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Primary Child and Adolescent Mental Health
Dr Quentin Spender
Consultant in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
Wolverhampton City Primary Care Trust
Wolverhampton, UK
Dr Judith Barnsley
Consultant in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
Dorset Healthcare University NHS Foundation Trust
Poole, UK
Alison Davies
Primary Mental Health Worker
Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
Chichester, UK
and
Dr Jenny Murphy
Clinical Psychologist
Dorset Healthcare University NHS Foundation Trust
Poole, UK
Quentin Spender, Judith Barnsley, Alison Davies and Jenny Murphy have asserted their right
under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book contains information obtained from authentic and highly regarded sources.
Reasonable efforts have been made to publish reliable data and information, but the author
and publisher cannot assume responsibility for the validity of all materials or the
consequences of their use. The authors and publishers have attempted to trace the copyright
holders of all material reproduced in this publication and apologize to copyright holders if
permission to publish in this form has not been obtained. If any copyright material has not
been acknowledged please write and let us know so we may rectify in any future reprint.
Except as permitted under U.S. Copyright Law, no part of this book may be reprinted,
reproduced, transmitted, or utilized in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other
means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission
from the publishers.
Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Part 1: Overview 1
5 Temperament 89
6 Resilience and risk 93
7 Attachment theory and looked-after children 102
8 Family issues 115
9 Separation, divorce and reconstituted families 140
10 Death, dying and bereavement 153
11 Effects of parental mental illness (including substance misuse)
on children and families 168
12 Child abuse and safeguarding 176
13 Behaviour management 201
Index 237
In the decade since the first edition of this book, the way in which mental health
services in the United Kingdom are provided to children and adolescents has
changed in a number of ways. Although geographical uniformity has proved dif-
ficult to achieve, frontline services have been extensively developed to improve the
mental health of the under-18 population.
The aim of this book is to give those working at the frontline – the first profes-
sionals that a child or parent may meet when asking for help – a practical guide
about what to do. The chapters are structured to enable relevant theoretical issues
to be summarised simply, followed by detailed suggestions about how to gather
relevant information and how to help, leaving referral to specialised services as a
last resort.
Our vision is that a whole variety of professionals to whom children or parents
may turn for help will have at their fingertips a means of understanding the prob-
lems presented, and will be able to offer straightforward ways of helping. Profes-
sionals at the frontline need training and advice from more experienced and highly
trained colleagues; but we hope this book will also play a role in their professional
development and provide an additional source of support, either as a component
of learning or as a resource for teaching.
It would be foolhardy not to acknowledge some of the difficulties inherent in
providing a universal Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) that
can meet everyone’s needs. These barriers include the following.
➤ Agency cooperation – Using the broadest definition of CAMHS, services are
provided and professionals employed by not only the National Health Service
but also by Educational and Social Care organisations; others play a role, such
as the youth criminal justice system, substance misuse services and counselling
charities. A single child may have contact with a bewildering array of different
organisations and individuals, making effective cooperation between them a
significant challenge.
➤ Management issues – The joint management of Education and Social Care, and
the appointment of jointly funded Commissioners, has been introduced to help
coordinate the main involved agencies. There remains tremendous variation in
management structures. Considering now the narrow definition of CAMHS,
specialised services may be part of Mental Health Trusts, Primary Care Trusts
vi
Another change since the first edition of this book is the increasing availability
of protocols and guidelines developed to reduce the risks inherent in any dab-
bling with other people’s mental health – and the variability of clinical approach
inevitable in a multidisciplinary field. Some are local, others are national, in
particular the Scottish Intercollegiate Guideline Network (SIGN)3 guidelines in
Scotland and the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE)4
guidelines for the whole UK. These aim to make clinical practice more evidence-
based and uniform, and should in theory reduce the postcode lottery.
Other developments such as leaflets,5 information sheets,6 websites7 and chari-
ties8 have aimed at reducing the confusion for families of knowing which profes-
sion they should go to when, and the confusion for professionals about whether
they are duplicating others’ work, or alternatively allowing families to fall into the
gaps between services. Various ways of combining professionals from different
disciplines into teams who are more coordinated, or more convenient for fami-
lies, or more convenient for agencies, have been devised (see some of the acro-
nyms above), but there seems to be a remarkable lack of uniformity. The Common
Assessment Framework9 is an attempt to save professionals in different agencies
from carrying out repeated initial assessments that ask all the same questions:
once done by one agency, it should be shared electronically with others who need
to be involved. The use of Electronic Health Records is already common in Health
Centres, and is due to spread to specialist CAMHS as we write this edition. We
anticipate some difficulties including all the information gathered by specialist
CAMHS in electronic form – not least because of concerns about who will access
the information.
Just as the expectations placed on professionals working in all levels of CAMHS
have changed in a decade, so have the lives of young people been transformed by
readily available internet access. Social contact can now take place without any-
one leaving their rooms. Cyber-bullying and internet grooming (leading to sexual
abuse) have added new dimensions to the hazards of adolescent relationships.
Whereas previously we might have worried whether we should allow a parent to
show us her daughter’s diary without permission, we may now be worried about
whether to look at a personal blog, and how we should respond to what we may
find there. Similarly, whilst there is much helpful information on the Internet,
young people can also access unhelpful sites such as pro-anorexia and pro-suicide
websites that compound their despair and undermine the help they may be offered
or at least need.
One change that has particularly affected the target audience for this book is
the advent, at least in some areas, of the Primary Child and Adolescent Mental
Health Worker, variously abbreviated as PCAMHW or PMHW. This specialism
was just being developed as the first edition was being published. The initial
idea for the book (which we must credit to Professor Peter Hill) was as a source
of practical information for those working in primary care – the case exam-
ples were written with General Practitioners in mind – but GPs may have been
only a small proportion of the book’s readership. Professor Hill was also part
of the group that developed10 the idea of the Four Tier system and the Primary
Child and Adolescent Mental Health Worker (for further details see Chapter 1:
Context).
The first edition seems to have been devoured by a variety of professionals
doing Tier 1 and Tier 2 work, and we hope this edition will cater more overtly
for these groups. We have shifted the emphasis to make the book suitable for any
profession to whom the Primary Child and Adolescent Mental Health Worker
consults. We hope the book will enable frontline practitioners (Tier 1 or uni-
versal services) to catch child mental health conditions at an early stage so that
interventions can be provided without having to wait for specialised services
(Tier 3 or targeted services) to become involved. The authorship, instead of being
a mixture of Child and Adolescent Psychiatrists and GPs, is now a mixture of
Child and Adolescent Psychiatrists and Primary Child and Adolescent Mental
Health Workers.
Rather than tinker with the first edition, we have rewritten the whole book,
reorganising some of the chapter structure, but keeping the more successful chap-
ters while updating them. We have persisted in our strategy of breaking-up the
text by liberal use of bullet points, tables, case examples, summary boxes (includ-
ing ‘Practice Points’ and ‘Alarm Bells’) and figures. The most striking change is
perhaps the first main section of the book (Chapters 2 to 4), which emphasises our
developmental approach by describing the differences between three important
development stages: pre-school, middle childhood and adolescence. In particular,
the chapter on middle childhood contains much of the content of the first chapter
in the first edition, which was entitled ‘Assessment’. We have also changed the title,
to reflect the change in emphasis.
A note on terminology: We have alternated the female and male pronoun when
talking about an unspecified child (or parent). We are aware there are various
definitions of ‘children’ (for instance: under-13, Gillick incompetent, under-16
or under-18); ‘adolescents’ (12–25 being perhaps the most inclusive); and ‘young
people’ (for instance, 16- and 17-year-olds, 11–19 or seven to 25). But we have
used these terms colloquially, without attempting to stick to one definition. We
have also used the terms ‘parent’ and ‘carer’ interchangeably (so as to avoid the
cumbersome phrase ‘parent or carer’). We have tried to keep abbreviations to a
minimum, but have allowed ourselves to use a few, such as: ‘CAMHS’ for Child
and Adolescent Mental Health Services; ‘ADHD’ for Attention-Deficit/Hyperac-
tivity Disorder; GCSEs for General Certificate of Secondary Education exams; and
‘DVDs’ for Digital Versatile Discs.
A note on case examples: We have pursued a policy of peppering the text liber-
ally with these, in order to break up the text, maintain clinical relevance and keep
things interesting. The case examples vary in their origins: some are based on a
single case, with enough details altered to make the identity unrecognisable to
anyone but the child and family; some incorporate details of more than one case;
and some are fictionalised on the basis of our clinical experience (so effectively
incorporating the details of many cases).
We hope that our labours will enable our readers to improve the mental health
and emotional well-being of children throughout the United Kingdom, and pos-
sibly elsewhere.
Quentin Spender
Judith Barnsley
Alison Davies
Jenny Murphy
April 2011
REFERENCES
1 www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Publications/PublicationsPolicyAnd
Guidance/DH_4089114
2 www.rcpsych.ac.uk/crtu/centreforqualityimprovement/qinmaccamhs.aspx
3 www.sign.ac.uk
4 www.nice.org.uk
5 www.rcpsych.ac.uk
6 CAMHS Evidence Based Practice Unit. Choosing What’s Best For You: what scientists have
found helps children and young people who are sad, worried or troubled. London: CAMHS
publications; July 2007. Available at: www.annafreud.org/ebpu (accessed 20 March 2011).
7 www.mentalhealth.org.uk
8 www.youngminds.org.uk
9 www.education.gov.uk/childrenandyoungpeople/strategy/integratedworking/caf/
a0068957/the-caf-process
10 Health Advisory Service. Together We Stand: the commissioning, role and management of
child and adolescent mental health services. London: HMSO; 1995.
xiii
This book germinated from an idea that we must credit to Professor Emeritus Peter
Hill, who wanted to fashion a companion volume to the same publisher’s The Child
Surveillance Handbook,1 of which he was an initial co-author. Along with our own
changing co-authorship, we have benefited from the direct or indirect input of
the following: Rosemarie Berry, Chrissy Boardman, Teri Boutwood, Nina Bunce,
Anna Calver, Esther Crawley, David Candy, Steve Clarke, David Rex, Moira Doo-
lan, Danya Glaser, Gill Goodwillie, Sue Horobin, Amelia Kerswell, Karen King,
Sebastian Kraemer, Karen Majors, Rebecca Park, Joanna Pearse, Nigel Speight,
Anne Stewart and Wendy Woodhouse. We would also like to thank the children
and families whom we have all seen in our clinical work: they have taught us so
much, and many of them have provided us with the stories for our case examples.
Note
1 First edition published in 1990, second edition published in 1994 and third edi-
tion published in 2009. Hall D, Williams J, Elliman D. The Child Surveillance
Handbook. 3rd ed. London and New York: Radcliffe Publishing; 2009.
xiv
Overview
In the words of one young person reporting to the 2008 UK Child and Adolescent
Mental Health Services (CAMHS) review panel, which will be quoted extensively
in this chapter: ‘It doesn’t mean being happy all the time but it does mean being
able to cope with things’.2
Child mental health problems are therefore difficulties or disabilities in these
areas that may arise from any number of congenital, constitutional, environmen-
tal, family or illness factors. Such problems have two components: firstly, the pre-
senting features are outside the normal range for the child’s developmental age,
intellectual level and culture (‘deviance’ – with a statistical more than a sociologi-
cal meaning); and secondly, the child or others are suffering from the dysfunction
(‘impairment’). Or to put it in a nutshell:
Disorder = deviance plus impairment.
There is no mental health disorder unless both aspects are present.
Our attempts in this book to explain these concepts will inevitably fall foul of such
geographical variability in the way that services and teams are named – as well as
the frequent major changes that are made to the ways in which services are deliv-
ered, particularly with each new government.
Figure 1.1 attempts to clarify the Four-Tier model, but with the strong caveat
that the exact placement within the diagram of each profession may seem appro-
priate only in some areas.
The traditional threefold division of services was into primary care (who refer
onto) secondary or specialist care (who refer onto) tertiary care – even more spe-
cialist care – traditionally in the local teaching hospital.
In the fourfold model, Tier 1 practitioners are those working in universal serv-
ices, such as primary care, schools or youth clubs. These professionals are not
primarily trained as mental health specialists – but mental health and emotional
Child mental
Child
health
Educational Psychologists Psychologists
Tier 2 professionals
working in
isolation Paediatricians Primary Child Community Learning
Mental Health Workers Disability Nurses
FIGURE 1.1 The four tier model of child and adolescent mental health provision. The
oval represents specialist CAMHS
Sandra, aged four years, is referred to her health visitor by her nursery school
because she is having episodes of rage during which she goes blue and appears
to stop breathing. The health visitor checks that Sandra’s mother, Janet, has given
consent to the referral and then visits her at home, while Sandra is there, to discuss
the concerns. She then visits the nursery school to talk to the staff and following this
she reviews the situation with a local primary mental health worker.
The health visitor and primary mental health worker have little difficulty establish-
ing that these episodes, which happen at home as well as at the nursery school,
are blue breath-holding attacks. Although there are no concerning features in the
history, Janet remains anxious about the breath-holding attacks and so the health
visitor arranges for a general practitioner’s appointment, where a thorough history,
examination and explanation provides Janet with some reassurance.
The health visitor then gives Janet the behavioural management advice contained
in Chapter 18 of this book on Breath-holding. She reinforces this advice with further
telephone support and a home visit six weeks later.
At this follow-up, the attacks have substantially reduced and Janet is much more
confident about managing the behaviour.
Tiers 2 and 3 include the traditional narrowly defined ‘specialist CAMHS’ service
in the oval, which is part of secondary care. A referral from Tier 1 is usually neces-
sary to allow a child or family to have access to it. Tier 2 is uni-disciplinary and
Tier 3 multi-disciplinary. Tier 2 professionals have specific mental health training.
They may support service delivery at Tier 1 by carrying out assessment, treatment,
consultation or training. Tier 3 teams usually offer a specialised service to those
with more severe, complex and persistent disorders. Confusion sometimes arises
with this model because the same professional may work in Tier 2 and Tier 3 in
the same day: she may be working in isolation in the morning, but in collaboration
with others in the afternoon. The nature of multidisciplinary working is also a lit-
tle ambiguous: does it require the young person or family to be seen by more than
one professional, or is it sufficient for the case referred to be discussed by several
professionals for the approach to be considered multidisciplinary?
Tier 4 services are more highly specialised, are roughly equivalent to tertiary
care, and usually require a referral from Tiers 2 or 3. Most serve a larger area than
the referring Tier 2/3 services.
It is debatable whether there are any other professionals in Tiers 2 or 3 who
work outside the oval: educational psychologists used to work regularly in
specialist CAMHS teams, but now seldom do; however, many are now part of
separate multidisciplinary teams centred around a school or group of schools.
Day units may be staffed by the same professionals who work for part of their
week in specialist CAMHS teams. Individuals within the oval may work partly in
conjunction with other team members (Tier 3) and partly on their own (Tier 2),
so may effectively be part of both tiers. Some Tier 4 teams may work in relative
isolation, so seem more like services at Tier 2 or Tier 3 level: for instance, sub-
stance misuse teams.
A development of this Four-Tier model has been an extra tier (not included
on our diagram) between specialist outpatient (Tier 3) and inpatient (Tier 4)
services, often referred to as Tier 3+ or Tier 3½. These sub-teams may take vari-
ous forms, including crisis intervention teams managed by a Tier 3 service or
outreach teams managed by a Tier 4 service. They are thought to lessen the
number and duration of costly inpatient admissions, and therefore more than
save what they cost.
One of the underlying principles of this model is that children’s mental health
needs should be met at the lowest tier possible. This book can be seen as part of this
general trend to empower a wider range of professionals in fulfilling the maxim
that child mental health and emotional well-being is everybody’s business.6
overstretched specialist CAMHS services (Tier 2/3). These may include mental
health problems experienced by:
➤ children with disability, particularly neurological disability or sensory impairment
➤ children who have been abused
➤ looked-after children
➤ children who present primarily with physical symptoms that are subsequently
found to be indicators of an underlying mental health problem
➤ autistic spectrum disorders
➤ ADHD.
Some families may prefer to see a paediatrician for such problems, as they per-
ceive this as less stigmatising than attending a mental health service. In Figure
1.1, we have placed paediatricians in both Tier 1 and Tier 2, but some may soon
be within Tier 3, due to a training programme in paediatric mental health that
has been developed while we wrote this edition; and some paediatric neurologists
may be involved in Tier 4 neuro-psychiatric assessment teams. This illustrates
that arguments about which tier a particular person is working at are likely to be
unhelpful. Another pitfall of the Four-Tier model is the professional snobbery
that sometimes develops between the tiers, on the assumption that the higher a
tier in which a professional works, the more skilled she must be. So staff in inpa-
tient units may look down on outpatient teams, whose members may in turn look
down upon uni-disciplinary working – which may in fact be the most challenging
of all and require the most skill – not least because a sole professional is doing it.
The Four-Tier model is simply one way of understanding how services are
organised; an alternative model, which some may see as more user-friendly, is
described below.
And so it has turned out (roughly), with the inevitable large geographical variation
in management structures and job descriptions.
An alternative model
The Four-Tier model is merely a way of looking at existing services and helping
to organise them, so it is not susceptible to randomised controlled trials, as some
Universal services Work with all children and young people. They promote and
support mental health and psychological well-being through the
environment they create and the relationships they have with
children and young people. They include early years providers
and settings such as childminders and nurseries, schools,
colleges, youth services and primary healthcare services such as
GPs, midwives and health visitors.
Targeted services Are engaged to work with children and young people who have
specific needs – for example, learning difficulties or disabilities,
school attendance problems, family difficulties, physical illness
or behaviour difficulties. Within this group of services we also
include CAMHS delivered to targeted groups of children, such as
those in care.
Specialist services Work with children and young people with complex, severe and/
or persistent needs, reflecting the needs rather than necessarily
the ‘specialist’ skills required to meet those needs. This includes
CAMHS at Tiers 3 and 4 of the conceptual framework (though
there is overlap here as some Tier 3 services could also be
included in the ‘targeted’ category). It also includes services
across education, social care and youth offending that work with
children and young people with the highest levels of need – for
example, in pupil referral units (PRUs), special schools, children’s
homes, intensive foster care and other residential or secure
settings.
have suggested. While very helpful in guiding thinking about the development
of CAMHS in the broadest sense, it has led to frequent misunderstandings and
unproductive debates about who fits into what tier at which time of day.
A more recent model is shown in Table 1.1.9 This divides services into univer-
sal, targeted and specialist, thereby in some ways reverting to the old primary/
secondary/tertiary model, but extending it well beyond health. It overcomes some
of the definitional conflicts inherent in the Four-Tier model. It remains to be seen
whether this model will increase clarity and reduce confusion (as intended) – or
will in time become susceptible to the same drift in meaning and inter-professional
rivalry that has sabotaged the clarity of the Four-Tier model. One potential confu-
sion is that so-called ‘specialist’ services are not necessarily the most specialised
in terms of professional training but are specialised in terms of the multiple needs
of the children they select to treat. It might make more sense to call them ‘multi-
needs services’ or ‘multi-professional services’.
TABLE 1.2 How to make services more effective: themes defined by children and carers
Connexions was set up as an extension of the Careers Advisory Service, but its
expanded remit can include sorting out many mental health issues, especially for
young people with learning difficulties, or those who, for other reasons, do not fit
into readily available educational or employment opportunities. There are many
other examples of organisations that contribute to children’s emotional health
and well-being: steps have been taken to ensure that all have a ‘common core’ of
training.12 In particular, education and social care contribute a large component of
overall mental health provision.
Education
In schools, support for individual children is invaluable, either in the form of
someone a child can talk to if she needs, or special needs help. Group or class-
room initiatives are also important, either as part of lessons in personal, social
and health education, or preferably as part of a whole school prioritisation of
pastoral care. Teaching staff and learning support assistants within the school
may be supported by local partnership teams centred on a cluster of schools.
These teams may have a variety of names (see the bullet-point list on page 4).
They can include a variety of professionals: educational psychologists; special-
ist advisory teachers; social workers; school nurses; mental health workers with
links to Tier 3 CAMHS; educational welfare officers; social inclusion workers;
and representatives from youth services, children’s centres, the police or volun-
tary organisations. These may form a ‘virtual team’, with members who are based
in different teams on different sites, or a real team, with co-located offices. Coor-
dination of input from different agencies may be a challenge, and may require
different sorts of solutions in different localities. Special schools may need more
specialist input. Meeting the mental health needs of 14–19 year olds may result in
particular difficulties for sixth-form colleges and Connexions, not least because
of the variable age cut-offs of different agencies.
Robert, aged 14 years, is having difficulty managing in school due to his behav-
iour. He has been to his local specialist CAMHS service for assessment of possible
ADHD, but has refused a trial of medication, and says he does not want to return for
any more appointments.
His father left home when he was three years old after a period of domestic
violence. His mother has two younger children by a different father, who has also
left the family home. She had a difficult relationship with her own mother, but Robert
has always got on well with his maternal grandfather and one of his maternal uncles.
At school, he gets into frequent fights and is often sent out of the classroom for
being disruptive. He responds well to small-group or individual tuition in the Learning
Support Unit (Special Needs Department), but is getting low grades for most sub-
jects, especially those involving literacy skills. He is however good at physical educa-
tion and craft, design and technology. He has recently been given three short-term
exclusions, for a combination of fighting with other pupils and swearing at teachers.
His mother is concerned that most of Robert’s friends seem to be involved in minor
criminal activities and possibly drug use (which Robert denies).
The special needs coordinator is concerned that Robert will be permanently
excluded, so, with his mother’s permission, seeks advice from the primary mental
health worker. Together, they agree that the special needs coordinator will approach
her local partnership team for further advice and in particular the social inclusion
worker. The social inclusion worker meets with Robert and his mother: he tries
to focus on Robert’s strengths rather than his problems. He gets Robert onto a
local activity scheme, which involves Robert in after-school and Saturday morning
activities, including a martial arts class, skateboarding, a drama group and a guitar
workshop. Robert makes a good relationship with a particular youth worker, who
manages to encourage Robert to establish a more pro-social group of friends, so
that he keeps out of trouble with the police. The special needs coordinator enrols
Robert at the beginning of Year 10 into college courses, each for one day per week,
in motor mechanics and carpentry, both of which he enjoys. He is allowed to reduce
the number of GCSEs he is enrolled for.
Over the next two years, Robert narrowly manages to avoid permanent school
exclusion, although he still has difficulties managing classroom situations with
particular teachers, and has to spend about half of his remaining three days in
school in the Learning Support Unit. He gets a D grade in Maths GCSE, and with
support from his Connexions worker, continues at college on a carpentry course
while taking his English GCSE re-sit. He has some difficulty getting an appren-
ticeship, but eventually finds one with a relative. Although he still clashes with his
mother about his late bedtimes and untidy room, she is pleased about the friends
he has made.
We have included a chapter on diet and exercise, but have not included chapters on
how to help children who start school with socio-economic disadvantage to catch
up; town planning; or how to lobby politicians.
“Strategy,” says Jomini, speaking of the art of war on land, “is the art
of making war upon the map, and comprehends the whole theater of
warlike operations. Grand tactics is the art of posting troops upon
the battlefield, according to the accidents of the ground; of bringing
them into action; and the art of fighting upon the ground in
contradistinction to planning upon a map. Its operations may extend
over a field of ten or twelve miles in extent. Strategy decides where to
act. Grand tactics decides the manner of execution and the
employment of troops,” when, by the combinations of strategy, they
have been assembled at the point of action.
... Between Strategy and Grand Tactics comes logically Logistics.
Strategy decides where to act; Logistics is the act of moving armies; it
brings the troops to the point of action and controls questions of
supply; Grand Tactics decides the methods of giving battle.
5. Fundamental Principles[21]
The situation here used in illustration is taken from the Thirty Years’
War, 1618–1648, in which the French House of Bourbon opposed the
House of Austria, the latter controlling Spain, Austria, and parts of
Germany. France lay between Spain and Austria; but if Spain
commanded the sea, her forces could reach the field of conflict in
central Europe either by way of Belgium or by way of the Duchy of
Milan in northern Italy, both of which were under her rule.
[The upper course of the Danube between Ulm and Ratisbon is
also employed to illustrate central position, dominating the great
European theater of war north of the Alps and east of the Rhine.—
Editor.]
The situation of France relatively to her two opponents of this
period—Spain and Austria—illustrates three elements of strategy, of
frequent mention, which it is well here to name and to define, as well
as to illustrate by the instance before you.
1. There is central position, illustrated by France; her national
power and control interposing by land between her enemies. Yet not
by land only, provided the coast supports an adequate navy; for, if
that be the case, the French fleet also interposes between Spanish
and Italian ports. The Danube is similarly an instance of central
position.
2. Interior lines. The characteristic of interior lines is that of the
central position prolonged in one or more directions, thus favoring
sustained interposition between separate bodies of an enemy; with
the consequent power to concentrate against either, while holding
the other in check with a force possibly distinctly inferior. An interior
line may be conceived as the extension of a central position, or as a
series of central positions connected with one another, as a
geometrical line is a continuous series of geometrical points. The
expression “Interior Lines” conveys the meaning that from a central
position one can assemble more rapidly on either of two opposite
fronts than the enemy can, and therefore can utilize force more
effectively. Particular examples of maritime interior lines are found
in the route by Suez as compared with that by the Cape of Good
Hope, and in Panama contrasted with Magellan. The Kiel Canal
similarly affords an interior line between the Baltic and North Sea, as
against the natural channels passing round Denmark, or between the
Danish Islands,—the Sound and the two Belts.[22] These instances of
“Interior” will recall one of your boyhood’s geometrical theorems,
demonstrating that, from a point interior to a triangle, lines drawn to
two angles are shorter than the corresponding sides of the triangle
itself. Briefly, interior lines are lines shorter in time than those the
enemy can use. France, for instance, in the case before us, could
march twenty thousand men to the Rhine, or to the Pyrenees, or
could send necessary supplies to either, sooner than Spain could
send the same number to the Rhine, or Austria to the Pyrenees,
granting even that the sea were open to their ships.
3. The position of France relatively to Germany and Spain
illustrates also the question of communications. “Communications”
is a general term, designating the lines of movement by which a
military body, army or fleet, is kept in living connection with the
national power. This being the leading characteristic of
communications, they may be considered essentially lines of
defensive action; while interior lines are rather offensive in
character, enabling the belligerent favored by them to attack in force
one part of the hostile line sooner than the enemy can reinforce it,
because the assailant is nearer than the friend. As a concrete
instance, the disastrous attempt already mentioned, of Spain in 1639
to send reinforcements by the Channel, followed the route from
Corunna to the Straits of Dover. It did so because at that particular
moment the successes of France had given her control of part of the
valley of the Rhine, closing it to the Spaniards from Milan; while the
more eastern route through Germany was barred by the Swedes, who
in the Thirty Years’ War were allies of France. The Channel therefore
at that moment remained the only road open from Spain to the
Netherlands, between which it became the line of communications.
Granting the attempt had been successful, the line followed is
exterior; for, assuming equal rapidity of movement, ten thousand
men starting from central France should reach the field sooner.
The central position of France, therefore, gave both defensive and
offensive advantage. In consequence of the position she had interior
lines, shorter lines, by which to attack, and also her communications
to either front lay behind the front, were covered by the army at the
front; in other words, had good defense, besides being shorter than
those by which the enemy on one front could send help to the other
front. Further, by virtue of her position, the French ports on the
Atlantic and Channel flanked the Spanish sea communications.
At the present moment, Germany and Austria-Hungary, as
members of the Triple Alliance, have the same advantage of central
and concentrated position against the Triple Entente, Russia, France,
and Great Britain.
Transfer now your attention back to the Danube when the scene of
war is in that region; as it was in 1796, and also frequently was
during the period of which we are now speaking.... You have seen
before, that, if there be war between Austria and France, as there so
often was, the one who held the Danube had a central position in the
region. Holding means possession by military power, which power
can be used to the full against the North or against the South—
offensive power—far more easily than the South and North can
combine against him; because he is nearer to each than either is to
the other. (See map.) Should North wish to send a big reinforcement
to South, it cannot march across the part of the Danube held, but
must march around it above or below; exactly as, in 1640,
reinforcements from Spain to the Rhine had, so to say, to march
around France. In such a march, on land, the reinforcement making
it is necessarily in a long column, because roads do not allow a great
many men to walk abreast. The road followed designates in fact the
alignment of the reinforcement from day to day; and because its
advance continually turns the side to the enemy, around whom it is
moving, the enemy’s position is said to flank the movement,
constituting a recognized danger. It makes no difference whether the
line of march is straight or curved; it is extension upon it that
constitutes the danger, because the line itself, being thin, is
everywhere weak, liable to an attack in force upon a relatively small
part of its whole. Communications are exposed, and the enemy has
the interior line....
This is an illustration of the force of Napoleon’s saying, that “War
is a business of positions.” All this discussion turns on position; the
ordinary, semi-permanent, positions of Center, North, and South; or
the succession of positions occupied by the detachment on that line
of communications along which it moves. This illustrates the
importance of positions in a single instance, but is by no means
exhaustive of that importance. Fully to comprehend, it is necessary
to study military and naval history; bearing steadily in mind
Napoleon’s saying, and the definitions of central position, interior
lines, and communications.
Take, for example, an instance so recent as to have been
contemporary with men not yet old,—the Turkish position at Plevna
in 1877. This stopped the Russian advance on Constantinople for
almost five months. Why? Because, if they had gone on, Plevna
would have been close to their line of communications, and in a
central position relatively to their forces at the front and those in the
rear, or behind the Danube. It was also so near, that, if the enemy
advanced far, the garrison of Plevna could reach the only bridge
across the Danube, at Sistova, and might destroy it, before help could
come; that is, Plevna possessed an interior line towards a point of the
utmost importance. Under these circumstances, Plevna alone