ariable indication of
personal panic; but it is very natural, and even very proper, that every
battery commander, the director of every military store and depot, and
the leader of every body of troops which is not definitely ordered to
remain, should have the individual determination that his particular
command shall not fall into the hands of the enemy. The artillery
officer firmly resolves that he will save his guns at all costs; the
heads of supply departments are in charge of valuable stores which their
army needs for its very existence and which would be of great aid to the
enemy if captured, and the troop-leader naturally argues that it would
be futile to allow his men to be cut off when a general retreat has
already been ordered. So if the organization of withdrawal is left to
the discretion of the people involved in it, as it has to be when the
whole thing has not been deliberately arranged beforehand, confusion is
almost inevitable.

[Sidenote: Fear of being cut off by the enemy.]

[Sidenote: Only severest means can stop civilian traffic.]

[Sidenote: Modern war is a wild fury of destruction.]

Moreover, the enemy always seems to be advancing much faster than he
really is. Under the discouragement that every army feels in falling
back, it is easy to credit the pursuer with exaggerated powers of rapid
motion; the defeated soldier forgets that the miles are just as long and
weary for his adversary trudging painfully after him as they are for
himself. Rumor, too, spreads wildly among tired and disheartened men.
Enemy cavalry, enemy armored motor-cars, hurrying ahead to cut him
off--that idea haunts the mind of each man in an enforced retirement. A
further complication is caused when, as was the case in the Italian
withdrawal, the civilian population is also desperately anxious to be
gone before the arrival of the enemy. The news of the forthcoming
evacuation of territory spreads backward with rapidity, and the roads
along the route of the retreating army fill at once with unregulated,
disorderly swarms of frightened civilians and their household baggage,
hastily stowed on slow-moving dilapidated carts that are likely to break
down at narrow points of the way and block whole miles of military
traffic for hours at a time. The Italian Army had to endure a great deal
of that kind of complication. Theoretically, of course, a general could
throw back cavalry and mounted police along the line of his retreat and
forbi