la guerre imaginaire did not appear.
The frequent changes in military
equipment and the constant advance
in the design of naval vessels posed
serious questions about the conduct ofa
future war. The answers came from
admirals and generals, army and navy
correspondents, who described the
shape of the next war in the Chesney
manner of rapid narratives, accurate
details and instructive episodes. Techno-
logical forecasters should note that all
theexperts failed miserably as watchers
of the future; they were too close to ~
problem and their knowledge was
limited to the problem. The few
accurate forecasts that appeared before
World War I came from intelligent and
imaginative ousiders-Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle, H. G. Wells, Albert Robida,
and Ivan Bloch. Can the expert be the
natural enemy of accurate extra-
polation?
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