In all this I do not mean to imply that Tommy is conscious of fighting to protect his supply of tea and to maintain English institutions. He is not; he is fighting because it has become the business of England and he has been ordered to fight. He grumbles and does what is required of him, not troubling to inform himself further, any more than at home he informed himself of the policies of the government. The government is an ephemeral sort of thing, a matter of speeches, and of elections and cabinets which come and go. But England is a fixed and enduring condition, the result of a long process of accumulation and integration in which Tommy, and the King, fit as stones in a building. It
Tommy would not know what to do outside of his place, because to take him out is to destroy the structure — and Tommy. He is not an individual; he is first an Englishman. With a full realization of this fact, we will, I think, cease to worry about his lack of imagination and self-reliance or his failure to possess the necessary quick resilience and adaptability to overcome the unexpected or to take advantage of it. He doesn’t lack self- reliance, and few men more readily adapt themselves to conditions. What he does lack is a feeling of independent self-sufficiency and aggressiveness and the concomitant impulse to push on alone, defiant of danger, glorying in individual achievement. Instead, it is instinctive with him to stand with his fellows. He is disposed to attach a great deal of importance to orders, and to conform strictly to them, because the issuing of orders is the business of the higher-ups, and all his life he has been accustomed to obeying orders or the decrees of government. Orders are a sign that everybody is on the job and things are being done in the correct manner.
But this doesn’t mean that the English soldier is demoralized and helpless when the officer is killed or momentarily absent. If leadership has been sound and inspiring it outlives the officer. The officer is a symbol, just as at home the King is a symbol, the
This imposes a great responsibility upon the officers, and I think it is here that the British Army was weakest. I don’t mean to indict the British officer. Far from it; the British officer at his best — and there were many of these — was a remarkably fine soldier. He was intelligent, and schooled by birth and breeding in the first essential of command: self-command. The old, regular officers were, of course, highly trained at Sandhurst (the British West Point). There were some who held commissions without having undergone this course of training; but, still considering the best, they rapidly acquired an acceptable substitute. They fell in with the traditions of the regiment, with which they probably were already familiar, and with the fine traditions of the British officer, which leave nothing to be said. They were a fine lot, distinguished at all times by something which perhaps may be called aplomb. They were always right side up, unruffled under the most harassing and disconcerting conditions.
The weakness to which I refer has nothing to do with them — except that, if it obtains, as I think it does, it resulted in their numbers being shot through with a lot of men not all of this sort. It is a weakness which seems to me to inhere in the British system — though I think it can be, and perhaps is being, overcome. The line between officers and men in England is not drawn by military decree. It has been determined by the circumstances of birth, habit, custom — all that goes to make up the English social system — through a thousand years. It is recognized in the broader authority of the sergeants as compared to ours. The sergeants, under the sergeant-major, attend to nearly all matters of camp and drill routine, and any special orders are executed through them, the officers merely indicating to the sergeant-major what is to be done. The idea is that the soldier may put on “company manners,” bring out his best just as he would like to do at home, however poor it is, if he were to be visited by someone of a station above him. The distinction may be made clearer, perhaps, by saying that it is not the business of the officer to train men, but to command and lead them. They are to be presented fit to respond to command. This is what is wanted. The ranks are not filled, as they are likely to be with us, with men who believe that they would be better officers than the lieutenant in charge of them. They do not aspire to lead, but to be well-commanded. The line between them marks the class distinction about which developed the weakness to which I refer.
The officers came from the classes, the higher-ups — of traditional necessity. But the traditional line is maintained more or less in defiance of the procreational methods of Dame Nature who goes on, indifferently, producing above the line a fair number of freaks with a minimum of grey matter. Many of these find their way into officers’ uniforms. The Chinese have a proverb: “You can’t carve rotten wood.” These fellows have the manner, but no way has been discovered to give them the matter; and the manner thus becomes a caricature; hence the stage-Englishman. On the stage he is all right, except that, in the United States, where the genuine article is not so well known, he reflects upon a lot of the finest fellows in the world.
But the battlefield is no place for a joke of this sort; though even here, so far as the manner goes, they carried it off pretty well. They could carry a “stick,” and many of them had the necessary self-command and calmness of manner. But that, of course, was not enough. In the hands of the real and splendid officer — and they were splendid — the stick was a symbol of his business to lead, to command, not to fight. It was a glorious sight. Armed with nothing else, they walked out ahead of their men into almost certain death, for they were easily spotted and picked off. Because of this, it was forbidden. Officers were required to remove the distinctive braid from their sleeves and to substitute dull bronze insignia on the shoulder, and were encouraged to carry a rifle. In the hands of the “dud,” the stick was not only a symbol of the right to command; it became also a symbol of his failure to possess anything more than the arbitrary right. He was fittingly armed, and if nothing more than his own life had depended upon it, his conspicuousness would have worked out well enough. The order to remove conspicuous insignia and to carry a rifle was a triumph of common sense over tradition. The officers who possessed this rare commodity appreciated the order, not for their own safety, but because they realized they were more valuable alive than dead — and I think, too, they realized that there were too few of them. But orders could not confer common sense upon the dud.
He should, of course, have been in the ranks but this was not always possible. After all, tradition is a hardy growth; and, though it couldn’t outwit Nature, it could and did outwit the High Command. It was not only difficult to get rid of him; it was difficult to replace him. For, although, while producing the duds above the line, Nature produced the same fair measure of fine material below it, this could not always be used. Tradition again. The English upper classes have among them a goodly number of families only a generation or so removed from the condition of poor bakers, brewers, soap-makers and distillers, and these have somehow and in some acceptable measure managed to acquire the approval of tradition. A generation and a lot of money can do wonders. But in England you can’t take a man from the ranks and make him an officer — generally speaking. He has the common sense, but he can’t carry a stick. Again, the High Command is helpless. In this case it has at hand the common sense, but can’t impose the manner; it can’t disguise this fellow so that the men will not recognize him as somebody who has been taken out from below and stuck up into a higher place, a violation of the order of things: “Aye; I knew the bloke when he was a bloomin’ sergeant.”
This, I think, marks a real weakness in the English Army. It is a situation with which the United States will not be faced. The qualifications here pertain more strictly to the individual, and we have no limited officer-class to be depleted. There is such a class in England. It contains some of the finest men in the world — and some of the greatest asses. This class was sadly depleted of its best during the war. I suspect (and would very much like to have firsthand information about it) that if along in the spring of 1918 the war-weary Tommy (whose ranks were also shorn of their best) showed signs of flagging morale, this condition had much to do with it. It is a pity; for Tommy, if he has the right sort of officer — even if this officer is killed in the first minute of the attack — is damned near invincible.
This insistence upon the importance of the officer should not be taken to mean that in the British Army it was
