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British Army From Within

<h2 class="vspace">CHAPTER X THE NEW ARMY</h2></div> In the course of these pages the remark has already been made that the British Army is in a state of flux; this is true mainly as regards numbers and organisation, but with regard to discipline and training no very great changes are possible. Methods of training may alter, and do alter for the better from time to time, but the basic principles remain, since an army can be trained only in one way: by the use of strict discipline and of means calculated to impart to men the greatest possible amount of instruction in the shortest space of time. The more quickly a man absorbs the main points of his training, the better for him and for the army whose effectiveness he is intended to increase. In the new army of to-day, from which it is intended to draft effective men into the firing line at the earliest possible moment, rapidity of training is a prime essential. At the outset, owing to the enormous numbers of men who flocked to159 the colours, training was no easy matter, and for some time to come instructors will be scarce when compared with the multitude of men who require training. In order to combat this, instructors have been asked to re-enlist from among ex-soldiers who, past fighting age themselves, are yet quite capable of drilling the new men. A minor drawback arises here, however, in that such of the instructors as left the colours before a certain date are out of touch as regards modern weapons and drill. For instance, the field gun at present in use in the British Army was not generally adopted until after the conclusion of the South African campaign; in the case of the cavalry, again, important modifications have been brought about in drill and formations during the last ten years, while the charger loading rifle with wind gauge is comparatively an innovation both as regards cavalry and infantry. It is not intended to imply that drill instructors who finished their colour service ten or twelve years ago are of no use, for, in the matters of imparting elementary drill and the first principles of discipline to the recruits, they are invaluable and far too few. But, in more advanced matters, it must be conceded that the sooner the new army can instruct itself the better, for the proverb about an old dog and160 new tricks may be applied to re-enlisted instructors and the new army, which is a whole bag of new tricks. It is essential that the new army should train itself at the earliest possible moment, and for this reason there are endless opportunities for the man with brains who enlists at the present time. The re-enlisted drill instructor will not accompany the men of the new army into the field, and, as an army increases, a relative increase must be made in the number of its non-commissioned officers, while there are also vacancies by the hundred for commissioned officers. For the average man, however, it is useless at the present time to depend on influence and back-door methods for promotion. Worth is all that will count, and an ounce of enlistment to-day is worth a ton of influence that might have been exercised yesterday. It is as true of the new army as of any other profession that there is plenty of room at the top. The way to get there is by enlistment to-day and hard and patient application to one’s work for a matter of weeks or months. No man can tell how long the new army will last, or what will be the conditions of service and strength of the army after the proclamation of peace. One thing, however, is certain. Not while161 a first-class power remains on the continent of Europe will conscription cease altogether between the Urals and the Atlantic, or between Archangel and Brindisi. It is quite probable that when peace comes again, universal conscription will cease, for there will no longer be an embodied threat in central Europe—the Powers will have no more of that, and the burden of armaments on the old scale must cease. On the other hand, however, nations will maintain sufficient forces to enable them to insist on international justice; the threat of the sword will always form the final court of appeal from the decisions of any arbitration body, and, while this is so, a British army must always be maintained. The existence of primal human instinct is fatal to the idea of total disarmament; war may not come again, for that is a contingency with regard to which none can prophesy, but the fact remains that the best provision for peace is ample preparation against the chances of war. Thus the man who looks for a career out of the British Army need not look in vain, for there will always be sufficient of an army, if only for colonial and foreign service, to furnish capable men with all the careers that they may desire. The other reason for enlistment, less selfish and more vital,162 has been expressed by many voices and by means of many pens; the country has called, and there are ugly names for those who, without sufficient claims of kin to form cause for exemption, refuse to answer the call. With regard to the composition of the new army it may be said that the standing of the men has altered materially since the outbreak of hostilities, though this is in keeping with the trend of thought and feeling that has been evident since the end of the South African campaign. Up to the end of the nineteenth century there still remained obscure provincial centres in which it was supposed that only wastrels would enlist, with a view to getting an easy means of livelihood; farther back, this conception of the Army was a very common one. It is hard to say at what period of British history such an idea gained currency, unless the employment of mercenaries previous to the time of the French Revolution may have given it birth. For, long before Waterloo, the British soldier gave ample proof of the stuff of which he is made, and there is not a battlefield of history from which there has not come some instance of self-denial or devotion to a comrade which attests among the ranks of the British Army the existence of the highest principles by which humanity is actuated. 163 But, up to the end of the nineteenth century, civilians could not understand the Army. Kipling taught them a little, but Kipling’s soldiers are all hard drinkers with a tendency to the slaughter of aspirates, and various other linguistic eccentricities. As character studies, Kipling’s soldiers are masterly works, but they bear little relation to the soldier of to-day, who, even as an infantryman, is required to be an educated man in certain directions, since he lives in a welter of wind gauges and trajectory, decimal points and mathematical calculations with regard to the accomplishment of his duties. The public as a whole has been waking up to these facts slowly—very slowly—but it has taken the world-catastrophe of a general European war to shake the public entirely from its apathy, and cause it to realise that the Army is an agglomeration of men in the highest sense of that little three-lettered word. There is to-day among all ranks and classes a realisation of the good that is, and always has been in the Army; there is a new interest in soldiers, in military movements, and in all that pertains to the theory and practice of war, and this augurs well for the future of members of the new army, both on duty and among their friends. Counting from the day that the nation wakened to the good that is in the164 Army, and the possibility of soldiers being at root like other men, military uniform has become a matter for pride to its wearer, and respect from those who from any cause are unable to assume the uniform. As this war has knit together motherland and colonies, so, by means of this war, the soldier has come to his own. The new army is not a thing apart from the nation: it is the nation. The new army means an increase not in numbers alone, for we may accept as a principle that the best will rule in a mass composed of all sorts from best to worst—that is, if we grant relative equality in the numbers of best and worst, and of each intervening grade. Periods of commercial prosperity have left the Army dependent mainly on the unemployed for its recruits, with a corresponding loss in education and moral tone, but the new army is composed of men of all grades, actuated for the most part by the highest possible impulses, and asking only to be allowed to give of their best. Enlisting in this spirit, it is inevitable that these men should look upward, and thus the best will rule. For purposes of rule the Army needs the very best, for its own sake and that of the future of the nation’s manhood. In gaining the best and their influence, the Army will165 increase in social standing and moral tone as well as in numbers. No man comes out from the Army as he went in; there are many types, and with the enormous increase in numbers at the present time, the number of types will increase as well as the number of representatives of each type. Country youths, town dwellers, agricultural labourers—who often make the best and keenest soldiers—men who know nothing of what labour is like, skilled artisans, and men from the office—all come to the ranks of the Army, which, shaping them to compliance with discipline, still leaves the stamp of individuality. The soldiers of the new army will come back to their ordinary avocations bearing the stamp of military training, stronger physically, and different in many ways—mainly improved ways. But the metal on which the stamp of the Army is impressed will remain the same, for one is first a man and then a soldier. The instances of Prussian brutality evident to-day, and an eternal disgrace to the German nation, do not prove anything against the Prussian military system, but afford evidence that brutality is ingrained in the Prussian before he goes up as a conscript to begin his training. So, whatever the characteristics of a man may be, the Army cannot make a166 brave soldier out of a cowardly civilian, and it cannot make a good man into a bad one; it accentuates certain traits of character and drives others into the background, but it neither destroys nor creates. It is a training school which, taken in the right way, brings out all that is best in a man, stiffens him to face the battle of life as well as the battles of military service, and strengthens self-confidence and self-respect. The men who are seen to have suffered in character during their military training are by no means examples from which one can cite the result of discipline and army work, for it is not the training that is at fault, but the inherent weakness of the men themselves. The social standing of the majority of recruits joining the new army renders it ten times more true of the Army of to-day than of the Army of yesterday, that military training gives more than it demands, inculcates habits which, followed in after life, are invaluable, and makes a man—in the best sense of the word—of each one who joins its ranks. One thing that officers and men alike in the new army should be made to realise is that the possession of a good kit carries one half of the way on active service—the things that carry the other half of the way are not to be purchased. But the167 man who has undergone the rigours of active service understands the value of good boots, good field-glasses, well-fitting and suitable clothing, and really portable accessories to personal comfort. These things, and an intelligent choice of them, go far to make up the difference between the man successful at his work and the failure, for although a bad workman is said to quarrel with his tools a good workman cannot do good work with bad tools. In the peculiarly exacting conditions entailed on men by active service, kit and equipment should be of the best quality obtainable, and the choice of what to take and what to leave behind is evidence, to some extent, of the fitness of the man for his work. The most important item of all is boots, and in fitting boots for active service one should be careful to select a size that will admit of the wearer enjoying a night’s sleep without removing his footwear. Care of the feet, and retention of the ability to march, are quite as important as shooting abilities, for the man who cannot march with the rest will not be in it when the shooting begins. For the rest, it is wise to try, if not to follow, as often as possible the tips given, by men who have been on active service, with regard to the choice of kit and the little things that make for comfort—that is, as far as168 compliance with these “tips” is compatible with keeping the size of one’s outfit down. The seasoned man, when talking of such subjects as kit and comfort, usually speaks out of his own experience, and his advice is worth following. The golden rule in the choice of an outfit for service is simply “as little as possible, and that little good.” This rule, by the way, used to be applied to the British Army in another way: the new army, however, makes a difference in the matter of size. <hr /> 169 <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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