Lawrence: If we look at the events of WWI we see that the absurd loss
of life on
both sides was due not so much to anything intrinsic in the nature of
war itself
as from leaders who refused to come up with tactics to match the modern
weaponry of the day.
Andreas: No. The loss of life wasn't due to poor tactical use of machines. The US, for example, understood the possiblities of military machines very well: the US used firebombing to systematically destroy huge numbers of civilians.
Lawrence is talking about WWI, in which thousands were slaughtered on the Western Front because the generals tried to advance infantry armed with rifles and bayonets against massed machine gun and artillery fire. I suspect that Andreas misread this part of Lawrence's post, mistaking 'WWI' for WWII, for there was no systematic firebombing of anything in WWI.
Robert Paul Reed College
------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
